Biden worries about pressure from allies to withdraw from race

WASHINGTON >> Sick with COVID and abandoned by allies, President Joe Biden is fuming at his beachside home in Delaware, increasingly irritated by what he sees as a concerted campaign to drive him out of the race and bitter toward some people he once considered close, including his former running mate Barack Obama.

Biden has been in politics long enough to assume that the leaks that have surfaced in recent days are being coordinated to increase pressure on him to step aside, people close to him said. He sees Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, as the main instigator, but has also been irritated by Obama, who sees him as a puppet master behind the scenes.

The tension between the sitting president and his own party’s leaders so close to the election is unprecedented in Washington in generations — particularly since the Democrats now trying to unseat him have been among the allies most critical to his success over the past dozen years. It was Obama who elevated Biden from a presidential contender to the vice presidency that would help him win the White House in 2020, and it was Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, who pushed through Biden’s groundbreaking legislative achievements.

But several people close to Biden, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters, described a president who is not in great shape, coughing and coughing more than 100 miles from power as his presidency reaches its most dangerous moment.

He has watched with increasing exasperation as news reports after news reports emerged that Schumer, Pelosi, Obama and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, had all warned of a crushing defeat for the party in November.

And he certainly noticed that Obama has done nothing to help him in recent days, even as his own former aides publicly led the way in calling for Biden to back down in what has been interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as a message from the former president’s camp. The unseen but palpable presence of Obama in particular has added a Shakespearean quality to the drama now unfolding, given their eight-year partnership.

While Biden and his team have publicly urged him to stay in the race, people close to him have privately said he is increasingly accepting that he may not be able to. Some have even begun discussing dates and locations for a possible resignation announcement.

One factor that could delay the decision: Advisers believe Biden won’t want to do it before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington on Wednesday to address Congress at the behest of Republicans, who are unwilling to please the prime minister, given their recent tensions over the war in Gaza.

Still, Biden is chafing under the pressure, and those pushing him risk him rising up again and pushing him to stay. A person familiar with his thinking said he had not changed his mind as of Saturday afternoon.

In his private outbursts about Obama and even advisers to former President Bill Clinton, Biden has made clear that he finds it particularly rich that the architects of the historic Democratic losses in the 1994 and 2010 midterms would lecture him on how to save the party after he led a better-than-expected midterm in 2022. While one person said Biden isn’t irritated with Clinton herself — in fact, he’s grateful that the former president has urged donors to keep giving — others said Obama is a different story.

“We have to close this wound now, and the sooner we can do that the better,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., who has not publicly called on the president to step aside. He said the barrage of criticism must be difficult for Biden. “I mean, to me, it’s very painful. I think it just shows the cold calculus of politics.”

More congressional Democrats publicly called on the president on Friday to pass the torch to another candidate to take on former President Donald Trump in the fall. They included Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and at least nine Democrats in the House of Representatives, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a close ally of Pelosi, her fellow Californian.

That Pelosi’s allies are coming out is not being seen as a coincidence at the president’s vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. When another ally of hers, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, weighed in earlier this week, a Biden administration official noted that it may have been Schiff’s lips moving but it was Pelosi talking.

It wasn’t just her allies. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. and a Pelosi rival, said Friday that Biden, “a mentor and friend” who helped him get elected to the House in 2014, “didn’t seem to recognize me” when they met at a D-Day memorial in France last month.

“Of course, that can happen as anyone gets older, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” Moulton wrote in The Boston Globe, reiterating his call for Biden to withdraw.

Biden pushed back with a statement Friday vowing to continue the race. “I look forward to being back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while advocating for my own record and the vision I have for America: a vision in which we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for all,” he said.

The White House and the Biden campaign have denied that he is about to withdraw. “Absolutely, the president is in this race,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign manager, said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” one of the president’s favorite shows and a regular venue for Democrats to meet with other Democrats. “You’ve heard him say that over and over again.”

She acknowledged, however, that the campaign has unraveled. “I’m not here to say that these haven’t been tough weeks for the campaign,” she said. “They certainly have. And we’ve certainly seen some drop-offs in support, but it’s been a small swing.” She argued that polls show the race was “hardened” before the debate and that voters haven’t changed much since then.

“The American people know the president is older,” she said. “They see that. They knew that before the debate. Yes, of course we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we reassure the American people that he is old, but he can get the job done and he can win.”

All the political machinations took place while the president was in isolation in Rehoboth battling COVID-19 symptoms. He was still coughing and hoarse on Friday, but his doctor said he was improving. Jill Biden was with him, though in a separate room.

Among those with him in Rehoboth this weekend are his aides Steve Ricchetti and Annie Tomasini. Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s chief of staff, accompanied her. It was unclear whether Biden would still return to Washington on Sunday as planned, but he was tentatively scheduled to travel to Austin, Texas, on Wednesday for a postponed celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.

Biden’s anger at his former partner Obama represents the latest chapter in a complicated relationship. Though they were not close when they ran together in 2008, they became friends during their two terms in the White House, and became especially close after Biden’s son Beau died in 2015.

But Biden has been nursing a grudge since Obama gently discouraged him from running for president in 2016, handing the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump. So Obama’s advice may not be welcome in Rehoboth right now, which may be one reason the former president isn’t offering it directly, according to people close to him.

Obama last saw Biden at a lavish, record-breaking Hollywood fundraiser for the debate in June, when the two appeared onstage together. At the end, Obama appeared to usher Biden off the stage. A former Obama adviser who was present that night said it was clear the former president was shocked and shaken by how much Biden had aged and seemed disoriented.

That fundraiser was the latest big haul for the campaign, which had hoped to raise about $50 million from major donors for the Biden Victory Fund this month, the same amount it did in June. But after the debate, it may raise less than $25 million in July, a painfully modest sum for a summer month in a presidential race, according to four people with knowledge of the campaign’s finances. The campaign doesn’t have to release its July fundraising figures until mid-August, and a spokesman dismissed the reports as “speculation.”

As they try to influence Biden, many aides have held back from making strong public statements because they feel empathy for him and fear that such statements could backfire. Some said that going public could lead to the president becoming even more defensive. And some have been hesitant to lend their names to statements because they feared his reaction to an attack from his friends.

While the roughly 40 members of Congress who have publicly called on the president to drop out of the race are in the minority, dozens of others privately agree. Two House Democrats estimated that 70% to 80% of their caucus would favor Biden withdrawing in a secret ballot.

“They can’t contain this. I think the dam has broken,” Connolly said. Even before Friday’s announcements, he said, “I had the feeling that the majority of my colleagues were so uncomfortable that they would welcome a decision to change horses.”

But Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., one of the president’s closest allies, passionately defended Biden’s ability to serve a second term. Speaking from the podium at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado, Coons cited the president’s work hosting a NATO summit, as well as his recent news conference and campaign events. “There are still people who say he is not strong enough or capable enough to be our next president,” Coons said. “I disagree.”

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.