Joe Biden has reportedly become more open in recent days to hearing arguments that he should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told Democratic colleagues that he could be convinced to leave the race soon.
The Washington Post reported that Pelosi has taken a prominent role in passing messages from House Democrats to the White House, relaying concerns that Biden is incapable of beating Donald Trump in November, and has said she thinks Biden is close to making a decision to end his campaign.
Pelosi has been widely reported as orchestrating the renewed pressure on Biden to give up his re-election bid, which has intensified in recent days after a brief pause following last Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Trump, to which the president responded with a series of authoritative statements calling for calm.
Though he continues to insist he will be the party’s nominee in November, Biden has reportedly started asking questions about negative polling data and whether the vice-president, Kamala Harris, considered the favourite to replace him if were to withdraw, fares better.
The indications of a possible rethink come after Biden tested positive on Wednesday for Covid-19, forcing him to isolate for several days while curtailing a campaign visit to Nevada that had been part of a drive to show his candidacy was very much alive.
It also coincides with fresh polling data showing that he now trails Trump by two points in Virginia, a state he won by 10 points in 2020, and signals that key Democrats, including Barack Obama, now believe he should stand down.
The Emerson College Polling/Hill survey showed Trump ahead by 45% to 43%, within the margin of error but consistent with a spate of other polls showing that Biden’s support has fallen in swing states since his disastrous showing at last month’s debate in Atlanta.
Biden’s newfound receptivity to at least the possibility of stepping aside represents a shift from the position he adopted at a press conference at last week’s Nato summit in Washington, when he told journalists he would only drop out if polling data showed him “there’s no way you can win”.
“No one’s saying that,” he added.
His willingness to listen to opposing arguments comes after Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, reportedly both told him that it would be in the country’s interest if he stepped aside, ABC reported.
I am told Chuck Schumer had a blunt one-on-one conversation with Biden Saturday afternoon in Rehoboth. Schumer forcefully made the case that it would be best if Biden bowed out of the race.
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) July 17, 2024
Schumer's office wouldn't comment on the specifics of the conversation, telling me only,…
Schumer described the report of his meeting with Biden at the president’s Delaware home last weekend as “idle speculation”, but, tellingly, did not deny its contents.
The Senate leader’s intervention has apparently been influential in delaying a move by the Democratic National Committee to stage an early electronic roll call of delegates that could have started next week and was aimed at locking in the nomination for Biden before next month’s party convention in Chicago. The roll call vote has been pushed by at least a week, giving forces opposed to him running more time to organise.
Pelosi also told Biden in a recent conversation that polls show he cannot beat Trump and that he could wreck the Democrats’ chances of recapturing the chamber in November, according to CNN.
Biden is said to have pushed back during the conversation, insisting – as he has in several Zoom sessions with other Democrats – that he had seen polling data showing he could win.
It is not known if Pelosi had called on the president to stand aside during the talk, which was said to have taken place in the past week.
Adam Schiff, the California congressman who on Tuesday became the latest elected Democrat to urge Biden to stand down, is known to be close to Pelosi.
“The speaker does not want to call on him to resign [as the Democratic nominee], but she will do everything in her power to make sure it happens,” Politico reported one Pelosi ally as saying.
A Washington Post report on Thursday suggested that Obama – for whom Biden served as vice-president – had told allies in recent days that Biden’s path to re-election had greatly diminished and that he needed to reconsider the viability of his campaign.
Obama has spoken to Biden just once since the 27 June debate but he and Pelosi have reportedly shared their concerns privately on the phone. The former president initially tweeted his support for Biden in the immediate aftermath of the debate.
Another key congressman, Jamie Raskin of Maryland – who played a leading role in the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the US Capitol – added his voice to the pressure with a four-page letter to Biden sent on 6 July comparing him to a tired baseball pitcher and pleading with him to consult with fellow Democrats over whether to continue his campaign, the New York Times reported.
“There is no shame in taking a well-deserved bow to the overflowing appreciation of the crowd when your arm is tired out, and there is real danger for the team in ignoring the statistics,” wrote Raskin, drawing a comparison with a Boston Red Sox pitcher, Pedro Martinez, whose tired state cost his team a place in the World Series in 2003.
In another ominous sign for Biden, Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the president’s main advisers and a co-chairman of his campaign, has told him that donors have stopped giving money to his campaign.
A Biden adviser told the New York Times that the decision on whether to withdraw from the race boiled down to three factors – polling, money and which states were in play. All three were moving in the wrong direction for Biden, he said.
As renewed speculation about Biden’s thinking intensified on Thursday, his supporters continued to insist that the position was unchanged.
“When it comes to if he’s open or being receptive to any of that, look, the president has said it several times: he’s staying in this race,” Quentin Fulks, the Biden campaign deputy manager, told reporters on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.
“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not at the top of the ticket,” he added.
