In a closed-door meeting Wednesday, some of the nation’s labor leaders — many of them staunch Biden supporters — said Americans’ doubts about Biden’s ability to do the job were hurting his candidacy and repeatedly asked Biden campaign officials about their plan to defeat Trump, according to two people familiar with their comments, who Like others for this story, they spoke on condition of anonymity to share private comments. Two of the most outspoken leaders were Sara Nelson, the president of the Association of Flight Attendants, and Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, two of Biden’s biggest labor allies.
In a statement released later Wednesday, the AFL-CIO leadership “voted unanimously to reaffirm its commitment” to Biden, saying, “No president has been more invested in helping working people than Joe Biden.”
Senior campaign officials have begun to take a more pessimistic view of Biden’s chances, even as they continue to deploy in a full-scale blitz to advance the campaign and reassure allies of the president’s potential for a rebound.
“The vast majority of campaign executives are discouraged and don’t see a solution,” said one Democratic strategist familiar with the discussions. A second person familiar with the discussions did not dispute that characterization.
“We can either worry or work, and this team is doing the work that wins elections,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
Democrats say defections are likely to increase in the coming days. Some lawmakers and donors have even privately suggested they could publicly call on Biden to step down by the end of the week. They say they don’t want to embarrass Biden during the NATO summit currently underway in Washington, while giving him time to decide for himself whether to withdraw from the race.
On Wednesday, Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont became the first Democratic senator to call on Biden to step down, writing in a Washington Post op-ed that he should do so “for the good of the country” because of the danger Trump poses. In addition, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), one of the party’s most vulnerable members, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and Antonio Delgado, the lieutenant governor of New York who previously represented a swing congressional district, have also called on Biden to step down.
In the first presidential debate with Trump on June 27, Biden was unable to finish his sentences, often spoke haltingly and, at times, seemed confused about the question he was trying to answer. Democrats panicked at the performance, raising questions about his ability to remain president for four more years and renewing concerns about the 81-year-old’s mental acuity.
Biden and his campaign have continued to publicly maintain that he will not leave the race and is well positioned to beat Trump in an election that is 117 days away. Biden’s campaign told Democratic senators Wednesday that campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon, senior campaign adviser Mike Donilon and White House adviser Steve Ricchetti will meet Thursday for a briefing on the path forward. Biden’s campaign said it conducted a poll immediately after the debate that showed no significant movement in key battleground states for Biden.
One Democratic senator said that if the campaign told senators that the president’s situation had not deteriorated, “I don’t think anyone would believe it.” He added that senators would be looking for “compelling evidence that they can turn this around.”
Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager in 2020 and a former White House communications director, expressed the party’s private frustrations that the campaign has yet to present an empirical case showing that Biden would recover from his debate setback and then gain enough momentum to win.
“If they have data that supports the path to victory they see, they should release it now and help the people who desperately want to beat Trump rally behind it,” Bedingfield wrote on social media. “People want to see the path.”
Ron Klain, a longtime Biden adviser and former White House chief of staff, said Biden’s team was unanimous that he remains the best candidate to defeat Trump. “He will win in 2024 as he did in 2020 because his personal values and character will ultimately prevail against Trump,” Klain wrote in a text message.
Democrats have privately outlined possible scenarios and timelines for their implementation if Biden decides to drop out of the race, including the possibility that Biden would approve Vice President Harris. One Democratic strategist said timing was of the essence: “Every iteration of this plan, the sooner the better,” to avoid a “mad rush” in the run-up to or during the Democratic National Convention in August in Chicago.
In a letter to his Democratic allies on Monday, Biden announced that he was “firmly committed to staying in the race, to fighting this race to the end, and to defeating Donald Trump.” But former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — a show Biden watches regularly — where she described Biden’s continued candidacy as an open question.
“It’s up to the president to decide whether he’s going to run,” said Nancy Pelosi, who remains a member of the House of Representatives after resigning her seat. “We all encourage him to make that decision. Because time is running out.”
House Democrats’ concerns are rooted in polls taken before the debate, which showed Biden already trailing Trump in districts he comfortably won in 2020, with approval ratings in the low 40s, according to a person who has seen the data. In both House and Senate polls, second-tier Democrats continue to outperform Biden in polling tests.
An AARP poll released Tuesday, conducted by pollsters working for the Biden and Trump campaigns, showed Biden trailing Trump by six percentage points in Wisconsin in a five-way race that included third-party candidates. Biden beat Trump in Wisconsin by less than a percentage point in 2020. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) maintained a three-point lead over her Republican opponent, businessman Eric Hovde, in the AARP poll.
“He’s just a liability everywhere,” said another Democrat working on campaigns this cycle and who has seen private polls across the country.
The campaign has since begun a new round of polling this week, though the results are not yet in, people familiar with the matter said. Biden also announced he will do an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt in Austin on Monday that will air on the first night of the Republican nominating convention.
National polls showed Trump with a slight lead heading into the debate, a sharp contrast to the roughly four-point lead Biden enjoyed over Trump at the same point in the 2020 campaign. Since the debate, national polls have shown an average shift of 2.5 points in Trump’s favor, according to a Washington Post polling average.
Democrats are particularly concerned about Biden’s diminished status compared to the 2020 campaign. At this point in this cycle, he was leading Trump by nine points in the RealClearPolitics polling average. Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 points in November. Trump is now ahead of that same average by more than three points.
Some Democrats have expressed concern in recent days about the pace of fundraising for Biden and the independent groups that support his campaign, as the president’s big donors have shown reluctance to work with their networks or have refused to follow up on donations. The campaign was bringing in more than $3 million a day after the debate, according to people familiar with the internal figures. Donations have since tapered off, and campaign advisers are waiting until next week’s Republican convention to see if enthusiasm returns.
The uncertainty among big donors about whether they can give to independent groups has made it “difficult to balance the checking account,” said one fundraiser involved in the effort. “I think a lot of big donors are going to shift their funding to the House and Senate. If Biden wants to stay in power, he has to pray that small donors are there.”
On Wednesday, George Clooney, the Oscar-winning actor and longtime Democratic donor, said Biden should drop out of the race. Clooney, who co-hosted a fundraiser for Biden last month in Los Angeles, said the president “wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020” at that event.
“That’s not just my opinion, that’s the opinion of every senator, congressman and governor I’ve spoken to privately,” Clooney wrote in The New York Times. “Every single one of them, regardless of what he or she says publicly.”
He continued: “The dam has burst. We can either bury our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can tell the truth.”
Lauren Kaori Gurley and Liz Goodwin contributed reporting.
News Source : www.washingtonpost.com
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