WASHINGTON — Several people close to President Joe Biden said Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, bowing to the growing demands of many anxious members of his party.
One of the people close to him warned that the president had not yet made up his mind to leave the race after three weeks of insisting that almost nothing would drive him out. But another said that “reality is setting in,” and that it would not be a surprise if Biden made an announcement soon endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.
Some people in Biden’s camp have told Democratic allies that the president’s resolve to stay in the race has been most shaken by three developments: The decision by Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, to weigh in so strongly, new state polls showing that his path to an Electoral College victory has grown far more remote and the boycott of key party donors.
The discussions among Biden’s advisers have advanced to the point that they are talking about the best timing and other details for an announcement if the president decides to give up his bid for a second term, according to one of the people informed about the situation. While some were anticipating that an announcement could come as early as the next few days, the timing remained in flux in part because Biden is in isolation at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, after a COVID diagnosis.
This account is based on interviews with five people close to the president, all of whom described the situation as extremely delicate and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending the president.
Many other Democrats more distant from the White House said expectations were rising within the party that the president would soon relent, a shift from just days ago when many were in despair about changing his mind. But there was also caution about reading signs from a president with an exceedingly small circle of confidants.
More Democratic defections became public Thursday. Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a key member of the House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, urged Biden to consult with fellow Democrats about whether to continue his campaign in a letter to the president dated July 6. Obtained by The New York Times, the missive compared the 81-year-old commander in chief to a tiring baseball pitcher. “Everything we believe in is on the line in the next four and a half months,” Raskin wrote.
Later Thursday, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who is facing a difficult reelection battle, said he believed that the president should exit the race. “While I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country,” he told a local Montana outlet, “I believe President Biden should not seek reelection.”
White House officials denied that the president was moving toward dropping out, dismissing reports to the contrary as a result of a coordinated campaign of leaks by Democratic leaders to escalate the pressure on Biden. Although he was listening to the concerns and taking them seriously, the officials said, he had not changed his mind about pulling out and made clear to aides in the last 24 hours that he remained determined to stay in the race.
Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime senior adviser and one of his most loyal confidants, has told the president that the race remains competitive despite Democratic doubts and some of the public polls, insisting that there is still a path to victory, according to other advisers. The president’s family has also been supportive of his sticking it out, noting his long history of overcoming the odds and defying skeptics.
Proud and stubborn, Biden keeps a mental checklist of all the times he has succeeded after being told that he could not and he tends to dig in the more he is pushed to change. But the mounting demands to step aside now come not from ancillary players or media commentators but from the very Democrats who have been his most important allies over the last several years. For a president who has prized his relationships on Capitol Hill, it reflects an extraordinary fall.
Understanding his psychology and sensitive to his current illness, several people familiar with the discussions said those close to him were hesitant to press him for an answer while he was suffering from COVID. His doctor said Thursday that he did not have a fever but was experiencing respiratory symptoms.
Biden’s deliberations came as the crisis engulfing his presidency intensified and the president was confronted directly with polls showing that his donors were abandoning him and he was losing badly in all of the battleground states.
Pelosi, the California lawmaker and one of the president’s most loyal supporters, has told him that she is pessimistic about his chances, marshaling her knowledge of the political map, polling data and fundraising to press her case. In a recent call, when Biden insisted he had polls showing he could win, Pelosi said “put Donilon on the phone,” so she could cite her own polls showing the opposite — a direct challenge to the president and an implication that he was not being fully informed.
A spokesperson for Pelosi did not deny that she had shared with the president data that showed he could not win and pressed him on what other data he could be basing his decision on.
“Speaker Pelosi respects the confidentiality of her meetings and conversations with the president of the United States,” the spokesperson said. “Sadly, the feeding frenzy from the press based on anonymous sources misrepresents any conversations the speaker may have had with the president.”
The political drama surrounding Biden’s future deepened even as former President Donald Trump prepared to formally accept his party’s nomination on the final day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and the president was said to be suffering from mild symptoms from COVID.
After Biden landed in Delaware on Wednesday night, the president paused, waved and said, “I am doing well.” He has begun taking Paxlovid, a treatment that may reduce the symptoms of COVID.
Publicly, the president’s team pressed forward.
Harris traveled to North Carolina for a campaign rally in which she made the case for Biden’s second term. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson, rejected the notion that the president might step aside for Harris or another Democrat.
“The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100-days agenda to help working families,” Bates said. T.J. Ducklo, a campaign spokesperson, added, “He’s running for reelection, and that will not change until he wins reelection.”
But while only 23 Democratic members of Congress, and no congressional leaders, have publicly called for Biden to drop out, many more have privately said he should. And while those conversations, and the talks between congressional leaders and Biden, were initially kept under tight wraps, they are beginning to be discussed more openly, a sign that impatience is growing in the face of the president’s defiant refusals to step aside.
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the two top Democrats in Congress, each told Biden privately over the past week that their members were deeply concerned about his chances in November and the fates of House and Senate candidates should he remain at the top of the ticket, according to two people briefed on the conversations.
The mood inside the White House and at the president’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, was grim Thursday as developments came in rapid-fire succession throughout the day.
Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program and one of Biden’s biggest supporters, all but called for him to drop out of the race.
Citing polls showing that Democrats are struggling in key states and warnings from longtime donors that Biden’s financial support has dried up, Scarborough said it was time for people around the president to “step up at this point and help the president, and help the man they love, and do the right thing.”
“This is not going to end well if it continues to drag out,” he said.
At the White House and on the Biden campaign, senior staff members are increasingly worried that Biden could lose Virginia, a state that last backed a Republican for president two decades ago and is no longer typically regarded as a presidential battleground, according to a senior Biden aide who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly about internal assessments.
The senior Biden aide said that at the campaign and the White House, senior staff members were increasingly, if informally, discussing among themselves their sense that Biden’s exit from the race was starting to feel inevitable — a matter of when and how, not if. Those conversations were taboo as recently as a few days ago, the person said.
But Quentin Fulks, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, denied that the president was more receptive to calls to step out of the race.
“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where Biden is not at the top of the ticket,” Fulks said Thursday. “We look forward to him accepting the delegates in Chicago.” But the campaign was quietly testing head-to-head polling between Harris and Trump, as reported last week.
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