WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden plans to discuss the future of his reelection campaign with his family at Camp David on Sunday, following Thursday’s nationally televised debate that left many Democrats wondering whether he can beat former President Donald Trump in November, according to five people familiar with the matter.
Biden’s visit was planned ahead of Thursday’s debate, and he and first lady Jill Biden are scheduled to be joined by their children and grandchildren later Saturday.
So far, top Democrats have publicly voiced their support for Biden, including through tweets from former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. Ranking Democrats including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Jim Clyburn of South Carolina and Nancy Pelosi of California have privately expressed concerns about Biden’s viability, despite all publicly endorsing the president, two sources familiar with the discussions said.
A Democratic House member who believes Biden should drop out of the race but has not yet publicly called for him to do so told NBC News that three of his colleagues expressed the same opinion during a vote on the House floor on Friday.
House leaders have not wavered in public, and aides have denied that they have expressed doubts behind closed doors.
“Speaker Pelosi has the utmost confidence in President Biden and looks forward to attending his inauguration on January 20, 2025,” said Ian Craiger, a spokesman for the former House speaker. “Any suggestion that she would have acted differently is simply untrue.”
Christy Stevenson, a spokeswoman for House Minority Leader Jeffries, said Jeffries “has repeatedly made clear publicly and privately that he fully supports President Joe Biden and the Democratic nominee.”
Briana Frias said Clyburn, who is heading to Wisconsin this weekend to campaign, has “every confidence in President Joe Biden and the Biden-Harris race.”
“Any reports that any member of Congress has expressed anything other than staunch support for President Biden are completely false,” Frias said.
At the same time, there is recognition among Democratic leaders that Biden should be given time to decide his next steps — they believe only the president, in consultation with his family, can decide whether to proceed with his campaign or end it early — and that Biden would not handle well under pressure.
“The two decision makers are the president and his wife,” one of the people familiar with the discussions said, adding: “Anyone who doesn’t understand how personal and family-related this decision is doesn’t know the situation well.”
A record of a president and his party in crisis With just over four months to go before an election that is said to determine the fate of our democracy, the report stems from interviews with more than a dozen Democratic Party officials, activists, aides and donors, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive issues such as whether the sitting president will not seek reelection and how to replace him.
Although Biden calmed some of his supporters with an impassioned speech at a rally in North Carolina on Friday, a person familiar with his state of mind described him as feeling humiliated, lacking confidence and keenly aware that the physical image of him at the debate — staring into the distance, mouth agape — will live on after his presidency ends, and described the speech as at times rambling, incoherent and hard to understand.
“It’s a mess,” this person said.
Another person familiar with the matter said Biden would ultimately listen to only one adviser.
“The only person who has ultimate influence over him is the first lady,” this person said. “If she decides a change in policy is needed, a change in policy will be made.”
Contacted after the report was released, sources familiar with the matter stressed that the Camp David gathering was not a formal family reunion.
“Any discussions about the campaign are expected to be informal or post-hoc,” the source said. “No one has begun any formal or definitive discussions.”
Anita Dunn, one of Biden’s few top aides, said on MSNBC’s “The Weekend” on Saturday that Biden has not discussed dropping out of the race with his aides and that internal discussions are focused on moving forward.
“The discussion has not gone well,” Dunn said. “What do we do next? The president is focused, more than anything, on what do we do next? What do we need to do?”
These private discussions between Biden, his family and top advisers are taking place against a backdrop of reflection among Democrats stunned by Biden’s emergence and how frequently his thinking goes off the rails.
The Biden campaign held a conference call with members of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday, which campaign officials described as an effort to reassure party leaders and show the Biden team is communicating with its allies.
“We are moving forward with this,” the official said.
Biden’s top aides and advisers have been telling staff in meetings and consultations to stay the course, and their message, as one administration official said, is “as always, we will weather this storm.”
Sources say Democrats are split into three camps: those who will defend Biden no matter what, those ready to dump him, and those who will wait to see what Biden does in the coming days and weeks and how the poll numbers fare before making a decision. It’s this third camp that Democratic insiders are closely watching.
“Democrats need to take a deep breath and look at the polls and the swing vote,” said one state Democratic Party chairman. “Until I see it differently, he’s the guy who put this coalition together, he’s the guy with the track record, he’s the guy who beat Donald Trump. Until I see it differently, he’s still the best guy to beat Donald Trump.”
The Biden campaign declined to comment for this article, instead pointing to a memo sent Saturday by campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon that argued Biden could still win and noted that he had raised more than $27 million between debate day and Friday night.
But it’s worth noting that while O’Malley Dillon acknowledged that tough polls are to be expected, he also said the media is to blame: “If we see a shift in the polls over the next few weeks, it wouldn’t be the first time that exaggerated media coverage has led to a temporary drop in the polls.”
Democrats are debating what the party’s best path to defeat Trump is: backing the 81-year-old incumbent president, who could see a repeat of a moment like Thursday night any time between now and Election Day, or backing a different candidate whose path to winning the nomination at next month’s convention could be a fraught process.
Biden insisted on Friday that he would remain the party’s standard-bearer in November, telling a crowd at a rally in North Carolina: “I wouldn’t be running again if I didn’t believe I could do this job with all my heart and soul.”
The president has spent much of the past 48 hours attending fundraisers with the Democrats most concerned about the fallout from his debate performance.
He addressed the issue head-on at an event on Saturday.
“I understand the concerns about the debate. I get it,” he added. “It just wasn’t a very good night.”
One major donor close to both Obama and Biden said party elites would only ask Biden to drop out of the race if they determined he was “not viable and was hurting the House and Senate elections.”
The wait-and-see approach is based on the recognition that there is no clear successor to Biden, and that Biden’s withdrawal could set off a bloody last-minute battle within the party and give Trump an easy victory.
Nor is there any realistic way to remove him from his position: All but a handful of delegates to the Democratic National Convention were elected with the pledge to nominate him at the party’s convention in August, and party officials say he would get the nomination if he were to run for it.
Moreover, if Biden were to withdraw after receiving the nomination, Democratic officials said, party leaders would have much more power over choosing a successor than if he had withdrawn before the nomination. Once a candidate is formally nominated, there is a process by which members of the Democratic National Committee choose a successor. Biden is the dominant force in the DNC, and his preferences for a successor would certainly carry weight.
If Biden leaves office before then, the delegates may comply with his request, but it would not be as binding as it is now, and they would be free to nominate anyone, potentially setting up a political convention fight.
“It takes discipline as much as emotion,” a senior Democratic official said. “It would not be politically wise for Biden to back down.”
