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According to another person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified to discuss it, the president has become increasingly determined in recent days to stay in the race.
But influential Democrats from the highest levels of the party apparatus, including congressional leadership led by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are sending signals of concern. Some Democrats are hoping Biden will assess the course of the race and his legacy during the next few days of recess.
By leveraging mountains of data on Biden’s positions, Democrats’ ranks in Congress could ebb and flow. Candid conversations in public and private, and with the president himself no longer campaigning after testing positive for COVID-19, many Democrats see an opportunity to encourage a rethink.
Time is of the essence. If Democrats are serious about the extraordinary move to replace Biden and put Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, this weekend will be crucial to changing the president’s mind, other people familiar with the private conversations said.
One of them said it is now or never, as there will be a virtual call to nominate the party’s choice in early August, ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Over the past week, Schumer and Jeffries, both from New York, have spoken privately with the president, candidly laying out the positions of Democrats on Capitol Hill, including the Democrats’ concerns.
Separately, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington spoke to the president last week, armed with new data. The campaign manager specifically raised the concerns of frontline Democrats running for the House.
And on Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff, a close ally of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, became the most prominent Democrat in the House of Representatives to call for Biden to drop his re-election bid. He said that while Biden can make the decision alone, he believes it is time to “pass the torch.”
Biden, in a radio interview recorded shortly before he tested positive for COVID-19, rejected the idea that it was too late for him to recover politically. He told Univision’s Luis Sandoval that it’s still early and that many people aren’t focused on the election until September.
“All the talk about who’s in charge and where and how, it’s kind of, you know — so far everything between Trump and I has been basically equal,” he said in a clip of the interview released Thursday morning.
Some national polls show a close race, while others suggest Trump has a lead. And some state polls also contain warning signs, including a recent New York Times/Siena poll that suggested a competitive race in Virginia.
While tensions over Biden’s ability to run a successful campaign have eased somewhat, particularly after Trump’s assassination attempt and with the Republican National Convention underway in Milwaukee, Democrats know they have limited time to resolve the turmoil in the party following the president’s weak debate performance last month.
Of course, many Democrats want Biden to stay in the race. And the Democratic National Committee is pushing ahead with plans for a virtual vote to formally make Biden its nominee in the first week of August, ahead of the Democratic National Convention that begins Aug. 19 in Chicago.
On Wednesday night, ABC News reported new details about Biden’s private meeting with Schumer at the president’s Delaware beach house, in which Schumer told the president it would be “better for the Democratic Party and better for the country if he recuses himself.”
A spokesman for Schumer called the report “empty speculation. Leader Schumer conveyed his caucus’s views directly to President Biden on Saturday.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden told Schumer and Jeffries that “he is the party’s nominee, he intends to win, and he looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100-day agenda to help working families.”
But among Democrats nationwide, nearly two-thirds say Biden should step aside and let his party nominate another candidate, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That undermines Biden’s post-debate claim that “average Democrats” still support him even as some “big names” turn on him.
Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday during a trip to Las Vegas and is experiencing “mild symptoms” including “general malaise” from the infection, the White House said.
The president, who has been campaigning in recent days, was expected to return to his beachside home in Delaware before the diagnosis was made.
Schiff’s announcement brings to nearly 20 the number of Democratic members of Congress calling on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race following his poor performance in the debate against Trump last month.
Schiff said that by withdrawing, Biden would “secure his leadership legacy by enabling us to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election.”
Schiff is a prominent Democrat himself and his comments will also be closely watched because of his close ties to Pelosi.
It was Pelosi who reignited questions about Biden after the debate, when she recently said that “it’s up to the president” to decide what to do — even though Biden had already fully stated that he had no intention of stepping aside. The former House speaker has openly supported the president, but has fielded calls from Democrats since the debate night wondering what happens next.
In response to Schiff’s comments, the Biden campaign pointed to what it called “extensive support” for him and his re-election bid from members of Congress in key swing states, as well as from the Congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses. The campaign noted that Biden was accompanied on his trip to Nevada this week by nearly a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Still, Schiff’s announcement came after Schumer and Jeffries encouraged the party to delay plans for a virtual vote to renominate Biden by a week. That vote could have happened as early as Sunday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The Democratic National Committee’s rulemaking division is meeting Friday to discuss plans for the virtual election, with finalization next week.
“We will not rush into a virtual voting process, although we will begin our important consideration of how a virtual voting process would work,” Bishop Leah D. Daughtry and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, co-chairs of the Democratic National Convention Rules Committee, wrote in a letter Wednesday.
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Associated Press editors Mary Clare Jalonick and Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.
Lisa Mascaro, Zeke Miller and Michael Balsamo, The Associated Press
