The Biden Dilemma

Joe Biden slipped into St. Edmond Catholic Church near Delaware’s Rehoboth Beach boardwalk just as Saturday-­evening services were slated to start. Soon, news broke of the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania. Biden was hustled out of the building, a black baseball hat over his shock of white hair, to receive word that his predecessor had been the target of an apparent assassination attempt.

Biden sprang into action and set into motion his return to Washington. He got his national-­security team on the phone and peppered aides with questions. He soon spoke with Trump, and had addressed the nation three times by the following night. His campaign halted political activities in deference to the sensitivity of the moment, even as aides acknowledged that his opponent staring down a bullet would only intensify the MAGA movement’s ardor and maybe strengthen Trump’s advantage in the race. 

It was another political setback for the President in a month when nothing has gone to plan. Since his disastrous June 27 debate, Biden’s re-election bid has been mired in crisis. He trails across battleground-state polls. More than 20 Democrats in Congress have publicly called for him to step aside, while the top Democrat in both the House and Senate privately have urged the same. Prominent donors are abandoning him or recalibrating their investments. Discussion of his apparent cognitive decline has dominated the news for weeks. An Associated Press poll released Wednesday found that 7 in 10 voters think Biden should withdraw from the race—including 65% of Democrats. The same day, the White House announced Biden would be doing his job while isolating and recovering from a case of COVID-19. 

The biggest problem for Democrats now may not be Biden’s mental sharpness, but his pride. Only he can choose to end his candidacy, and so far he has resisted. Much like Trump, he holds grudges against the press, disdain for Washington, a taste for power, and a sense of his own unique abilities to do the job. Unable to push him out, many frustrated Democrats have stayed silent, either too timid to declare the President can no longer lead the ticket or unsure whether the most convenient replacement, Vice President Kamala Harris, would fare better. “Nobody wants to be the person calling on him to step aside because nobody thinks he’s going to step aside,” a Senate Democratic aide told TIME last week, when White House and campaign officials still thought the panic might be fleeting and could give way to other narratives. (It did not.)

As bad as Biden’s position looks now, there’s still plenty of time for the President to author a comeback story. He boasts a well-funded and robust campaign operation, with 1,200 aides spread across 300 offices; the head count should hit 2,000 by summer’s end. To stave off the Democratic rebellion, he has rallied prominent Black, Latino, progressive, and union leaders behind him. The polls remain close, and his opponent unpopular. It’s too early to tell whether the attack in Butler, Pa., has shifted any of those dynamics. “These candidates are deeply, deeply defined to the American electorate,” says Quentin Fulks, Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager. “I do think that we will win on the popularity of the issues.”

The window for Biden to drop out is closing soon. Meanwhile, the Republicans’ convention in Milwaukee has showcased Trump at his most statesmanlike, leading a GOP that hasn’t been this united in years. “The tragedy of it is who is on the other side,” says a senior Biden Administration official of the Democrats’ dilemma, “and how this is benefiting him.”

To understand Joe Biden in this moment of obstinance, it helps to trace the path that led him here. No sooner had he been elected to the Senate in 1972 than he suffered the death of his wife and daughter in a car crash. Fifteen years later, Biden’s first run for the White House ended abruptly after he delivered a debate argument pilfered from a British politician. As the plagiarism scandal snowballed, Biden’s inner circle—many of whom still occupy positions in his orbit today—urged him to exit. Even now, Biden has regrets that he heeded his advisers over his family, who urged him not to quit.

The experience colored Biden’s contempt for both the press and his critics. He sees the elitists in Washington working against him. To bow to the calls for him to step aside would be tantamount to admitting he isn’t up for the task, and he believes he is. It would be 1987 all over again.

But Biden’s dismissal of the Democrats’ doubts as a Beltway phenomenon is self-serving and inaccurate. Americans have had doubts about Biden’s age for, well, ages. An Associated Press–NORC poll last summer found 77% of adults believe Biden is too old to govern effectively through a second term. 

The debate cemented that perception, and the weeks since have been agonizing for the President, party officials, and millions of anxious voters. After making the rounds in an attempt to shore up support, Biden tried to announce that the discussion was over. “The Democratic Party has spoken. The Democratic nominee is me,” he said on a tense July 8 call with the party’s top fundraisers and donors. “I’m not going anywhere, folks.” 

Yet two days later, Nancy Pelosi gave the ditch-Biden effort fresh momentum. “It’s up to the President to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” the 84-year-old former House Speaker said of her 81-year-old President, speaking as if Biden’s decision hadn’t been clear for weeks.

As the party fretted, a string of appearances designed to showcase Biden’s capabilities did little to quell doubts. The Trump shooting put the debate on pause but didn’t end it: Strategizing over how to deny Biden the nomination continues to bounce around backrooms, group texts, and Zoom calls. Even during the Republican convention, Biden found himself losing more ground.

“Our nation is at a crossroads,” Representative Adam Schiff, the party’s California Senate nominee, said Wednesday. Schiff, a Pelosi ally, called on Biden to step aside for the good of the party: “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.” It was a message not unlike one delivered by House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries at the White House on July 11 and by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer in Rehoboth hours before Trump’s assassination attempt. Pelosi, too, has spoken directly to Biden about her concerns in recent weeks.

Even as Democrats panic about Biden’s chances, they lack a clear alternative. The easiest swap would be Harris. Passing over the first woman and first person of color to fill the vice presidency would be politically tricky for a party that relies on those constituencies at the ballot box, and unlike other replacements, Harris would face no trouble tapping into the ticket’s war chest.

Yet Biden’s pollsters remain convinced that the surveys still show a path to victory for the President. In a rematch between two known quantities, they argue, Trump will have the harder task wooing undecided voters. “At the end of the day, this race is going to be decided by the small sliver of true independent and swing voters in the middle,” says Senator Alex Padilla of California. “I think Joe Biden is more than in the ball game here.”

In the meantime, Biden has tightened his inner circle. His top advisers have been family members, not his chief of staff or senior messaging maven. At a pivotal moment, he is leaning on true believers who are less inclined to deliver tough news. Asked in an interview with NBC News whose advice he seeks, Biden’s response was curt and telling: “Me.”

Meanwhile, the party’s skepticism of his chances grows by the day. Stan Greenberg, who was Bill Clinton’s pollster and who had previously touted Biden’s re-election chances, has repeatedly petitioned the White House to take his current peril more seriously. Other party strategists are similarly concerned that the campaign is ignoring a crisis situation for both the President and the down-ballot candidates across the country whose fortunes are tethered to his. Reliably Democratic states are suddenly trending purple. If Biden is forced to spend time defending territory this fall in Minnesota, Virginia, New Mexico, or New Hampshire, the “Blue Wall” of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania is likely long gone.

The party’s broader fortunes may not figure into Biden’s calculations as he sits alone at the end of the day in his private office in the White House residence. The President remains confident that he alone can beat Trump. Like his predecessor, Biden seems willing to overstay his welcome, dragging down his allies, rather than accept the possibility that voters prefer someone else. Says a former top Biden aide: “He’s wanted this job his whole life and can still do it better than the other guy.” But the bar should be much higher than that.

—With reporting by Brian Bennett and Eric Cortellessa