Biden faces more calls from Democrats to withdraw from race

Numerous officials, lawmakers and strategists within President Biden’s party increasingly see his candidacy as untenable, and their personal concerns are slowly but surely filtering into the public eye, according to interviews with more than 50 Democrats this week.

More and more Democrats now believe that by remaining on the ticket, the president is jeopardizing their ability to retain the White House and threatening other candidates on the ballot. The moment has come to create an extraordinary clash between a proud president of the United States who insists he is not giving up his re-election campaign and members of his party who are beginning to suggest that he should.

“I have less and less confidence in the ability of this campaign to win this race,” Rep. Scott Peters, Democrat of California, said in an interview. “If we know we’re going to lose, we’d be foolish not to look at a different course.”

Representative Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota, urged Biden on Saturday to step down as the Democratic nominee. “I do not believe the President can campaign effectively and win against Donald Trump,” she said in a statement.

Lawmakers say they have been overwhelmed with concerns about Mr. Biden’s candidacy from donors and voters. Among members of the Democratic National Committee, effectively the political arm of the White House, many said they were still supportive, but even there cracks are emerging.

And a Democratic congressman, a former senior Obama administration official and a senior adviser to a prominent Democratic governor used the same word in separate private interviews on Friday to describe Biden’s position on the campaign trail: “untenable.”

“It would be good for him to realize that no one is irreplaceable,” said Mark LaChey, the former first vice chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party who encouraged Biden to drop out of the race, which is essentially the only way to begin the process of changing the nominee at this point. “A lot of people would be very excited to have someone else on the Democratic ticket run for president. And I think there’s a gap in enthusiasm right now, and I think that gap is only going to get wider.”

To be sure, many leading Democrats have publicly expressed support for the president or kept quiet about their misgivings. But a senior White House official who worked with Biden during his presidency, vice presidency and 2020 campaign said in an interview Saturday morning that Biden should not seek re-election.

After watching Biden in private, in public and while traveling with him, the official said they no longer believed the president had what it took to campaign vigorously and defeat Donald J. Trump. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity so he could continue serving, said Biden had increasingly shown signs of his age in recent months, including speaking more slowly, haltingly and quietly, and had appeared more tired in private.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates pointed to Biden’s comments in a Friday interview with ABC News, in which he vowed to stay in the race.

In that interview, Mr. Biden also defended his acumen and ability to serve.

For years, Democratic officials have largely kept their concerns about Mr. Biden’s age and ability to a hush-hush conversation, even as many voters have vocally voiced reservations about nominating someone who would be 86 at the end of a second term. But in the days since the first presidential debate in June and what some Democrats have described as the campaign’s feeble attempt at damage control, those whispered fears have turned into a whirlwind of action, though it remains to be seen where it will all lead.

Many Democrats who believe Biden should withdraw from the race emphasize their personal affection and respect for him and describe a sense of genuine sadness.

Still, donors are funding private polls to assess how alternatives to Mr. Biden would perform. Other lawmakers are debating whether and when to publicly break with the president, with one Democratic strategist close to moderate members of Congress predicting that “the dam is about to break” when lawmakers return to Washington next week.

And at least one recent proponent is openly expressing doubts.

Geoff Duncan, a Republican and former lieutenant governor of Georgia, campaigned for Biden the day before the debate as part of his opposition to Trump.

But the “debate was a huge eye-opener for me about the physical and mental well-being of President Biden,” Duncan said Friday. “It’s going to take a significant amount of evidence to disprove what I saw and heard in that debate. That seems like an unlikely scenario at this point.”

There is also a new effort to organize delegates ahead of the August convention to show that the Democratic base wants a different candidate, said an organizer who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a nascent campaign.

It will be carried out by a new group, Pass the Torch, which is also promoting a petition to Democrats more broadly calling on Mr. Biden to step aside. A man standing near the president before he spoke at a rally in Wisconsin on Friday held a sign with the slogan “Pass the torch, Joe.”

Biden said he had no plans to do so.

During his speech in Wisconsin, the president struck a defiant tone, saying no one could “push” him to drop out. “Let me say this as clearly as I can: I’m staying in the race,” he proclaimed.

He reiterated those comments in his interview with ABC News on Friday and plans to campaign in Pennsylvania on Sunday.

“President Biden knows better than anyone that campaigning is about earning the trust and support of voters,” Kevin Munoz, a Biden spokesman, said in a statement. “He’s on the campaign trail to do just that — and in the states with the voters who will decide this election. There are many days between now and Election Day, and the hard work of earning every vote is far from over.”

Mr. Biden’s family has a huge influence on his decision-making, and after the debate they urged him to stay in the race. The decision is essentially his alone: ​​If he were to step aside, he would almost certainly have to release his own delegates so they could support another nominee.

Some Biden advisers have suggested that the focus on the president’s age and debate performance is of interest only to donors, the news media and pundits. They said the campaign has continued to have strong, small-dollar fundraising and noted that many Democratic elected officials have publicly emphasized their support for Biden and continue to campaign for him.

But polls show that a large majority of voters believe Biden is too old to serve another term as president, according to a post-debate survey conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.

Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman urged Democrats to pay attention.

“It really worries me because I don’t think people are listening,” she said, keeping it brief before calling on Biden to step aside. “It’s just worth thinking about it, talking about it, and really examining it and making sure that we’ve done our due diligence so that in November we can honestly say that we did everything we could.”

In interviews with dozens of DNC members, key party activists, many said Mr. Biden had their full support. In their view, the election remains between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, and they have no interest in reevaluating their options.

“I’m glad President Biden is at the top of the ticket,” said Virgie M. Rollins, the DNC’s Black Caucus Chair. “I’ll take President Biden in a wheelchair before I take a convicted felon.”

Jonathan Saidel, a committee member from Philadelphia, said he thought Mr. Biden’s ABC News interview went better than the debate. But even if it had gone badly, he said, he would have remained committed to Mr. Biden, arguing that the election was more about convincing voters of the dangers of Mr. Trump than of the merits of the current president.

“What I tell people is they don’t have Jesus and Moses on the ticket,” Mr. Saidel said. “Nobody’s perfect.”

Other Democrats expressed reluctance to embark on an unpredictable, messy process to find a new nominee with less than four months to go before Election Day. There is also no unanimity, in these hypothetical scenarios, on whether the party should immediately unite behind Vice President Kamala Harris or pursue an open nomination process if Mr. Biden steps aside, tensions that could flare up in the coming weeks.

A few DNC members mentioned a proposal circulated by longtime committee member James Zogby to create a more open nomination process in that scenario. It was evidence that even within the most supportive party apparatus, some are openly considering other eventualities.

“If President Biden ultimately leaves office, I hope and expect that any process to replace the top of the ticket will be fully transparent while also empowering our base,” said Jeri D. Shepherd, a committee member from Colorado.

Former Oklahoma Governor and DNC member David Walters has voiced his concerns since the debate, citing Biden’s poll numbers.

“There is only one relevant issue,” he wrote in an email to The New York Times on July 4. “Who is the best candidate to stop Donald Trump?”

He praised Biden’s record of legislative achievements and his foreign policy acumen, saying that if the president were to leave office, “he would receive the praise of the world for his personal sacrifice for the good of his country.”

“In politics and campaigns, perception is greater than reality,” Mr. Walters said. “He may be operating at 100 percent capacity. But 14 months into this 18-month campaign, the campaign is losing that argument.”