Coons: Dems backing Biden ‘angry and hurt’ by calls to end campaign

Democratic senators backing President Biden’s reelection campaign until its final hours were “quite angry and hurt” by the calls from fellow Democrats on him to end his campaign, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) says in a new interview with Robert Costa of CBS This Morning.

Coons, Biden’s top ally in the Senate, described difficult weeks leading up to Biden’s decision as the Democratic Party was torn apart by the debate over Biden’s future.

Costa said some Democrats felt “betrayed” by those calls, a point Coons did not dispute.

“It was a very hard couple of weeks as folks who felt urgently about this decision increasingly spoke up, first privately and then publicly, and in the last conversation we had of the co-chairs of the campaign and in some conversations with fellow senators who like me were deeply committed to continuing this campaign with Joe Biden as the nominee, were quite angry and hurt,” Coons said in the interview.  

“He really wanted a second term,” Coons said of Biden. “There were many of us who were very excited about the prospect of another term.”

Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday and endorsed Vice President Harris as the Democratic nominee for president. Harris has quickly consolidated support and is a near sure thing to be the nominee in the fall.

Coons is among the hundreds of Democratic office holders now endorsing Harris.