WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s His ability to run for reelection faced a key test on Thursday. The highly anticipated press conference He and his team have met privately with skeptical senators on Capitol Hill, and many House Democrats have called for him to step down. raceAnd before the press conference he made a notable gaffe.
As Biden prepares for a whirlwind of meetings with world leaders at NATO and an evening news conference to demonstrate his commitment to serving another four years in office, voters are watching and elected officials are deciding whether to push for an alternative option.
But while announcing a deal for NATO nations to help Ukraine, Biden called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin,” drawing gasps of surprise from the audience. Biden quickly returned to the microphone and said, “President Putin is going to beat President Putin, President Zelensky.”
“I was focused on defeating Putin,” he said in explaining the gaffe.
“I’m better,” Zelensky replied. “You’re much better,” Biden retorted.
The Democratic Party It’s a tough problem to solve: Top donors, supporters and key lawmakers have questioned Biden’s ability to seek reelection after his performance in recent debates, but the 81-year-old president is refusing to give up as he fights to face off against the Republican nominee. Donald Trump In a rematch.
In a new memo, the Biden campaign laid out what appears to be a path to keeping the White House, saying winning the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan was the “clearest path” to victory and asserting that no other Democrat was better able to put up a fight against Trump.
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“There is also no indication that anyone else will out-do President Trump,” said the memo from campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, obtained by The Associated Press.
The memo sought to dismiss “hypothetical polls about alternative candidates” as unreliable, saying such surveys “do not take into account the negative media environment that a Democratic nominee would face.”
Meanwhile, the campaign has been quietly surveying voters to get a sense of how Vice President Kamala Harris is viewed among voters, two people familiar with the campaign told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
The poll, which was first reported by The New York Times, was not necessarily intended to show whether Harris could replace Biden as the nominee, but to better understand how she is viewed, according to people familiar with the matter. It was conducted after Trump stepped up his attacks on Harris after the debate, according to a second person familiar with the survey.
While Biden has sounded confident about his chances of winning, his campaign acknowledged on Thursday that he is behind, and a growing number of White House and campaign aides are privately harboring doubts about whether Biden can turn things around.
But they have said they will 100% follow Biden’s lead unless he resigns, and there appears to be no coordinated internal effort to convince the president to step down.Biden’s allies were well aware going into this week that there would be more calls for him to step down, and were preparing for it.
The number of House Democrats calling for Biden to step down grew to 12 on Thursday. So far in the Senate, only Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont has called for Biden to drop out of the race.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has asked Biden’s team to meet privately with senators over lunch to discuss their concerns and the way forward, but some senators have complained they want to hear from the president himself.
The 90-minute meeting with the president’s team did not offer any new data, polls or strategies to help Biden beat Trump, and the senators’ thinking appeared to remain unchanged, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.
One senator, speaking on condition of anonymity in a private briefing, described the meeting as frank, sometimes angry and somewhat painful because many in the room know and love Mr. Biden. Senators clashed with advisers about Mr. Biden’s performance in the debate and its impact on this year’s Senate elections.
“I believe the president can win, but he needs the ability to respond to voters’ concerns. He needs the ability to speak directly to voters over the next few days,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, a Democrat, said after the vote.
Meanwhile, leading senators have strongly supported Biden, leaving the party in a deadlock.
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont told the Associated Press that Biden “is going to win this election. I think he has a chance to win in a landslide.”
Sanders, who has been openly critical of the Biden campaign, said Biden needs to say more about his plans for the future and the country. “As we get closer to Election Day, the choice is becoming very clear,” he said.
The campaign, which has poured money into other battleground states including Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Georgia, has put new emphasis on “blue wall” states as an acknowledgment that its path to defeating Trump in November is narrowing, even as the campaign maintains that Sun Belt states are “not out of reach.”
Campaign officials wrote in memos that Biden is likely to win, but 270 electoral votes He also noted that the three states are important in many ways, which is why Biden has prioritized them in his recent trips: He visited Madison, Wisconsin, Philadelphia and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, over the weekend, before heading to Detroit on Friday.
Polls taken after the debate showed broad consensus among Democrats across the country that they doubt Biden can win the presidential election in November.
__ Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo, Colleen Long, Mary Clare Jalonick, Kevin Freaking, Farnoush Amiri and Lynley Sanders contributed to this report.
