Biden Continually Asserts His Resolve to Stay, but Democrats Seem Unresponsive

Joe Biden’s efforts to halt the debate over his candidacy seemed to be faltering on Wednesday as a drumbeat of top liberals and key lawmakers continued to question him ahead of a pivotal day for the president.

Senior Biden aides are planning to meet with worried Senate Democrats on Thursday at Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee headquarters while the president will hold a rare NATO-themed press conference later in the day that will be closely watched by Democrats and others. Another poor performance from the president would reaffirm fears among Democrats that Biden doesn’t have the stamina or mental acuity to run for president.

Many Democrats in the Senate have been mum in public about Biden’s continued candidacy — except to offer some advice for his campaign. But some have begun to more forcefully voice their concerns after a meeting on Tuesday left the caucus in limbo about the president’s standing.

“I am deeply concerned about Joe Biden winning this November because it is an existential threat to the country if Donald Trump wins,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told reporters on Wednesday.

Blumenthal’s comments came after Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said Tuesday night that he thinks Trump is on track to beat Biden this November — potentially in a “landslide” that could also lose Democrats the House and Senate. He urged Democrats to have a “discussion” about Biden’s election prospects. And in the House, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Biden’s favorite morning show Wednesday and appeared to suggest that the president should consider dropping out.

In another sign of the Senate anxiety spilling into public view, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) urged Biden to “look at all of the information and carry on detailed conversations with key leaders,” such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, to do what’s best for the country. Both Schumer and Jeffries have said they support Biden.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who caucuses with the Democrats, told POLITICO that it’s incumbent on Biden to demonstrate that he still has what it takes to campaign by answering questions in an unscripted format, adding: “It should be soon.”

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who on Wednesday became the first Democratic senator to call onBiden to step aside, said he agreed with Pelosi’s comments, while Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) bluntly said there are “a great number of candidates who are capable of winning this November against a maniacal criminal thug like Donald Trump.”

But party fears over the president have extended far beyond the upper chamber of Congress. An electorally vulnerable Democrat, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), called on Biden to drop out “for the good of the country.” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a veteran lawmaker who is retiring from Congress this year, became the ninth House Democrat to say Biden should step back. And actor George Clooney, a major Democratic fundraiser who appeared alongside the president just weeks ago, urged the party to select a new nominee.

It was Pelosi’s comments, however, that garnered much of the attention throughout the day.

“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi told MSNBC. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”

The former speaker, who is respected both by Biden and the Democratic caucus, suggested that her party hold off on further discussions until Biden wraps the closely watched NATO summit, which he is hosting in Washington this week. Pelosi later said there’d been some misunderstanding about what she meant, though a spokesperson for Pelosi’s office told POLITICO that she “fully supports whatever President Biden decides to do.”

Still, other Democrats close to Biden are becoming more vocal in their concerns about his candidacy.

Clooney penned an op-ed in The New York Times on Wednesday calling for a new nominee to replace Biden, writing that “we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign” about his condition. He revealed that at a high-profile fundraiser he co-hosted in Los Angeles last month, Biden “was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Biden advisers conceded Wednesday that more work needed to be done to assure nervous Democrats, according to two officials familiar with internal campaign strategy granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

They recognized that Pelosi’s words carried weight, and that she seemed to deliberately keep alive the notion that the president could reconsider his run, which frustrated some in Wilmington. But the officials insisted that Biden’s plans have not changed, and they tried to explain away Pelosi’s comments as a simple recognition that some in the House were still anxious — and that she needed to give them a voice.

Biden’s allies were less charitable with Clooney, who they said spent only an hour or so with Biden at the fundraiser, which was planned around the actor’s schedule and therefore required the president to fly in overnight from the G7 summit in Europe, according to one of the officials.

A campaign official pointed back to the letter the president sent to Hill Democrats on Monday stating that he would stay in the race. And they highlighted the president’s schedule — campaign rallies over the holiday weekend in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania followed by the NATO summit this week and another campaign trip this Friday to Michigan — as proof that he was up to the task of a grueling presidential campaign.

A growing chorus of House Democrats are speaking out in favor of Biden stepping back from the race, including Ryan, who on Wednesday became the eighth representative to do so. Ryan represents a purple district in the Hudson Valley of New York — a blue state where support for Biden is slipping.

There were other signs of growing anxiety among Democrats who have been part of a firewall of support for the president. Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Biden’s biggest base of support on the Hill, told CNN on Tuesday that vulnerable Democrats should distance themselves from the president if that’s what they need to do to win reelection.

In a statement on Wednesday, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) urged the party to have a “down-ballot reckoning of whomever we nominate” — declining to name Biden directly, despite denouncing the “piling-on” by Biden critics just two days earlier.

On Monday, Torres said “weakening a weakened nominee seems like a losing strategy for a presidential election.” By mid-week, the representative had urged his party to be “clear-eyed” about the consequences of choosing a particular nominee for president.

Biden aides also recognized that the president would be under scrutiny for his performance at Thursday’s news conference and at a planned Michigan rally on Friday on the heels of the grueling NATO summit schedule. But they also believed that the calendar would soon give Biden a favor.

The Republican National Convention is slated to begin Monday, and the four-day event — which could be preceded by Trump’s vice presidential choice — will likely dominate the political conversation and could shift the spotlight off Biden.

Ursula Perano contributed to this report.