President Biden and his advisers rushed to stem the first serious defections from within the Democratic Party since his shaky debate last week. Leading Democrats legitimized doubts about his mental acumen and floated the idea of replacing him as the nominee.
Biden hoped to gain new control with his operation on Wednesday, meeting with a group of Democratic governors both in person and virtually in an effort to drum up support after days of private hand-wringing suddenly and quickly became public.
On Tuesday, Biden faced his first formal call to resign from a Democratic congressman. The top Black lawmaker whose support helped Biden win the 2020 nomination said he would support the vice president if Biden would “step aside.” And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said after Biden’s stuttering debate performance that it was “a legitimate question to say, ‘Is this an episode or is this a condition?’”
For days, the Biden campaign has maintained, privately with donors and party activists and in memos, that the race remains fixed. But a private poll by a pro-Biden super PAC leaked to the news site Puck showed the president losing ground — about 2 percentage points — in all of the key, hard-fought states. He also now trailed in New Mexico, New Hampshire and Virginia, three states that weren’t even seriously contested by Republicans a year ago.
The series of early defections and declining support in the polls reveal the scale of the crisis still gripping the Democratic Party. While Biden’s aides have repeatedly and forcefully said publicly that the president has no plans to leave the race, initial public calls for him to step aside from elected lawmakers made clear that the issue was far from over.
The frustrations revolve not just around Mr. Biden’s poor performance, but also around the actions he and his allies have taken since then to convince Democrats that he can win. Many Democrats worry that Mr. Biden is moving too slowly to address fears about his mental fitness and stamina. They say he should have done a series of interviews or campaign events in swing states almost immediately.
Efforts by the campaign and the White House to ease the concerns have led to what amounts to a series of tests for the president in the coming days. They have announced an interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos on Friday, the president’s first in-depth appearance with a reporter in weeks, as well as a press conference next week. At the end of the week, Mr. Biden will travel to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin for campaign events.
Any misstep in this guise could set off a series of conversations among Democratic Party officials, major donors and elected leaders over whether the president should remain on the party’s slate of candidates.
The discontent reflects how sharply Biden’s disastrous debate performance has changed political expectations for Democrats. Fears of losing the White House have extended far beyond the presidential race, fueling Democrats’ worries that Biden’s weakened position — and the path he’s been following in the polls for much of the year — could also undermine their chances of controlling Congress and retaining some power in Washington.
While top campaign and White House officials have worked aggressively to assuage supporters’ fears, Biden has been noticeably quiet in recent days. As of Tuesday morning, he had not called either of the top two Democrats in Congress, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer, according to two people familiar with the matter, but Biden did call Jeffries at some point during the day. He has spent most of the past three days out of the public eye, only to deliver a brief speech Monday night, and has not taken questions from reporters.
At a meeting of Democratic governors on Monday hosted by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, some of the party’s top elected leaders expressed frustration over the lack of contact with Mr. Biden since the debate, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Most Democratic governors have not had direct contact with Mr. Biden since the debate, a fact that has caused outrage and raised persistent questions about his health.
During Tuesday’s White House press briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre faced a barrage of questions for nearly an hour about the president’s abilities, his medications and his physical exams, including whether he had undergone a neurological test.
“We want to look forward,” said Ms. Jean-Pierre, who dismissed the idea of a neurological study. “We will go all over the country. Americans will see him with their own eyes.”
During a private meeting this week with prominent Republican opponents of Trump, some participants, including former and current Republicans, told two top officials — Jeff Zients, the White House chief of staff, and Jen O’Malley Dillon, the campaign manager — that Biden should drop out of the race, according to two people familiar with what happened.
Biden’s advisers responded by saying this was not an option.
Still, comments from top campaign supporters have fueled speculation — and a degree of wishful thinking — that Biden could cede his spot on the ticket to Vice President Kamala Harris. On Tuesday, Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, whose endorsement proved crucial for Biden in the 2020 primary, told MSNBC that he still wanted a Biden-Harris ticket. But he also preemptively announced who he would support if Biden were to leave the ticket.
“I will support her if he were to step aside,” Mr. Clyburn said of Ms. Harris.
Appearing for a fundraiser in San Francisco on Tuesday, Ms. Harris sought to quell talk of a ticket other than Biden-Harris, saying she was “proud to be Joe Biden’s running mate.”
“Look, Joe Biden is our candidate,” she told CBS News. “We beat Trump once, and we’re going to beat him again. Period.”
It is unclear whether efforts to restore confidence in the campaign will be successful, as nerves within the party appear to be growing by the day, across the breadth of Biden’s political coalition.
Two Democratic lawmakers representing some of the most contested swing districts in the country — Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington — both made public predictions that Mr. Trump would win the election. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island openly asked for assurances from the White House about Mr. Biden’s “condition” in an interview with a local television station.
And Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, a veteran progressive lawmaker who represents a district near Austin, released a statement calling on Biden to withdraw from the race, becoming the first elected Democratic lawmaker to do so.
“President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020,” Mr. Doggett wrote. “He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024.”
Privately, many Democrats have said they need to make sure they win the House now to prevent Republicans from controlling all three branches of government, given the GOP’s current lead in the Senate races and now the race for the White House. Some donors have begun discussing shifting funding from the presidential race to congressional races, where they believe their party has a better chance of winning.
“You have to make sure you win the House because the path to get there is the clearest,” said Dan Sena, former executive director of the House Democratic campaign arm.
One of the first polls released after the debate by an independent news organization, CNN, showed on Tuesday that Trump had a six percentage point lead over Biden49 percent to 43 percent, matching his lead in previous CNN polls.
According to the poll, a majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters said the party would have a better chance of winning if the nominee were someone other than Biden.
If Ms. Harris were the nominee, the race would be slightly closer, the poll found, with her trailing Mr. Trump by two percentage points, 47 percent to 45 percent. Other alternatives to Mr. Biden — California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — were also trailing.
Former Oklahoma Gov. David Walters, a member of the Democratic National Committee, refrained from calling on the president to step aside in an interview Tuesday. But he said that if polls come out in the swing state showing other potential Democratic candidates in a much stronger position against Trump, “that will give everyone pause.”
He also urged party leaders to be candid in their talks with Democrats.
“Donors, activists and others would respond much better if there were more straightforward updates and briefings about why it’s necessary to continue as we are, or otherwise,” he said. “You can overdo the rah-rah, because people saw what they saw, and they know 51 million people saw it too.”
Speaking at a fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, on Tuesday night, Biden again admitted to a debate gaffe, blaming it on his busy travel schedule in June, which took him to Europe twice. But he had spent nearly a week at Camp David before the debate to rest and prepare.
“I came back and almost fell asleep on stage,” Biden said.
Katie Glueck And Nicholas Nehamas contributed to the reporting.
