In a closed-door meeting on Wednesday, leaders of the nation’s labor unions, many of them staunch Biden supporters, said public doubts about Biden’s ability to do the job are damaging his candidacy and repeatedly asked Biden campaign officials about their plan to defeat Trump, according to two people with knowledge of their remarks. Other reporters interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private comments. Two of the most outspoken leaders were Biden’s top labor allies, Sara Nelson, president of the Union of Flight Attendants, and Sean Fain, president of the United Auto Workers union.
In a statement late Wednesday, the AFL-CIO leadership said it “voted unanimously to reaffirm our commitment to Biden” and that “no president has been more committed to supporting workers than Joe Biden.”
Even as campaign officials continue their all-out offensive to keep the campaign moving forward and reassure allies about the president’s chances of a comeback, they are growing more pessimistic about Biden’s chances of a victory.
“Most campaign staff are frustrated and don’t see a path forward,” said a Democratic strategist familiar with the discussions, a description not disputed by a second person familiar with the discussions.
“We can choose to worry or we can choose to work. This team is in the business of winning an election,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement.
Democrats, meanwhile, say defections are likely to grow in the coming days, and lawmakers and donors have privately suggested they might call on Biden to publicly withdraw by the weekend. They say they don’t want to embarrass him during the NATO summit in Washington while also giving him time to decide for himself whether to withdraw from the race.
On Wednesday, Vermont Sen. Peter Welch became the first Democratic senator to call on Biden to step down, writing in a Washington Post op-ed that he should step down “for the good of the country” because of the danger Trump poses. Additionally, some of the party’s most vulnerable lawmakers, including Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) and New York Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, who once represented a battleground district in the House, also called on Biden to step down.
During his first presidential debate with President Trump on June 27, Biden was unable to complete sentences, spoke frequently haltingly and at times seemed confused about what question he was trying to answer, sending Democrats into a panic over his performance, raising doubts about his ability to serve another four years as president and raising new questions about the 81-year-old Biden’s mental acuity.
Biden and his campaign continue to publicly state that he has no plans to withdraw from the race and is in a position to beat Trump in the election, which is 117 days away. The Biden campaign told Democratic senators on Wednesday that campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, senior adviser Mike Donilon and presidential adviser Steve Ricchetti would meet on Thursday to brief them on their future course of action. The Biden campaign said it conducted a poll immediately after the debate, but that it had not seen any significant movement for Biden in battleground states.
A Democratic senator said that even if the campaign told senators that the president’s position had hardly deteriorated, “I don’t think anybody would believe that,” adding that senators would want “compelling evidence that things can be turned around.”
Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager for the 2020 presidential campaign and a former White House communications director, expressed private frustration within the party that the campaign has yet to show empirical evidence that Biden can bounce back from his debate setbacks and gain enough momentum to win.
“If they have data that supports what they see as a path to victory, they should release it now and help rally around it those who desperately want to defeat Trump,” Bedingfield wrote on social media. “People want to know the path.”
Ron Klain, a longtime Biden adviser and former White House chief of staff, said there is consensus within Biden’s team that he remains the best candidate to beat Trump. “He will win in 2024 just as he did in 2020 because ultimately his personal values ​​and character will prevail over Trump,” Klain wrote in a text message.
Democrats have been privately considering scenarios and the timing of if Biden were to decide to drop out of the race, including the possibility that he would endorse Harris as his vice-presidential pick. Time is of the essence, said one Democratic strategist. “As always, the sooner the better,” he said, seeking to avoid a “mad scramble” around or at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.
“I remain committed to staying in this race, fighting to the end, and defeating Donald Trump,” Biden announced in a letter to Democratic allies on Monday. But former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” a show Biden is known to watch regularly, on Wednesday and said it was an open question as to whether Biden would continue to run.
“It’s up to the president to decide whether he wants to run,” said Pelosi, who has served in the House since stepping down as speaker. “We’re all urging him to make that decision, because time is running out.”
A concern for House Democrats is that pre-debate polling shows Biden already lagging behind Trump in districts he won comfortably in 2020, with approval ratings in the low 40s, according to a person who has seen the data. In both House and Senate polls, lower-ranked Democratic candidates continue to outperform Biden in voter tests.
An AARP poll released Tuesday, conducted by a polling firm backed by both the Biden and Trump campaigns, found Biden trailing Trump by 6 percentage points in Wisconsin in a five-way race that included third-party candidates. Biden beat Trump in Wisconsin by less than 1 percentage point in 2020. The AARP poll also showed Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) holding a 3-point lead over her Republican opponent, businessman Eric Hovde.
“He’s a stickler everywhere,” said another Democrat working on campaigns this election cycle, who has looked at private polls across the country.
The campaign launched a new poll this week, but the results are not yet in, according to a person familiar with the campaign.Biden also announced that he will be doing an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt in Austin on Monday that will air on the first night of the Republican nominating convention.
National polls showed Trump with a slight lead before the debate, in contrast to Biden holding a roughly 4-point lead over Trump at the same time in the 2020 campaign. Since the debate, Trump has an average lead of 2.5 points in national polls, according to a Washington Post polling average.
Democrats are particularly concerned about Biden’s weakening standing compared to the 2020 campaign, when Biden was leading Trump by nine points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, after Biden won the national popular vote by 4.5 points in November. Trump now leads by more than three points in that same average.
Some Democrats have grown increasingly concerned in recent days about the pace of fundraising by independent groups supporting Biden and his campaign, as groups that raise big sums for the president have been reluctant to use their networks or have refused to honor contributions. The campaign raised more than $3 million in a single day after the debate, according to people familiar with the internal numbers. Donations have since tapered off, and campaign advisers are waiting to see whether enthusiasm will return with the Republican convention next week.
“It’s hard to balance checkbooks,” said one fundraiser involved in the effort, worried about whether big donors will give to independents. “Many of the big donors will move their money to the House and Senate. If Biden wants to stay in office, they’ll just have to hope that the small donors get through.”
On Wednesday, Oscar-winning actor and longtime Democratic donor George Clooney said Biden should drop out of the race. Clooney, who co-hosted a Biden fundraiser in Los Angeles last month, said at the event that the president “isn’t even Joe Biden in 2020.”
“This is not just my opinion. It is the opinion of every senator, congressman and governor I have spoken to privately,” Clooney wrote in The New York Times. “Every single one of them, regardless of what they say publicly.”
He continued, “The dam has broken. We can either bury our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can tell the truth.”
Lauren Kaori Gurley and Liz Goodwin contributed reporting.
