Will anyone in Joe Biden's circle of friends, aides, and family be able to break through the president's denialism and force him to face the facts?
The momentum for Biden to withdraw is certainly building, but the president himself appears to still be in his staff's protective cocoon. If he really knew how bad it was, he might be thinking of an exit strategy at this point.
A group of two dozen former Democratic congressmen have signed a letter urging Biden to open the August national convention to choose another candidate.
"President Biden would best serve the nation he loves by releasing the convention delegates who are pledged to nominate him for a second term. His decision to do so would mean an open convention in August," they wrote.
The lawmakers point out that the party is at risk of not only losing the presidency but also of slaughter in down-ballot races.
“This leads us to a regretful conclusion. President Biden would best serve the nation he loves by releasing the convention delegates who are pledged to nominate him for a second term. His decision to do so would mean an open convention in August. We ask him to make that decision” the letter, which POLITICO obtained, reads.
It should be noted that the recent public polls still show a close race between Biden and Donald Trump. Biden remains competitive in all the battleground states with the possible exception of Pennsylvania, where Trump is up 5-7 points in recent polls.
But internal polling by individual candidates and the party tells a much different story. Biden has become a big drag on down-ballot races, making the possibility of a full-blown Democratic disaster in November an emerging reality.
It's not so much by how much Biden is losing. It's where he's losing and the reality that his most loyal constituencies are abandoning him.
"I’ve never seen such a grim Electoral College landscape for Mr. Biden," writes former Bill Clinton advisor and Democratic campaign guru Doug Sosnik in the New York Times.
"He not only faces losing battleground states he won in 2020, he is also at risk of losing traditional Democratic states like Minnesota and New Hampshire, which Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama carried. If current trends continue, Mr. Trump could rack up one of the most decisive presidential victories since 2008."
Mr. Biden’s problems run much deeper than one bad debate. By spring, he had the lowest job approval average of any recent president seeking re-election since George H.W. Bush in 1992. His support has dropped by nearly a net 10 points since the 2022 midterm elections.
The negatives have translated into a hard political reality. Without a total Trump collapse, Biden has no path to winning 270 electoral votes and re-election.
The Biden campaign hoped to change this political dynamic by calling for a historic early debate in June. What made Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance so devastating was that it reinforced voters’ strongest negative idea about his candidacy: that he is simply too old to run for re-election. In a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted after the debate, 74 percent of respondents said Mr. Biden was too old to govern another term in office.
Due to his worsening political situation, Mr. Biden now has only one narrow path to winning 270 electoral votes and the presidency in November, a more dire situation than he faced when I looked at his potential paths in April and a reality his campaign acknowledged in a strategy memo on Thursday.
Even traditional Democratic constituents are falling away. The Congressional Black Caucus — at least the leadership — appears solidly behind Biden. Ordinary black voters are a different story with Trump's support among blacks reaching historic levels for a Republican.
Biden still maintains a large lead over Trump among black voters. He won 89% of the black vote in 2020. But recent surveys show Trump gaining support with some surveys showing him getting as much as 20% of the black vote. That would be absolutely devastating for Biden.
And the Hispanic vote, which is rapidly becoming far less reliable, is up for grabs. On Thursday, Biden held a Zoom call with the Hispanic Caucus that devolved into a chaotic mess.
Biden showed up for the call an hour late, which is something he's been doing a lot of lately.
The source said the campaign tightly controlled who could ask a question on the call. Reps. Gabe Vasquez and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez both used the “raise hand” feature on the Zoom call, and both had their hands lowered by organizers of the call and were not allowed to speak, the source said.
Of the lawmakers who did get to ask Biden a question, Correa told Biden that Latino voters need to hear from him and urged the president to “talk to these families and say to them, there is a pathway in my second administration for all of you that have been here for decades, that have followed the laws, that have paid taxes to be part of the American dream,” according to a partial transcript of the call obtained by NOTUS.
Biden responded that he strongly agreed “with every word you just said, not a joke.”
The Zoom call didn't get much coverage, which is a blessing for the Biden campaign. But it points up the reality for Biden that he continues to ignore.
