Joe Biden’s 2024 candidacy appeared to be on its last legs following a June debate performance that left many Democrats questioning his viability. Biden resisted pressure to step aside, and the assassination attempt against his Republican rival Donald Trump temporarily pushed the issue off the front page. But Biden’s doubters regained the momentum this week. Here’s a look at where the debate over removing Biden from the ticket stands after a string of wildly dramatic days in U.S. politics.
Follow our liveblog for the latest updates on this still developing story.
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Biden team pushes back on reports he’ll quit
As news stories and rumors about Biden’s possible exit from the race proliferated, Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said the president has no intentions of dropping out. “You have heard from the president directly time and again, he is in this race to win. He is our nominee, and he’s going to be our president for a second term,” she said. Her words echoed a circulating Biden campaign memo, which stated bluntly that there’s no alternative nominee.
“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not at the top of the ticket,” deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks told CBS News. But NBC News reported Friday morning that Biden family members are said to be gaming out an plan for how Biden could exit his campaign.
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Senior Congressional leadership is pressuring Biden
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have both spoken to the president privately in recent days and told him that many in their caucuses fear that Biden’s presence on the ticket could prevent Democrats from winning control of the House and Senate next year, per the Washington Post. Both meetings were made public, but statements issued from both leaders’ offices at the time were slim on details. On Friday, Jeffries told reporters that Biden is the party’s nominee “right now” and has a “tremendous track record of success.”
CNN reported Wednesday that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had recently spoke with Biden in private, telling him that the polls are showing him that he can’t win in November. When the president pushed back on her characterization, Pelosi, who is considered one of the party’s most savvy politicians, reportedly asked Biden’s top adviser Mike Donilon to get on the phone with them to talk about polling. A top ally of the former Speaker told Politico she could even resort to public pressure to get Biden to leave the ticket. “The Speaker does not want to call on him to resign, but she will do everything in her power to make sure it happens,” they said.
She and former president Barack Obama have reportedly spoken privately, both voicing concerns about Biden’s ability to defeat Trump. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Obama has told allies in private that Biden needs to consider if his candidacy is even viable, citing signs that he lacks a clear path to victory in November.
Biden is also feeling the pressure from his favorite pundits. MSNBC’s Morning Joe, of which the president is an avid watcher, has taken a notably different tone when discussing Biden’s chances, with host Joe Scarborough suggesting Thursday morning that Biden’s team is intentionally keeping him in a bubble and hiding bad campaign news from him. And if that weren’t enough, Biden was diagnosed with COVID-19 Wednesday, taking him off the campaign trail as his rival Trump and his newly announced running mate Ohio senator J.D. Vance are being fêted at the RNC.
The president issued a statement Friday, blasting Trump’s RNC speech from the previous night and previewing his return to campaigning in the next few days. “I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone,” he said.
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Some other Democrats are losing faith publicly
On Friday morning, both sides of the debate notched victories among the Democratic rank and file. Five more members of Congress called on Biden to step aside, including four who issued a group statement. One of the four was Marc Veasey, the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus to do so. And the group includes two progressives, a faction that has notably supportive of Biden to this point.
But earlier on Friday, Congressional Hispanic Caucus’s political action committee endorsed Biden on Friday, providing something of a counterweight. And New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took to Instagram Live early Friday morning to warn viewers about the push to replace Biden, saying that many who support a change would be against Vice President Kamala Harris as well. “A lot of them are not just interested in removing the president. They are interested in removing the whole ticket,” she said.
On Friday, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico became the third senator to call for Biden to step aside, following Peter Welch of Vermont and Jon Tester of Montana who is possibly the most vulnerable Democratic senator running for reelection. Tester called on Biden to drop out of the race on Thursday night, following earlier criticism privately and publicly. “Montanans have put their trust in me to do what is right, and it is a responsibility I take seriously. I have worked with President Biden when it has made Montana stronger, and I’ve never been afraid to stand up to him when he is wrong,” Tester said, according to the Daily Montanan. “And while I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”
California representative Adam Schiff, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee who is running for Senate in the fall, took his once private feelings public on Wednesday, telling the Los Angeles Times he has “serious concerns” that Biden can defeat Trump and said that he thinks it’s time for the president to pass the torch. White House officials reportedly believe that Schiff’s statement came with Pelosi’s blessing, according to Reuters. The current tally of members of Congress calling for Biden’s replacement stands at 27 representatives and three senators.
Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a staunch ally of Biden’s, said the president is “weighing” who the strongest candidate is to defeat Trump. “I am confident he is hearing what he needs to hear from colleagues, from the public,” he said, per Axios.
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Top donors are getting skittish
Democratic donors are also growing concerned about November. Last week, actor George Clooney said in a New York Times op-ed that Biden should step aside for the good of the country, his words coming on the heels of a star-studded Hollywood fundraiser in June. Clooney joins heiress Abigail Disney and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings who have also said the Democratic Party needs a new candidate.
Semafor reported that the president has recently spoken with film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg who told Biden that donors are growing impatient. The former Walt Disney Studios chairman later issued a statement saying the outlet’s reporting was a “misread of a private meeting.”
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The DNC is sticking with Biden so far
Despite private concerns, the Democratic Party still seems largely committed to Biden as its nominee. The Democratic National Committee had plans to hold a virtual roll-call vote in the coming days that would officially make Biden the nominee before the party’s national convention began in August. Party officials cited concerns about Biden being able to appear on the ballot in states like Ohio, though Ohio’s governor signed a bill solving the clerical problem. The move was denounced by some who saw it as a rushed attempt to circumvent calls for Biden’s replacement and avoid a convention-floor fight for the nomination with some House Democrats planning to sign onto a letter denouncing the action. The heads of the DNC Rules Committee announced in a letter made public Wednesday that the vote would now occur in August, a small win for Biden critics, resulting in the House members doing away with their planned action. Punchbowl News reports that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries pushed for the vote delay.
Representative Jared Huffman, a California congressman who helped to organize the letter, told Politico that the planned signers faced pressure from local party leaders and labor to drop their plans. “No doubt about it, they were trying to twist arms and break legs,” he told the outlet.
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The latest polls don’t have much good news for Biden
Recent polling has been clearly trending downward for the president, though overall it remains a close race. A Virginia Commonwealth University poll released Monday shows Trump leading Biden by 3 percentage points in Virginia. Biden is also trailing Trump in Pennsylvania, a key swing state, 45 percent to 48 percent, while only slightly leading him in Virginia, according to a New York Times–Siena College poll. That same poll shows Vice-President Kamala Harris, who has been floated as a potential replacement candidate for Biden, faring better than her running mate. In Virginia, Harris is beating Trump 49 percent to 45 percent, while only trailing him by one point in Pennsylvania.
An AP-NORC poll released Wednesday contained even worse news, revealing that close to two-thirds of voters surveyed thought that Biden should leave the race and let the Democratic Party select a new nominee.
On Wednesday, Politico reported that a circulating BlueLab Analytics polling memo suggests that voters are keen to move on from Biden. It says that alternative candidates are running ahead of Biden in key battleground states by about three points and even outperform Harris. Some of these names include Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Arizona senator Mark Kelly, and Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro.
On Friday, election analyst Nate Silver said his 2024 electoral model showed a recent four point spike for Trump in national polling.
Senate Democratic campaigns are also sharing a polling memo from Welcome PAC that reportedly shows candidates being negatively impacted by sharing a ticket with Biden in comparison to others like Harris or Whitmer, per Semafor.
Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg has sent polling memos to the president and his top aides warning that Biden is on the path to losing significantly in the fall, per CNN. But there are reports that members of Biden’s team are not being frank with him about his drop in the polls.
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