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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 “is Biden too old to run” debate off the front page, but talk is growing once more. 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.
Saturday’s assassination attempt at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, temporarily halted the public “replace Biden” discussion as Democratic politicians suddenly had to navigate a sensitive national moment, but conversation has begun anew with several prominent voices joining their ranks both officially and behind closed doors.
CNN reported Wednesday that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 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.
However, a Pelosi spokesman has denied the reporting. “Speaker Pelosi respects the confidentiality of her meetings and conversations with the President of the United States. Sadly, the feeding frenzy from the press based on anonymous sources misrepresents any conversations the Speaker may have had with the President,” they said in a statement to Bloomberg News.
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.
The current party leadership has also voiced their members’ concerns directly to 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.
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.
There are some who believe that Biden is listening to his critics. “He’s gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?” a senior Democratic adviser told CNN. “It’s still unclear where he’s going to land but seems to be listening.” Axios reports that some top Democrats believe the pressure could make Biden decide to drop out as early as this weekend with one person close to the president telling NBC News, “We’re close to the end.” However, the Biden campaign has shot down that reporting. “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.
Representative Adam Schiff, the influential former Trump impeachment manager 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 New York Times reports that Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland wrote a letter to Biden over the July 4th holiday that praised him, but suggested he speak with party members on the best way to proceed. In the missive, Raskin compared the president to Boston Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martínez whose tired performance after being left on the mound in the 2003 American League Championship Series is believed to have led to the Yankees’ eventual Game 7 win.
On Thursday, Senator John Hickenlooper stopped just short of calling Biden to step down from the ticket, but seemed supportive of the idea. “That’s his decision to make, but certainly there’s more and more indications that that would be in the best interests of the country, I think,” he told Reuters.
The current tally of congressional members who have publicly called for Biden to step down is 20 representatives and one senator. Peter Welch, the lone senator in the group, told NBC News Thursday that Biden’s chances are “top of mind” for his Senate peers. “There is enormous concern among my colleagues of the situation we are in and the prospects of beating Trump and what would happen to our frontline races,” he said.
On Saturday, Biden had a tense call with members of the New Democrat Coalition who raised concerns about his candidacy. Puck reports that the president raised his voice on the call during an exchange with Colorado representative Jason Crow on the subject of foreign policy, challenging him on concerns about his leadership and seeming to compare the Army Ranger vet’s Bronze Star win with that of his son’s, the late Beau Biden. “Name me a foreign leader who thinks I’m not the most effective leader in the world on foreign policy. Tell me!” Biden is reported as saying.
Even with rampant concerns in the halls of Congress, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has emerged as one of Biden’s strongest defenders. In an interview with the New Yorker, Sanders conceded that the president has had his missteps but remains the strongest possible opponent to Donald Trump. “Sometimes he gets confused about names. You’re right — sometimes he doesn’t put three sentences together. It is true. But the reality of the moment is, in my view, he is the best candidate the Democrats have for a variety of reasons, and trying, in an unprecedented way, to take him off the ticket would do a lot more harm than good,” he said.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
