President Joe Biden has privately told a key ally that he is considering whether to drop out of the presidential race, a shocking admission that underscores the sorry state of his candidacy.
Biden, coming off his disastrous performance in last week’s debate, acknowledged that he only has this weekend left to convince voters that he is mentally prepared for the job.
On Friday he will be in Madison, Wisconsin, where he will give an interview to ABC News. On Sunday he will travel to Pennsylvania.
“He knows that if there are two more events like that, we’ll be in a different place” at the end of the weekend, the ally told The New York Times.
The White House flatly denied it.
“That claim is absolutely false. If the New York Times had given us more than seven minutes to comment, we would have told them so,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates wrote in X.
Biden called a meeting of his campaign staff on Wednesday to give them a pep talk and tell them he will stay in the race and win.
“Let me say this as clearly as possible, as simply and directly as I can: I am running… nobody is pushing me to leave. I am not leaving. I am in this race to the end and we are going to win,” he reportedly said.
If Biden drops out of the race with Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris would be the front-runner to replace him. Biden and Harris had lunch at the White House on Wednesday.
Democrats fear Biden may no longer be able to beat Trump in November. Even Biden’s staff has needed reassurance, as more than 25 lawmakers have expressed doubts about the president’s eligibility.
President Joe Biden has privately told a key ally that he is considering whether to drop out of the presidential race.
Reports that Biden is thinking about leaving are mounting as donors, lawmakers and senior party officials fear the president is unprepared for the campaign. There is also frustration that Biden is waiting too long to re-emerge and present himself as a strong, forceful leader.
A major donor said TMZ that “it’s only a matter of time” before Biden steps down.
Another ally told CNN that Biden understands the next few days are critical to determining whether he can salvage his candidacy, and noted what he would have to accept: “It’s just not working.”
“He sees the moment. He has a clear vision,” the person said.
“As for what it would take, polls are plummeting, fundraising is drying up and interviews are going poorly,” the person said. “He’s no stranger to this.”
The White House is struggling to calm the storm of outrage over Biden’s debate performance, with Democratic lawmakers calling for the president to drop out of the race and White House staff “freaking out.”
White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients held an all-staff meeting at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday to encourage disillusioned staff and assure them that Biden will remain the nominee.
On the call, she acknowledged that Biden did not have a great debate performance last week, but told staff he is a “great president” and urged them to “stick together.”
“He didn’t have a great night, but it was a great night and what we all know is that he’s a great president,” Zients reportedly said.
He laid out three key points: keep your head down and continue working for the American people as the campaign takes over the election; keep your head up because the administration has accomplished a lot; and stay united.
The call lasted about 10 minutes. Zients did not take questions but said interested staff should email him. He repeated Biden’s quote that when you get knocked down, you get back up.
“That’s what he’s doing and that’s what we all need to do… follow the president’s lead,” he said.
Additionally, the Biden campaign sent a memo to its entire staff showing internal polls from battleground states that showed Biden only lost half a point as a result of his poor debate performance.
The move was made in anticipation of what is expected to be bad news in the polls for the president.
“We’re going to see some polls coming out today and we want all of you to hear from us what we know internally and what we expect to happen externally,” the memo, obtained by PoliticalIt reads. ‘Polls are a snapshot in time and we should all expect them to continue to fluctuate: It will take a few weeks, not a few days, to get a full picture of the race.’
Vice President Kamala Harris would be the favorite to replace Biden if he withdraws
The White House is trying to calm staff fears after President Joe Biden’s debate performance: Above, Biden with his deputy chief of staff Bruce Reed, senior adviser Mike Donilon and deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini
Amid the race to calm domestic fears, there is a major outreach operation underway to try to quell growing calls for Biden to be replaced.
The president has been on the phone with lawmakers trying to shore up his support on Capitol Hill amid concerns that Republicans could take control of the House and Senate, along with the White House, in the next election, giving them unfettered power to govern the country.
Biden will also meet with governors on Wednesday night as he and his team fight to stem even more defections.
Meanwhile, Jill Biden has been dispatched to the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Michigan to tout Biden’s achievements in the White House, as polls show him trailing Donald Trump.
The effort comes as questions continue to be raised about Biden’s mental abilities to handle the presidency and speculation mounts about who might replace him as the Democratic presidential nominee.
“Everyone is going crazy,” one official said. Axios.
But there seems to be a reason for such panic.
A series of private polls from a pro-Biden super PAC showed the president losing ground (by about two points) in all of the major battleground states, Puck News reported.
Biden was also now behind in New Mexico, New Hampshire and Virginia, three states that were considered safely Democratic.
Biden is trailing Donald Trump in the Five Thirty-Eight polling average for the presidential race.
Democrats keep their distance.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who is seeking reelection in Wisconsin, announced Tuesday morning that she will not join Biden on stage when he campaigns in her hometown of Madison on Friday.
And many Democrats are concerned that the president is moving too slowly to calm panic over his candidacy and his mental state.
White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients to hold full-staff meeting Wednesday
Donald Trump and Joe Biden at last week’s debate, where Biden faltered in his answers
There is also talk of an imminent Democratic revolt in the House.
Jared Golden of Maine, Lloyd Doggett of Texas and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state either told Biden to drop out or said they thought he would lose to Trump on Tuesday.
Those defections added to a group of 25 House members, commonly referred to as “frontliners” because of their status as moderates in key districts, who are ready to break with Biden and abandon the party now.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi highlighted Biden’s many legislative accomplishments during an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, but said it was legitimate to ask whether his debate performance was a one-night stand or a broader health issue. She said Trump should receive the same scrutiny.
“I think it’s legitimate to ask whether this is an episode or a condition. And when people ask that question, it’s legitimate to ask it of both candidates,” Pelosi said.
Biden, speaking at a campaign event in Virginia on Tuesday night without a teleprompter, attributed his performance to lack of sleep and noted that he had made two international trips in the run-up to the debate.
“The thing is, as you know, I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world a couple of times, crossing about 100 time zones… before… the debate. I didn’t listen to my team and I came back and almost fell asleep on stage,” he said. “That’s not an excuse, but it’s an explanation.”
He was in France for the 85th anniversary of D-Day and then in Italy for the G7.
But he did not mention the seven days he spent at Camp David before his showdown with Trump. He spent the week holed up with his advisers preparing for the debate.
However, Biden rarely started before 11 a.m. and would pause in the afternoon for a nap, the New York Times reported.
Some Democrats suggested Biden should think about the future of the party as a whole.
“He has to be honest with himself,” Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, a moderate from Illinois, told CNN on Tuesday.
“It’s his decision. I just want him to appreciate at this point how much this affects not only his career but all the other races that will be held in November.”
And Rep. Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, whose endorsement of Biden in 2020 helped him become the nominee, told MSNBC he still wanted a presidential ticket with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
But then he announced who he would support if Biden dropped out of the race.
“I’ll support her if he steps aside,” Clyburn said of Harris.