WASHINGTON (AP) — A defiant man President Joe Biden vowed Wednesday to continue running for re-election, rejecting Growing pressure from Democrats to withdraw after a disaster debate performance raised questions about his willingness to continue campaigning, let alone win in November.
But increasingly ominous signs have mounted for the president. Two Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to drop out of the race while a top ally has publicly suggested how the party could choose someone else. And his aides said they believed he had only a few days left to show he was up to the challenge before anxiety boiled over within the party.
“I’m going to say it as clearly as I can, as simply and directly as I can: I’m running…no one is pushing me to leave,” Biden said on a call with members of his reelection campaign team. “I’m not leaving. I’m in this race all the way and we’re going to win.”
In his private conversations, Biden has focused on efforts to correct course after his heated debate and the threat he sees former President Donald Trump as posing to the country as he seeks comment on what went wrong Thursday in Atlanta and takes responsibility for his performance.
“We had a direct, open, clear-eyed conversation about the debate, his thoughts on what happened and why it wasn’t his best night or his best debate,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, who spoke with Biden on Tuesday, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “He wanted advice. He was sincerely asking for advice and feedback on what he should do to rebuild trust and support, and what the best path forward is.”
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Coons, the president’s closest ally on Capitol Hill, said Biden clearly understood the urgency, difficulty and importance of the election, as the senator urged the president to hold more unscheduled and open events to restore confidence in his candidacy. The two also discussed Biden’s schedule and how it will impact his political efforts, particularly as he balances that task with critical governing duties such as the NATO summit in Washington next week.
Biden’s efforts to pull multiple levers to salvage his faltering reelection include his impromptu appearance with campaign aides, private conversations with top lawmakers, a whirlwind weekend of travel and a network television interviewBut he faced serious signs that his support was rapidly eroding on Capitol Hill and among other allies.
Arizona Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva told the New York Times that while he supported Biden as a candidate, this was “an opportunity to look the other way” and that what Biden “needs to do is take responsibility for keeping this seat — and part of that responsibility is to withdraw from this race.”
Biden, 81, may have a few days to make a convincing case for his fitness for office before his party’s panic over his debate performance and anger over his response escalate, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the strategy more freely. The president acknowledges the urgency of the task — after examining polls and mountains of media coverage — but he is confident he can do it in the coming days and insists he will not withdraw from the race, they said.
Biden met for more than an hour at the White House Wednesday night, in person and virtually, with more than 20 Democratic governors who later described the conversation as “frank” but said they supported Biden despite their concerns about a Trump victory in November.
“The president is our candidate. The president is the leader of our party,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said. He added that during the meeting, Biden “made it very clear that he was in it to win.”
Despite those reassuring sentiments, a major Democratic donor, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, also called on the president to withdraw from the race, saying that “Biden must step aside to allow a strong Democratic leader to defeat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous.” The statement was first reported by The New York Times.
All this followed a statement by Rep. Jim Clyburn, a longtime Biden friend and confidant, that he would support a “mini-primary” in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention next month if Biden were to drop out of the race. The South Carolina Democrat floated an idea that appears to lay the groundwork for alternate choices by delegates during Democrats’ planned virtual roll call, scheduled ahead of the party’s more formal convention set to begin Aug. 19 in Chicago.
On CNN, Clyburn said: Vice President Kamala HarrisGovernors and others could join the competition: “It would be fair to everyone.”
Clyburn, a senior lawmaker who is a former member of his party’s House leadership team, said he had not personally seen the president act as he did during the debate last week and called it “concerning.”
And even as other Democratic allies have remained silent since Thursday’s debate, private frustration is growing over the Biden campaign’s response to its disastrous debate performance at a crucial moment in the campaign — particularly in the fact that Biden waited several days to directly limit the damage with senior members of his own party.
A Democratic aide said the lack of reaction was worse than the debate performance itself, saying lawmakers who support Biden want to see him directly combat concerns about his stamina in front of reporters and voters. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the dynamics between the parties candidly.
Most Democratic lawmakers, however, are taking a wait-and-see approach with Biden, waiting to get a better sense of how things are going through new polls and Biden’s planned interview on ABC News, according to Democratic lawmakers who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the president.
When Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who called on Biden to drop out of the race this week, sought support from other Democratic lawmakers for his move, he found no one and ultimately issued a statement of his own, according to a person familiar with the effort who was granted anonymity to discuss it.
But there was also a sense that the waiting period would soon expire if Biden does not step up his outreach to the Capitol or prove he is up to the task.
Some have suggested Harris is emerging as the frontrunner to replace Biden if he were to step down, though people involved in private discussions acknowledge that governors. Gavin Newsom from California and Gretchen Whitmer Michigan candidates remain viable alternatives. But some insiders see Harris as the best candidate to quickly unify the party and avoid a messy and divisive convention fight.
As pressure mounted around Biden, he and Harris made a surprise appearance on a conference call with the entire campaign staff to give them a pep talk. They stressed the importance of beating Trump, the presumptive nominee, in November and returned to Biden’s post-debate promise that when he was knocked down, he would get back up.
“Just like we beat Donald Trump in 2020, we’re going to beat him again in 2024,” Biden said, as he assured attendees he wouldn’t be shut out of the race. Harris added: “We won’t back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight and we will win.”
During her briefing with reporters, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre was asked whether Joe Biden would consider resigning. “Absolutely not,” she responded.
“I can’t propose something that would change the president’s mind,” Jean-Pierre said of Biden’s pursuit of a second term.
Democrats, however, are not satisfied with the explanations given by White House staff and the president himself for Biden’s debate performance. Some in the party are even more frustrated, because they believe Biden should have answered questions about his shaky debate performance much sooner and that he put them in a difficult position by remaining in office. the race.
The Leadership Now Project, a group of business leaders, academics and thought leaders, said in a letter that the “threat of a second Trump term” is great enough for Biden to “pass the torch of this year’s presidential nomination to the next generation of highly capable Democrats.”
Trump’s campaign released a statement stressing that “every Democrat” now calling for the president to “resign” was once a Biden supporter.
Trump had a slight lead over Biden in two polls of voters taken after last week’s debate. One poll, made by SSRS for CNNfound that three-quarters of voters — including more than half of Democratic voters — said the party had a better chance of winning the presidency in November with a candidate other than Biden.
According to the CNN/SSRS poll, about 7 in 10 voters and 45% of Democrats said Biden’s physical and mental abilities were a reason to vote against him.
And about 6 in 10 voters, including about a quarter of Democrats, said re-electing Biden would be a risky choice for the country rather than a safe choice, according to a New York Times/Siena College pollThe poll found Democrats were split on whether Biden should remain the nominee.
Biden campaign pollster Molly Murphy said that “today’s poll does not fundamentally change the course of the race.”
In a further effort to boost morale, Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, urged White House aides in an all-staff meeting to ignore the “noise” and focus on the task of governing.
Biden himself has begun to make personal moves on his own, speaking privately with senior Democratic lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Coons and Clyburn.
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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Zeke Miller, Colleen Long, Josh Boak and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.
