The End of Biden’s Candidacy Approaches

At the start of the day yesterday, it was conceivable that Joe Biden might manage to hold on to the Democratic nomination for president. But this morning, things seem to be slipping out of his grasp.

The blows to Biden were both procedural and political: The Democratic National Committee delayed a pivotal vote that would have made replacing him more difficult, a prominent Democrat called for Biden to step down, and reports of behind-the-scenes maneuvering made clear that other top party leaders have lost faith in Biden’s candidacy, even if they aren’t willing to say so publicly yet.

The president’s strategy for riding out the calls for him to step down was apparently to survive until a virtual roll-call vote sometime in July. (Even this might not have been enough: Elaine Kamarck, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution and a member of the DNC Rules Committee, told me last week that she was skeptical that would have done the trick. “There’s work-arounds for all of these things,” she said. “Monday night at the [Democratic National] Convention is really the drop-dead night.”) But yesterday, the chairs of the committee said the vote would not occur until at least August 1. That means more time for more negative polls, more chances for the president to stumble, and most important of all, more rounds of significant defections.

After the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump over the weekend, the revolt among prominent Democrats appeared to peter out, or at least pause. But as my colleague Russell Berman reported yesterday, the concerns among congressional Democrats have persisted—in part because of the risk of subjecting the country to another Trump administration and in part out of fears for their own down-ticket political fortunes.

[Read: Biden has failed to halt the revolt]

Representative Adam Schiff of California, currently running to become one of the state’s senators, called for the president to step aside. He praised Biden’s record but added, “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”

Schiff’s public statement is notable because he is a protégé of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is revered in the party for her strategic acumen and will to win, and it’s unlikely he’d speak out without her knowledge and perhaps encouragement. According to Politico, Pelosi doesn’t want to publicly call on Biden to back down, but she has been a de facto field general for efforts to nudge him out. CNN reports she told the president privately that he is dragging down the party. Pelosi isn’t alone. Her successor as House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer both told Biden it would be better if he left the race, ABC’s Jonathan Karl reported.

Biden’s campaign also faces money woes. Not only has Trump erased what was expected to be a big advantage in fundraising, but Jeffrey Katzenberg, the president’s close ally and major donor, privately told Biden that new cash is drying up as donors lose faith that he can win, according to Semafor. And MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a steadfast media ally of the president’s, suggested this morning that it’s time for him to go. “It’s really incumbent on people that are around Joe Biden to step up at this point and help the president, and help the man they love, and do the right thing,” he said.

Strikingly, as Politico’s Playbook notes, these Democrats are not making much effort to downplay the reports. Schumer’s office called reports “idle speculation” but didn’t quite deny them, saying, “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus.” Jeffries’s office said that his counsel to Biden was private.

[David Frum: Biden’s heartbreaking press conference]

The only person who can get Biden out of the race right now is Biden. Other Democrats have little recourse but pressure. Although the president has remained publicly defiant, and reportedly privately defiant, there are signs that he is slowly opening to the idea. Both CNN and The New York Times reported that Biden is more “receptive” to stepping aside and has quizzed advisers about Vice President Kamala Harris’s path to victory were she the nominee.

In an interview, Biden also laid out a possible path for leaving the race. “If I had some medical condition that emerged, if somebody, if doctors came to me and said you got this problem and that problem,” he might be willing, he told BET News’s Ed Gordon.

Hours after that interview was released, the White House announced that Biden had tested positive for COVID-19. That may not be the off-ramp that Democrats want—the president’s symptoms are reportedly mild—but it will give Biden several days to sit at home and think about his future.