Decision point: Democratic pressure grows for Biden to ‘pass the torch’

President Joe Biden and Maritza Rodriguez, Biden for President’s Latina adviser, greeted patrons at Linda Michoacan Mexican Restaurant in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 17, 2024. AP Photo.

Amid growing anxiety at his prospects for victory, and now recovering from a mild case of covid, President Biden is facing renewed pressure from Democratic lawmakers over the past 24 hours to drop out of the race.

The public pressure briefly subsided following the failed assassination attempt on former President Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday evening, which President Biden immediately and multiple times vociferously condemned.

House Democratic congressman Adam Schiff, now running for Senator in California, and said to be close with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, went public yesterday (July 17) with a statement urging Biden to pass the torch.

Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history,” Schiff said in a statementto the Los Angeles Times. “But our nation is at a crossroads. A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

“While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said. “And in doing so, secure his legacy of leadership by allowing us to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election.”

That was followed by reports yesterday afternoon that the top Senate and House Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, had in separate private meetings with  Biden late last week warned him that “his continued candidacy imperils the Democratic Party’s ability to control either chamber of Congress next year,” the Washington Post reported.

Today, the Washington Post reported that former President Barack Obama, for whom Biden served as vice president for eight years, “has told allies in recent days that President Biden’s path to victory has greatly diminished and he thinks the president needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy,” the paper said, citing “multiple people briefed on” Obama’s thinking.

“In some conversations, Obama, who has long looked to data for political insights, has told people he is concerned that the polls are moving away from Biden, that former President Donald Trump’s electoral path is expanding and that donors are abandoning the president,” the Post report said.

Meantime, Semafor reported that film producer and Biden friend and campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg told Biden at a meeting in Las Vegas yesterday that some major campaign donors had stopped writing checks.

“President Biden has become more receptive in the last several days to hearing arguments about why he should drop his re-election bid,” the New York Times reported today, citing Democrats briefed on his conversations.

While Biden has not yet given “any indication that he is changing his mind about staying in the race,” the Times wrote, he “has been willing to listen to rundowns of new and worrying polling data and has asked questions about how Vice President Kamala Harris could win.”

Polling, cash, and which states in play

“One Biden adviser…said that the decision came down to hard facts and that there were three that mattered: polling, cash and which states are in play,” the report said. “And, as this adviser put it, none of those are trending in the right direction for Mr. Biden.”

A growing kind of conventional wisdom seemed to emerge Thursday afternoon that Biden might announce a decision to step down as early as this weekend.

“Two senior House Democrats tell @MajorCBS they expect the question of Biden’s candidacy to be resolved in 3-5 days,” CBS White House reporter Weija Jiang wrote on Twitter this afternoon.

“It was always more logical that if Biden was ever going to drop out,” CNN political analyst Ronald Brownstein wrote on Twitter today, “it would be after the Republican convention and allowing the GOP to make four nights of attacks on him that instantly become irrelevant rather than focusing so directly on the other alternatives.”

After his poor debate performance on June 27, Biden needed “a reasonable amount of time to show by actions, in polls, and by reassuring his party that he could win,” Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote on Twitter today.

But “the polls in swing states are terrible,” and many Congressional Democrats and donors have lost confidence that he can win, she continued. Biden “has not removed doubts that he can be an effective campaigner, or that he could serve 4 ½ more years. And he is now sick.”

“Democrats are at a decision point,” she wrote. “This cannot go on.”

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