The number of Democrats willing to go on record calling on Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race is growing. Donors are withholding millions of dollars in donations, and Democratic voters are feeling increasingly dejected. While only a handful of elected Democrats are calling on Biden to drop out or have expressed concern about him, plenty more haven't yet gone public. Now their concern isn't limited to Biden's likely defeat; they're worried about the impact on down-ballot races and the possibility that Donald Trump could win the election in November and get majorities in both the House and Senate.
"Some worry that Biden could drag down the rest of the ticket so badly that they not only fail to win back the House, but Trump and Hill Republicans could be handed big-enough majorities in both chambers to actually carry out huge GOP priorities," reports Politico.
“They are nervous about the upcoming election,” Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) told Politico. “If anybody tells you they’re not, they’re lying.”
The problem for vulnerable Democrats, of course, is that they are worried about voters tying them to Biden, which makes it harder for them to get reelected. "Democrats’ quest to assert more local control may be compromised as well, as Biden’s crisis could jeopardize their attempts to flip legislative chambers in swing states like Arizona and Pennsylvania, and hang onto Michigan and Minnesota," the report explains.
More than two dozen lawmakers, Hill staffers, state officials and Democratic operatives were interviewed for this article. Most were granted anonymity to freely discuss the situation or weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
Inside the Capitol, Democrats who fear Biden can’t win make up a majority of the party and a growing number are willing to say so publicly.
“It’s over,” one aide to a battleground Democrat said of the fight to flip the House. “It doesn’t matter if they’re outperforming him by 35 f***ing points. The math doesn’t work.”
Democrats, particularly in the House, are increasingly worried that the political landscape has drastically changed over the past week. Biden managed to temporarily calm his critics with his letter to congressional Democrats on Monday, but senior Democrats now believe a push to remove him is inevitable, even after his "big boy" press conference after the NATO summit on Friday.
While House leadership hasn't openly called for Biden to drop out, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi have not discouraged the idea. According to reports, Pelosi has privately suggested that she wants Biden to step aside, and Democratic leaders are aware that prolonging the situation harms the party — so much so that Jeffries is advising lawmakers to speak out sooner rather than later, most likely to help speed up the process.
There is widespread belief among party insiders that Biden is going to cost Democrats their chance to win control of the House.
“I don’t think there’s any coming back from the debate,” a Democratic consultant working on multiple House races told Politico. “There’s nothing that can be done to repair that.”
But here's where things get really interesting: it sounds like Democrats have conceded that they won't win the White House and are merely hoping they can keep control of Congress.
“If Biden remains the nominee and shows real weakness, can you have this massive split ticket?” one strategist said. “It’s not the current polling data [that’s the problem], it’s projecting out.”
Some Democrats are now saying openly that they believe Trump will win the election so that they can position themselves as a check on his power. Among them are Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.), who hold districts that Trump won in 2020.
Party operatives have begun to seriously consider a broader shift toward this message to address voters’ anxieties about a Trump win.
“There’s going to be a big pivot to ‘we need to be a check on Trump,’” a strategist said.
If the message House Democrats are running with is acting as a check on Trump, they've given up on winning the White House in November.
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