By Saturday, that battle showed signs of intensifying.
Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), who is in a competitive race and among the more endangered Democrats, on Saturday morning called on Biden to drop out of the race, saying “there is only a small window left to make sure we have a candidate best equipped to make the case and win.”
“Given what I saw and heard from the President during last week’s debate in Atlanta, coupled with the lack of a forceful response from the President himself following that debate, I do not believe that the President can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump,” she said in a statement.
Her decision is a reflection of the series of meetings and decisions taking place this weekend, with the party steeling itself for a volatile few days amid a growing impasse that has emerged between the president and his party over the path forward. Biden has been buoyed by his family — particularly first lady Jill Biden and his son Hunter — who have been adamant that he not allow party leaders to drum him out of the race. Outside his tight circle, however, many Democrats eyeing contested races up and down the ballot were growing nervous.
Craig is the fifth congressional Democrat to call for Biden to step down, while another 13 members of Congress and governors have expressed concern about him continuing, according to a Washington Post tally.
Biden’s campaign scrambled to put together two campaign events in Pennsylvania on Sunday, while House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) scheduled a Sunday call with top Democrats in the lower chamber of Congress.
With congressional Democrats returning to Washington next week for the first time since Biden’s shaky debate performance — and with the president hosting a NATO summit and planning a solo news conference — the next few days are expected to be emotional and potentially combative as lawmakers weigh whether previously private conversations about Biden’s standing as the nominee should become more public.
Biden on Friday sought to use a battleground state rally and a prime time television interview to quell the concerns about his candidacy. Some of his allies and those inside his campaign were assured by the performance and didn’t feel any of his interview answers, or his delivery of them, would alter their thinking about moving forward.
But some of Biden’s defiance throughout the day ran the risk of driving more skittish lawmakers to go public with their concerns. In the interview, he dismissed any polls that have him losing to Trump (“All the pollsters I talk to tell me it’s a toss-up”) or those that show his approval rating at 36 percent (“That’s not what our polls show”) and he insisted that he had no firsthand knowledge of any Democratic discontent (“They all said I should stay in the race … none of the people said I should leave.”)
Asked how he’d feel if he stayed in the race and Trump won, he responded, “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.”
Biden is now scheduled to do two campaign events on Sunday, one in Philadelphia and another in Harrisburg, according to a White House schedule. Those events came after he canceled an appearance at the National Education Association’s conference in Philadelphia after union staff set up picket lines.
He plans to return to the White House on Sunday night, ahead of the NATO summit in Washington and where, on Thursday, he is planning to hold a rare solo news conference.
Jeffries’s decision to hold a call with top Democrats was made before Biden’s rally in Wisconsin and the ABC interview that aired Friday night. But it was the restlessness of members that prompted Jeffries to move up a weekly meeting that usually takes place on Wednesdays when the chamber is in session, and instead hold it on Sunday.
Biden and his aides have often dismissed some of the calls for him to leave the race, pointing to the fact that the bluntest words are coming from those who have previously made similar statements.
Julián Castro, a former secretary for Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration who ran in the 2020 primary and raised concerns at the time, said Friday night on MSNBC that Biden “is basically in denial” about “the decline that people can clearly see.”
Former congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio, who also ran in the 2020 Democratic primary and previously called on Biden to drop out of the race, said Friday that the president’s interview “didn’t move the needle at all.”
“I don’t think he energized anybody. I think there was a level of him being out of touch with the reality on the ground,” he said. “I’m worried.”
Allies who have long defended him were supportive.
“President Biden has delivered remarkable progress for the American people, and he has plans to do even more in his next term,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) wrote on X. “I can’t wait to help him continue to take the fight to Trump and win in November.”
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) posted on X that “Democrats need to get a spine” and that “Joe Biden is our guy.”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) was positive but also said that Biden needed to do more.
“Biden did a very good job in the 22-min interview with Stephanopoulos,” he wrote on X. “But most of the questions were about Biden’s capabilities. We need an extended live interview that focuses on where Biden plans to lead us over the next 4 years.”
Sherman also called for Biden to do a longer interview live on Friday before the full ABC News interview aired, even as he acknowledged that Biden “may very well be able to give us another great four years.”
“I think that we need to test Biden further,” Sherman said on CNN.
Marianna Sotomayor and Azi Paybarah contributed to this report.
