2020 US Election

Jeffries, Schumer privately warned Biden he could imperil Democrats
The Democratic leaders, in separate meetings last week, suggested Biden’s candidacy could damage the party’s hopes of controlling the House and the Senate.

By Tyler Pager and Michael Scherer
July 17, 2024 at 7:47 p.m. EDT
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, in separate private meetings with President Biden last week, told him that his continued candidacy imperils the Democratic Party’s ability to control either chamber of Congress next year.

Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with Biden on Thursday night at the White House, and Schumer (D-N.Y.) met with him on Saturday in Rehoboth Beach, Del. In the meetings, the congressional leaders discussed their members’ concerns that Biden could deprive them of majorities, giving Republicans a much easier path to push through legislation, according to four people briefed on the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.

In a separate one-on-one conversation, a person close to Biden told the president directly that he should end his candidacy, saying that was the only way to preserve his legacy and save the country from another Trump term, the person said. Biden responded that he adamantly disagreed with that opinion and that he is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

President Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of 2024, where Biden stumbled and Trump spread falsehoods. Here are takeaways and fact checks from the debate.

The Democratic leaders released short statements after the meetings, acknowledging only that they occurred but saying little or nothing about the substance. The Biden campaign and the White House also have not provided public summaries of the meetings.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden told Schumer and Jeffries in their private meetings that he would remain at the top of the ticket. “The President told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families,” Bates said in a statement.

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in California and a close ally of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), on Wednesday became the latest and most prominent House member to call on Biden to leave the race. Adding to the president’s challenges, he was diagnosed with covid-19 on Wednesday, forcing him to curtail his campaign schedule.

Even before last month’s presidential debate, in which Biden repeatedly stumbled, Democrats’ internal polls showed his support trailing his 2020 levels by significant margins in key districts, according to people familiar with the data. Biden’s team had long hoped that the debate would boost those numbers, but it has not worked out that way.

“Democratic House polls have not shown any change in congressional candidate standing since the debate,” said one person familiar with the data, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

In the Senate, Democrats have a 51-49 majority, but Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a longtime Democrat who recently switched to independent, is not seeking reelection, meaning the GOP will almost certainly recapture his seat. Even if Democrats win all the other contested seats, the result would be a 50-50 split — meaning the Senate would be controlled by whichever party wins the White House, because the vice president casts the tiebreaking vote in the chamber.

That has deeply worried many Senate Democrats, given that Biden is trailing Trump in numerous battleground state polls in which Democratic Senate candidates continue to lead — a sentiment Schumer expressed to Biden in their meeting. “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus,” said an aide to the senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

In private meetings with larger groups of lawmakers, Biden has disputed the notion that he is losing to Trump or that he would hurt other Democrats and has cited polls as a defense, although he has not specified which ones prove his point, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.

The private warnings from Jeffries and Schumer are a striking message from the party’s leaders and reflect the dire outlook among many Democrats after Biden’s debate performance. Nearly two dozen members of Congress have publicly called on Biden to exit the race, and many more elected officials privately share that sentiment.

Pelosi and former president Barack Obama, who have spoken out about the state of the race in recent days, have expressed concern privately about the president’s path forward, according to people familiar with their conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private. Obama spoke with Biden after the debate, offering his support as a sounding board and private counselor for the man who was his vice president.

Biden has in recent days launched an energetic, sometimes combative, effort to hear out the concerns of fellow Democrats, meeting virtually with five groups of House lawmakers. He has also spoken privately with party leaders, including Pelosi and Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.).

Biden had a phone conversation on Friday with Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which coordinates the party’s House races, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversation was private. A DCCC spokesman declined to comment.

Although their path to retaining their Senate majority has seemed shaky for some time, Democrats had seen a clear path to win back the House, which Republicans now control 220-213. With Trump leading Biden in the polls, Democrats fear that a failure to retake the House would give Trump and the far-right faction of the Republican Party a free hand to remake Washington.

The day after his meeting with Biden, Jeffries sent a letter to his Democratic House colleagues to inform them of his conversation, noting that he had requested the meeting.

“In my conversation with President Biden, I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward that the Caucus has shared in our recent time together,” Jeffries wrote, referring to the full caucus of House Democrats.

After his meeting Saturday, Schumer said in a statement, “I sat with President Biden this afternoon in Delaware; we had a good meeting.”

In recent days, Democratic lawmakers and even top strategists working on Biden’s reelection effort have grown increasingly concerned that the president is not getting a full picture of the state of the race. In particular, they worry that he has not met with his campaign’s pollsters and, instead, has relied largely on the advice of a dwindling circle of longtime aides.

The back-and-forth is playing out alongside a related dispute over whether to proceed with a virtual roll call that would formally nominate Biden several weeks before the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19-22. Some Democrats say that is a necessary move to ensure that Republicans cannot challenge Biden’s nomination as coming too late; others complain that it is a ploy to cement his nomination before the delegates gather.

On Wednesday, the co-chairs of the convention’s rules committee issued a letter saying that the virtual roll call would take place, but they promised it would not be rushed and would not occur before Aug. 1. The announcement came after some Democratic lawmakers had started protesting the process and urging the party to abandon it.

Paul Kane, Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.
 

People Close to Biden Say He Appears to Accept He May Have to Leave the Race
One person familiar with President Biden’s thinking cautioned that he had not yet made up his mind to leave the race, after three weeks of insisting that almost nothing would drive him out.

President Biden’s deliberations came as the crisis engulfing his presidency intensified and he was confronted directly with polls showing that he was losing badly in all of the battleground states.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
Michael D. ShearPeter BakerKatie Rogers
By Michael D. Shear, Peter Baker and Katie Rogers
The reporters cover the White House.

July 18, 2024
Updated 9:11 p.m. ET
Several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, bowing to the growing demands of many anxious members of his party.

One of the people close to him warned that the president had not yet made up his mind to leave the race after three weeks of insisting that almost nothing would drive him out. But another said that “reality is setting in,” and that it would not be a surprise if Mr. Biden made an announcement soon endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.

This account is based on interviews with four people close to the president, all of whom described the situation as extremely delicate and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid offending the president. Mr. Biden remained in isolation at his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., after being diagnosed with Covid on Wednesday.

Many other Democrats more distant from the White House said expectations were rising within the party that the president would soon relent, a shift from just days ago when many were in despair about changing his mind. But there was also caution about reading signs from a president with an exceedingly small circle of confidants.

More Democratic defections became public on Thursday. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, a key member of the House committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, urged him to consult with fellow Democrats about whether to continue his campaign in a letter to Mr. Biden dated July 6. Obtained by The New York Times, the missive compared the 81-year-old commander in chief to a tiring baseball pitcher. “Everything we believe in is on the line in the next four and a half months,” Mr. Raskin wrote.

Later on Thursday, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, who is facing a difficult re-election battle, said he believed that the president should exit the race. “While I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country,” he told a local Montana outlet, “I believe President Biden should not seek re-election.”

White House officials denied that the president was moving toward dropping out, dismissing reports to the contrary as a result of a coordinated campaign of leaks by Democratic leaders to escalate the pressure on Mr. Biden. While they said he was listening to the concerns and taking them seriously, he had not changed his mind about pulling out and made clear to aides in the last 24 hours that he remained determined to stay in the race.

Mike Donilon, Mr. Biden’s longtime senior adviser and one of his most loyal confidants, has told the president that the race remains competitive despite Democratic doubts and some of the public polls, insisting that there is still a path to victory, according to other advisers. The president’s family has also been supportive of his sticking it out, noting his long history of overcoming the odds and defying skeptics.

Proud and stubborn, Mr. Biden keeps a mental checklist of all the times he has succeeded after being told that he could not and he tends to dig in the more he is pushed to change. But the mounting demands to step aside now come not from ancillary players or media commentators but from the very Democrats who have been his most important allies over the last several years. For a president who has prized his relationships on Capitol Hill, it reflects an extraordinary fall.

Understanding his psychology and sensitive to his current illness, several people familiar with the discussions said those close to him were hesitant to press him for an answer while he was suffering from Covid. His doctor said on Thursday that he did not have a fever but was experiencing respiratory symptoms.

Mr. Biden’s deliberations came as the crisis engulfing his presidency intensified and the president was confronted directly with polls showing that his donors were abandoning him and he was losing badly in all of the battleground states.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the former speaker and one of the president’s most loyal supporters, has told him that she is pessimistic about his chances, marshaling her knowledge of the political map, polling data and fund-raising to press her case. In a recent call, when Mr. Biden insisted he had polls showing he could win, Ms. Pelosi said “put Donilon on the phone,” so she could cite her own polls showing the opposite — a direct challenge to the president and an implication that he was not being fully informed.

A spokesman for Ms. Pelosi did not deny that she had shared with the president data that showed he could not win and pressed him on what other data he could be basing his decision on.

“Speaker Pelosi respects the confidentiality of her meetings and conversations with the president of the United States,” the spokesman said. “Sadly, the feeding frenzy from the press based on anonymous sources misrepresents any conversations the speaker may have had with the president.”
The political drama surrounding Mr. Biden’s future deepened even as former President Donald J. Trump prepared to formally accept his party’s nomination on the final day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee and the president was said to be suffering from mild symptoms from Covid.

Our politics reporters. Times journalists are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. That includes participating in rallies and donating money to a candidate or cause.

After Mr. Biden landed in Delaware on Wednesday night, the president paused, waved and said, “I am doing well.” He has begun taking Paxlovid, a treatment that may reduce the symptoms of Covid.

Publicly, the president’s team pressed forward. Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to North Carolina for a campaign rally in which she made the case for Mr. Biden’s second term.

Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, rejected the notion that the president might step aside for Ms. Harris or another Democrat. “The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100-days agenda to help working families,” Mr. Bates said. T.J. Ducklo, a campaign spokesman, added, “He’s running for re-election, and that will not change until he wins re-election.”
But while only 22 Democratic members of Congress, and no congressional leaders, have publicly called for Mr. Biden to drop out, many more have privately said he should. And while those conversations, and the talks between congressional leaders and Mr. Biden, were initially kept under tight wraps, they are beginning to be discussed more openly, a sign that impatience is growing in the face of the president’s defiant refusals to step aside.

Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the two top Democrats in Congress, each told Mr. Biden privately over the past week that their members were deeply concerned about his chances in November and the fates of House and Senate candidates should he remain at the top of the ticket, according to two people briefed on the conversations.

The mood inside the White House and at the president’s campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., was grim on Thursday as developments came in rapid-fire succession throughout the day.
Joe Scarborough, the host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program and one of Mr. Biden’s biggest supporters, all but called for him to drop out of the race.

Citing polls showing that Democrats are struggling in key states and warnings from longtime donors that Mr. Biden’s financial support has dried up, Mr. Scarborough said it was time for people around the president to “step up at this point and help the president, and help the man they love, and do the right thing.”

“This is not going to end well if it continues to drag out,” he said.

At the White House and on the Biden campaign, senior staff members are increasingly worried that Mr. Biden could lose Virginia, a state that last backed a Republican for president two decades ago and is no longer typically regarded as a presidential battleground, according to a senior Biden aide who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly about internal assessments.

The senior Biden aide said that at the campaign and the White House, senior staff members were increasingly, if informally, discussing among themselves their sense that Mr. Biden’s exit from the race was starting to feel inevitable — a matter of when and how, not if. Those conversations were taboo as recently as a few days ago, the person said.
But Quentin Fulks, Mr. Biden’s deputy campaign manager, denied that the president was more receptive to calls to step out of the race.

“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where Biden is not at the top of the ticket,” Mr. Fulks said on Thursday. “We look forward to him accepting the delegates in Chicago.” But the campaign was quietly testing head-to-head polling between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, as reported last week.
 

Pelosi has told House Democrats that Biden may soon be persuaded to exit race
The former House speaker has stepped up her behind-the-scenes role in working to persuade the president to bow out of the campaign.

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is telling House Democrats that she thinks President Biden can be convinced fairly soon that it's time to end his reelection bid. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
By Marianna Sotomayor, Jacqueline Alemany and Paul Kane
Updated July 18, 2024 at 9:31 p.m. EDT|Published July 18, 2024 at 6:17 p.m. EDT
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi has told some House Democrats she believes President Biden can be persuaded fairly soon to exit the presidential race amid serious doubts he can win in November, according to three Democratic officials familiar with her private discussions.

Following Biden’s halting debate performance last month, and the panic it unleashed among Democrats in and outside of Washington, Pelosi (D-Calif.) has taken a strong, behind-the-scenes role in trying to resolve the political crisis by playing intermediary for upset rank-and-file Democrats and relaying those messages to the White House.

The former speaker, who left her leadership post in 2022 but still wields enormous clout, has told California Democrats and some members of House leadership that she thinks Biden is getting close to deciding to abandon his presidential bid, three Democratic officials said. Some Democrats fear that, by staying in, Biden will end up handing the White House to Donald Trump.

Pelosi’s aides declined to address her talks with her congressional colleagues while dismissing the media “feeding frenzy” about her discussions with Biden.

“Speaker Pelosi respects the confidentiality of her meetings and conversations with the president of the United States,” a spokesperson for the former speaker said.

Biden’s campaign advisers continued Thursday to dismiss talk of replacing him on the ballot.

“President Biden has not spoken to Congressional leadership today,” said TJ Ducklo, a campaign spokesman. “The President is his party’s nominee, having won 14 million votes during the Democratic primary. He’s running for reelection, and that will not change until he wins reelection.”

Rank-and-file Democrats see Pelosi’s hand in a pair of California Democrats calling for Biden to step down, after several days of relative quiet, following the assassination attempt on Trump last weekend. On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a close Pelosi ally, formally called for Biden to step aside for another Democrat. Rep. Jim Costa (D-Calif.) followed suit Thursday.

Concerns among Democrats about Biden’s bid have increased in recent days. Along with Pelosi, party luminaries including former president Barack Obama, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), have conveyed their concerns about Biden’s continuing candidacy for the White House. Jeffries and Schumer told Biden directly in separate meetings recently that his continued candidacy imperils the Democratic Party’s ability to control either chamber of Congress next year. And Obama has told allies in recent days that Biden needs to seriously reconsider the viability of his candidacy.

Pelosi has kept a low public profile since a July 10 appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” which Biden is known to watch, in which she undermined his case for remaining on the November ballot. Democrats saw her nuanced comments — “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run” — as reopening the discussion after Biden had sent a defiant letter to lawmakers two days earlier stating that he was running.

Biden campaign officials continued to reject the calls to step aside. “I don’t want to be rude, but I don’t know how many times we can say this: President Biden is staying in this race,” Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, told reporters Thursday in Milwaukee.

Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, do not seem persuaded.

While she is not actively seeking them out, Pelosi has sent word to House Democrats, particularly those facing tough reelection bids this fall, that she is open to talking through the White House political crisis and how to handle the matter, according multiple House Democratic lawmakers and aides.

The former speaker took detailed notes during these discussions, particularly on polling data from the lawmakers in their races and about Biden’s standing in those key districts, according to one Democrat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive conversations.

These talks, along with private polling data, informed Pelosi’s thinking as she maneuvers through the sensitive discussions with Biden and his inner circle.

The Washington Post and other news outlets reported this week on a recent discussion with Biden, during which Pelosi rejected the president’s assertion that he was doing fine in the polls. She asked him to bring a senior adviser into the talk so they could compare in detail their divergent internal polling, according to one person familiar with the conversation.

Now 84 and back among the rank and file, Pelosi retains a large degree of clout at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Many lawmakers view her as the best Democrat to deliver the tough message to Biden, in part because he views her as a contemporary with her own legacy.

Pelosi also has no individual political aspirations left, having retired from leadership 18 months ago, after 20 years leading House Democrats. She doesn’t have to worry about the ramifications of telling senior leaders what they don’t want to hear, these Democrats say, and the new House leadership appreciates an extra voice in trying to help push Biden into retirement.

But Democrats who want to push Biden aside warn that doing so is far from certain. “It’s a work in progress,” one Democratic lawmaker said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss conversations the former speaker has had with members of the California delegation.

Pelosi has previously gone to great lengths to avoid appearances of being akin to a co-leader to Jeffries and his top lieutenants, House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).

Moments after her floor speech exiting the speakership, Pelosi told a small group of reporters she never wanted lawmakers to see her “being the mother-in-law in the kitchen” trying to explain how her son wanted his Thanksgiving dinner.

But in this moment Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar each have their own political sensitivities that make it more difficult to be forceful toward Biden. The Congressional Black Caucus, the base of support for Jeffries over his climb through House leadership, includes several prominent senior Democrats who are among Biden’s staunchest supporters.

That’s also the case for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which has helped launch Aguilar into rising-star status.

So, in this moment, Pelosi has stepped in and played the role of a more blunt messenger to the Biden orbit, channeling what she has heard from her caucus.

One Democrat who spoke with her in recent days reached out to the former speaker, asking for her view. Pelosi set up a call and went through all the details of their district and polling, saying she was taking down detailed notes about the data, according to the Democrat.

At the end of the call, Pelosi explained that she was not actively reaching out to the rank and file, but she wanted lawmakers to know that she was happy to talk the situation through with anyone.

“Just text me,” Pelosi said, according to this Democrat.

The lawmaker hung up the phone and immediately texted a group of 50 Democrats telling them that Pelosi was willing to talk.

Leigh Ann Caldwell and Ashley Parker contributed to this report.