Biden's ability to win back skeptical Democrats is being tested at a perilous moment for his campaign
WASHINGTON, DC: Despite a week of campaign stops, interviews and insistence that he is the best candidate to take on Republican Donald Trump, President Joe Biden has not eased the pressure on him to drop out of the 2024 race .
Biden has strong options this weekend that could set the direction for the country and his party as the nation heads to the November election with the Republican Party in high gear after the Republican nominating convention to send Trump back to the White House.
Representative Mark Takano, the top Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, on Saturday added his name to a list of nearly three dozen Democrats in Congress who say it's time for Biden to leave the race. The Californian urged Biden to “pass the torch” to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Meanwhile, Harris has enlisted the support of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who told MSNBC on Saturday that the vice president is “ready to step up” to unify the party and stand up to Trump if Biden decides to drop out. Warren said knowing that “gives me a lot of hope right now.”
Other lawmakers are expected to speak in the coming days. Donors have expressed concern. And the organization calling on Biden to “Pass the Torch” has planned a rally on Saturday outside the White House. Biden insisted that he accepts everything.
“There's no joy in admitting that he shouldn't be our nominee in November,” said Democratic Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Kentucky, one of the Democrats calling for Biden to drop out of the race. “But the stakes in this election are too high, and we can't risk having anything other than Donald Trump as the focus of the campaign.”
The standoff is becoming increasingly unbearable for the party and its leaders, a month after the Democratic National Convention, which is supposed to be a unifying moment to nominate an incumbent to challenge Trump. Instead, the party is at a crossroads not seen in generations.
That creates a stark contrast to Republicans who, after years of bitter and chaotic infighting over Trump, have essentially backed the former president's far-right takeover of the GOP despite his conviction in a money-laundering case and pending federal criminal charges for trying to overturn 2020 election before the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
From his beach house in Delaware, the 81-year-old Biden is in isolation due to the COVID infection, but also politically with a small circle of family and close advisers. White House physician Kevin O'Connor said Friday that the president still has a dry cough and hoarseness, but that his COVID symptoms have improved.
The president's team insisted he was ready to return to the campaign trail next week to counter what he called the “dark vision” laid out by Trump.
“Together, as a party and as a country, we can and will defeat him at the ballot box,” Biden said in a statement Friday. “The stakes are high and the choice is clear. Together we will win.”
But outside the enclave of Rehoboth, debates and passions are heating up.
A donor call of about 300 people on Friday was called a waste of time by one participant, who was granted anonymity to discuss the private conversation. While that person praised Harris, who spoke for five minutes, according to the attendee, the rest of the time was taken up by others who brushed off donor concerns.
Not only are Democrats divided over what Biden should do, they also lack consensus on how to choose a successor.
Democrats campaigning for Biden to step down so far don't seem to have coalesced around a plan for what comes next. Very few lawmakers mentioned Harris in their statements, and some said they favored an open nomination process that would support the party's new nominee.
Democratic senators Jon Tester of Montana and Peter Welch of Vermont both called on Biden to drop out of the race and said they would favor an open nominating process at the convention.
“Had it been open, it would have strengthened whoever is going to be the final candidate,” Welch told The Associated Press.
Other Democrats say it would be politically unthinkable to pass over Harris, the nation's first female vice president who is black and Southeast Asian, and logistically impossible with a virtual nomination vote scheduled early next month until as the Democratic convention opens in Chicago. August 19.
Minnesota Rep. Betty McCollum, who called for Biden to step aside, has clearly endorsed Harris as a replacement.
“To give Democrats a strong, viable path to winning the White House, I urge President Biden to release his delegates and allow Vice President Harris to run to become the Democratic presidential nominee,” McCollum said in a statement.
It's unclear what else the president can do, if anything, to reverse course and win back Democratic lawmakers and voters who are wary of his ability to defeat Trump and serve another term after he quit the debate last month.
Nearly two-thirds of Democrats say Biden should drop out of the presidential race and let his party nominate another candidate, according to a new poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, sharply undermining his post-debate claim that “average Democrats” are all still with him, even if some “big names” turn against him.
Meanwhile, a majority of Democrats think Kamala Harris would do well for the top job, according to a separate poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Biden, who sent congressional Democrats a show-off letter vowing to stay in the race, has yet to visit Capitol Hill to shore up support that senators and representatives have noticed is lacking.
The president did hold a number of virtual conversations with various groups last week, some of which ended in failure.
During a conversation with the Hispanic Caucus, one of the Democrats, Mike Levin of California, told Biden that he should step aside. During another meeting with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Biden became defensive when Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., asked him to consider meeting with top party leaders about the way forward.
Huffman was one of four Democratic lawmakers who called on Biden to resign on Friday.
At the same time, Biden still has a strong following. On Friday, he won the support of the Hispanic caucus in Congress and received endorsements from leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
