Some Biden aides discussing how to convince him to step aside – report
The New York Times reports that some aides to Joe Biden are strategizing ways to convince the president that he cannot win re-election, and that stepping aside to make way for another Democrat is the best way to keep Donald Trump from returning to the White House.
A White House spokesman denied the story. Here’s what the Times reported:
Some longtime aides and advisers to President Biden have become increasingly convinced that he will have to step aside from the campaign, and in recent days they have been trying to come up with ways to persuade him that he should, according to three people briefed on the matter.
A small group of Mr. Biden’s advisers in the administration and the campaign – at least two of whom have told allies that they do not believe he should keep trying to run for a second term – have said they would have to convince the president of several things.
They said they have to make the case to the president, who remains convinced of the strength of his campaign, that he cannot win against former President Donald J. Trump. They have to persuade him to believe that another candidate, like Vice President Kamala Harris, could beat Mr. Trump. And they have to assure Mr. Biden that, should he step aside, the process to choose another candidate would be orderly and not devolve into chaos in the Democratic Party.
Those discussions were recounted by three people familiar with them who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. There is no indication that any of the discussions have reached Mr. Biden himself, one of the informed people said.
Key events
Maya Yang
Despite their bitter rivalry, Donald Trump’s campaign wants Joe Biden to stay in the race as the president faces increasing calls from his own party to step aside due to his old age.
The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell reports:
Donald Trump and his campaign want Joe Biden to stay in the race, according to people familiar with the matter, and have discussed taking steps to ensure they don’t push the president to withdraw amid escalating panic among Democrats following his recent debate performance.
The latest thinking inside Trump’s campaign is for them not to pile on the concern about Biden’s age and mental acuity in case their attack ads push Biden to step aside.
If that happened, the campaign advisers think Trump would lose two lines of attack that have been central to his campaign if Biden steps aside: claiming that Biden is “sleepy” and lacks the fitness for another term in office, and falsely claiming that Biden is to blame for inflation and an uptick in illegal immigration.
For the full story:
Congresswoman Cori Bush declines to say if Biden can win election
Maya Yang
Missouri’s Democratic representative Cori Bush declined to say whether Joe Biden would win the 2024 presidential election.
Speaking to ABC correspondent Rachel Scott on Thursday who asked whether Bush supports the president, Bush replied, “What does that mean?”
“Do you want to see him be the nominee?” Scott asked, to which Bush said, “I want to beat Trump in November.”
“Can Biden do that?” Scott followed up, to which Bush said, “That is a question for Joe Biden.”
Video of this exchange with Rep. Bush who wouldn’t say if Biden can win
Q- Do you support the president?
Bush: what does that mean?
Q – Do you want to see him be the nominee?
Bush: I want to beat Trump in Nov
Q -Can Biden do that?
Bush: That is a question for Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/39ljZUr0fu
— Rachel Scott (@rachelvscott) July 11, 2024
Lauren Gambino
Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia said he would have to decline to comment because he did not attend the briefing due to another commitment he couldn’t postpone.
Meanwhile, senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut says he remains concerned but refused to share any details from the briefing, which he described as “serious”.
Lauren Gambino
Senate Democrats are arriving at the Capitol after a briefing by Joe Biden’s campaign officials billed as an opportunity for campaign officials to quell democrats’ panic about the president’s chances of winning the White House in November.
Whether it worked, they would not say.
As they did earlier this weeks, senators brushed by reporters, ignoring questions about whether the Biden team’s presentation convinced them that he still had a path forward and helped forestall further defections. On Wednesday night Vermont senator Peter Welch became the first senator to ask for Biden to drop out.
Concern is mounting and, as the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi said the day before, Democrats believe time is running short for the president to step aside. So far there is no indication Biden will heed the growing calls to abandon his reelection bid, even as calls grow.
The president’s supporters – and his doubters – will be watching his performance tonight at a press conference following at the conclusion of the Nato summit.
Maya Yang
Actor Michael Douglas said that it is “hard to imagine” Joe Biden serving another four years.
Speaking to the BBC, Douglas said:
“It’s a painful, painful decision because I admire the man tremendously, I personally had a fundraiser for him at our house in April and I think he’s done an incredible job.
But I am worried, not this week or next week but let’s say, next year. It’s just so hard for me to imagine a man four and a half years down the line from now, particularly in a time that’s so combative, that requires someone to really be so articulate.”
Douglas’s comments follow actor George Clooney, a major Democratic fundraiser, who published a New York Times op-ed in which he called Biden to step aside, saying, “This is about age. Nothing more.”
The day so far
Signs are emerging that people close to Joe Biden may be gearing up to convince him to exit the presidential race. The New York Times dropped two significant reports, with one saying that his re-election campaign is looking into how Kamala Harris might fare against Donald Trump, and the other, which was similar to a report by NBC News, that aides were discussing ways to get Biden to step aside. However, the leaders of his re-election campaign argue in a new memo that Biden still has a path to victory, and that his standing with voters has not changed as much as commonly believed since his troubling debate against Trump. There are two major events happening later today that will be important to watch. The first is a meeting between Democratic senators and three top Biden advisors, which could prove crucial to gauging how his congressional allies feel about his prospects. The second is the president’s press conference following the Nato summit, which is scheduled for 6.30pm ET. An eloquent performance by Biden here could quell doubters who think he is too old to effectively convey his message to voters.
But that is not all the news that has happened today:
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Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader, wants to talk to every single one of his lawmakers about Biden before deciding on the “next step”, Punchbowl News reports.
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Most voters think Biden and Trump are “embarrassing”, but the former president has the edge in a new Pew Research Center poll.
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George Clooney gave Barack Obama a heads-up before publicly announcing that he thought Biden should step aside – and Obama did not offer any objections, Politico reported.
In recent days, many Democrats in Congress and elsewhere have responded to questions about whether they support Joe Biden by saying that the president needs to show his strategy for winning.
Today’s memo from his campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez could be seen as serving as an answer to those concerns. Beyond indicating that his campaign believes his best path to victory is by winning the traditionally Democratic battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, the memo also argues that the race has not changed as much since the debate as some believe.
“While there is no question there is increased anxiety following the debate, we are not seeing this translate into a drastic shift in vote share,” Chávez Rodríguez and O’Malley Dillon say, pointing to this ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll from today showing a tied race.
They go on to argue that Biden remains within the margin of error of many polls of battleground states, and that key voters view him more positively than Donald Trump:
Our internal data and public polling show the same thing: this remains a margin-of-error race in key battleground states.
The movement we have seen, while real, is not a sea-change in the state of the race – while some of this movement was from undecided voters to Trump, much of the movement was driven by historically Democratic constituencies moving to undecided. These voters do not like Donald Trump. In internal polling, our post-debate net favorability is 20 percentage points higher than Trump’s among these voters. These voters have always been core persuasion targets for the campaign and we have a very real path to consolidating their support since they are not considering Trump as an alternative.
They also downplay the possibility of another candidate performing better against Trump:
In addition to what we believe is a clear pathway ahead for us, there is also no indication that anyone else would outperform the president vs. Trump. Hypothetical polling of alternative nominees will always be unreliable, and surveys do not take into account the negative media environment that any Democratic nominee will encounter. The only Democratic candidate for whom this is already baked in is President Biden.
There is a long way to go between now and Election Day with considerable uncertainty and polls in July should not be overestimated, but the data shows we have a clear path to win. As we’ve always said, in today’s fragmented media environment, it will take time for our message to break through with trusted messengers and a strong ground game. That remains the case.
We’ll see if it’s enough to quell Democratic concerns. Three top Biden aides, including O’Malley Dillon, are meeting today with Democratic senators, in what may be a key moment in shoring up confidence in the president.
NBC News has just published a similarly grim report about the chatter by those close to Joe Biden over his chances of hanging on to the presidency.
“He needs to drop out,” a Biden campaign official told NBC.
They say several of his closest allies, including three people involved in his campaign to win a second term, believe he has “zero” chance of winning, and may swamp Democrats in down-ballot races.
Here’s more, from NBC:
The set of Democrats who think he should reconsider his decision to stay in the race has grown to include aides, operatives and officials tasked with guiding his campaign to victory. Those who spoke to NBC News said the sentiment that he should exit and leave the Democratic nomination to someone else — most likely Vice President Kamala Harris — is widespread even within the ranks of the campaign and the outside Democratic entities supporting it.
“No one involved in the effort thinks he has a path,” said a second person working to elect him.
A third person close to the re-election campaign said the present situation — the questions swirling around Biden’s cognitive abilities, the dearth of fundraising and more polls showing Biden dropping in support and other candidates faring better — is unsustainable. This person also said they didn’t see how the campaign could win.
All of them spoke on the condition of anonymity because they don’t want to be seen as further damaging a candidate they appreciate for his victory over then-President Donald Trump in 2020 and his policy wins in the White House. But two others close to Biden told NBC News that while they haven’t given up all hope of a turnaround, they see that as an increasingly unlikely outcome. And they believe the goal of defeating Trump in November should take precedence over backing Biden.
“The question for me, and a lot of us, is: Who is the best person to beat Donald Trump?” another person working to elect Biden said. “There are a lot of us that are true blue that are questioning our initial thoughts on that.”
Ultimately, the decision rests with Biden on whether he stays in, and the president has been insistent this week that he’s not going anywhere. But these sources say that Biden is done — whether he drops out before November or loses to Trump on Election Day.
In their report, the New York Times says that while people who work with Joe Biden are discussing how to convince him to step aside, the talks do not appear to include his inner circle of confidants.
“The people who are closest to the president, a group that includes some of his longest-serving advisers and members of his family, remain adamant that Mr. Biden will stay in the race. A person familiar with the group dynamics said that such conversations are not happening in the group closest to Mr. Biden, that he is still committed to staying in the race, and that he still believes he is the best person to beat Mr. Trump,” the Times reported.
“The conversations have been happening outside that small orbit.”
Some Biden aides discussing how to convince him to step aside – report
The New York Times reports that some aides to Joe Biden are strategizing ways to convince the president that he cannot win re-election, and that stepping aside to make way for another Democrat is the best way to keep Donald Trump from returning to the White House.
A White House spokesman denied the story. Here’s what the Times reported:
Some longtime aides and advisers to President Biden have become increasingly convinced that he will have to step aside from the campaign, and in recent days they have been trying to come up with ways to persuade him that he should, according to three people briefed on the matter.
A small group of Mr. Biden’s advisers in the administration and the campaign – at least two of whom have told allies that they do not believe he should keep trying to run for a second term – have said they would have to convince the president of several things.
They said they have to make the case to the president, who remains convinced of the strength of his campaign, that he cannot win against former President Donald J. Trump. They have to persuade him to believe that another candidate, like Vice President Kamala Harris, could beat Mr. Trump. And they have to assure Mr. Biden that, should he step aside, the process to choose another candidate would be orderly and not devolve into chaos in the Democratic Party.
Those discussions were recounted by three people familiar with them who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. There is no indication that any of the discussions have reached Mr. Biden himself, one of the informed people said.
Biden campaign acknowledges debate ‘setback’, sees path to victory through Great Lakes
In a memo acquired by the Guardian, top officials in the Biden-Harris campaign acknowledge that the president has lost standing following the first debate against Donald Trump, but that they believe the race is still winnable.
The most likely path for Joe Biden to be re-elected is by winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, reads the memo, which a source familiar said was shared internally by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez. However, the sun belt states that Biden won in 2020, but which recent polls indicate are drifting away from the president, “are not out of reach”, they write.
“No one is denying that the debate was a setback. But Joe Biden and this campaign have made it through setbacks before. We are clear eyed about what we need to do to win. And we will win by moving forward, unified as a party, so that every single day between now and election day we focus on defeating Donald Trump,” the memo reads.
Biden campaign reportedly looking into Harris’s strength against Trump
The Biden-Harris campaign has commissioned a survey to measure how Kamala Harris would fare in a head-to-head matchup against Donald Trump, the New York Times reports, in a new indication that it is possible Joe Biden could call off his re-election campaign amid mounting concerns about his ability to win.
Here’s what the Times says the campaign is doing, and what it might mean:
The survey, which is being conducted this week and was commissioned by the Biden campaign’s analytics team, is believed to be the first time since the debate that Mr. Biden’s aides have sought to measure how the vice president would fare at the top of the ticket. It was described by three people who are informed about it and insisted on anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information. They did not specify why the survey was being conducted or what the campaign planned to do with the results.
The effort, which comes as a growing number of prominent lawmakers call for Mr. Biden to step aside or suggest he should reconsider his plans to run, indicates that his campaign may be preparing to wade into a debate that has consumed the Democratic Party behind closed doors: whether Mr. Biden should step aside for his vice president.
While some of Mr. Biden’s top aides have quietly argued that Ms. Harris could not win the election, donors and other outside supporters of the vice president believe she might be in a stronger position after the debate, and could be a more energetic communicator of the party’s message.
New survey finds Trump leading presidential race, Biden dogged by age concerns
The Pew Research Center is out with a new poll that indicates voters are very much worried about Joe Biden’s age, and generally Donald Trump in the presidential race.
The survey, taken after their late June debate in which Biden appeared to struggle to respond to Trump’s attacks, showed a mere 24% of voters describe the president as “mentally sharp”, while more than twice that number feel that way about Trump. Pew notes that views of Biden as mentally sharp are down significantly from 2020, and by six percentage points from January alone.
And while the presidential election will likely be decided in a handful of swing states, Pew found that Trump had a 4 percentage point lead over Biden among registered voters nationwide.
That said, the survey confirms that both men are not exactly well thought of. Identical 63% shares of those surveyed described both Trump and Biden as “embarrassing”, including big shares of their own supporters.
In our new survey, only 24% of voters say the phrase “mentally sharp” describes Biden; 58% say the same of Trump.
Meanwhile, about twice as many voters describe Trump as mean-spirited (64%) than say that about Biden (31%). https://t.co/gXwCjkgaAO pic.twitter.com/c49nIN34ky
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) July 11, 2024