Joe Biden has reportedly become more open in recent days to hearing arguments that he should step aside as the Democratic presidential candidate after the party’s two main congressional leaders told him they doubted his ability to beat Donald Trump.
While continuing to insist he will be the party’s nominee in November, the president has reportedly started asking questions about negative polling data and whether Vice-President Kamala Harris, considered the favourite to replace him if were to withdraw, fares better.
The indications of a possible rethink come after Biden tested positive on Wednesday for Covid-19, forcing him to isolate for several days while curtailing a campaigning visit to Nevada that had been part of a drive to show his candidacy was very much alive.
Related: Biden faces renewed pressure to step aside as Democrats’ rift widens
It also coincides with fresh polling data showing that he now trails Trump by two points in Virginia, a state he won by 10 points in 2020.
The Emerson College Polling/The Hill survey showed Trump ahead by 45% to 43%, within the margin of error but consistent with a spate of other polls showing that Biden’s support has fallen in swing states since his disastrous showing at last month’s debate in Atlanta.
Biden’s newfound receptivity to at least the possibility of stepping aside represents a shift from the position he adopted at a press conference at last week’s Nato summit in Washington, when he told journalists he would only drop out if polling data showed him “there’s no way you can win”.
“No one’s saying that,” he added.
His willingness to listen to opposing arguments comes after Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, reportedly both told him that it would be in the country’s interests if he stepped aside, ABC reported.
I am told Chuck Schumer had a blunt one-on-one conversation with Biden Saturday afternoon in Rehoboth. Schumer forcefully made the case that it would be best if Biden bowed out of the race.
Schumer’s office wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the conversation, telling me only,…
— Jonathan Karl (@jonkarl) July 17, 2024
Schumer described the report of his meeting with Biden at the president’s Delaware home last weekend as “idle speculation” but tellingly did not deny its contents.
The Senate leader’s intervention has apparently been influential in delaying a move by the Democratic National Committee to stage an early electronic roll call of delegates that could have started next week and was aimed at locking in the nomination for Biden before next month’s party convention in Chicago. The roll call vote has been pushed by at least a week, giving forces opposed to him running more time to organise.
Equally persuasively, Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, also told Biden in a recent conversation that polls show he cannot beat Trump and that he could wreck the Democrats’ chances of recapturing the chamber in November, according to CNN.
Biden is said to have pushed back during the conversation, insisting – as he has in several Zoom sessions with other Democrats – that he had seen polling data showing he could win.
It is not known if Pelosi had called on the president to stand aside during the talk, which was said to have taken place in the past week.
Pelosi has been widely reported as orchestrating the renewed pressured on Biden to give up his re-election bid, which has intensified in recent days after a brief pause following last Saturday’s failed assassination attempt on Trump, to which the president responded with a series of authoritative statements calling for calm.
Adam Schiff, the California congressman who on Tuesday became the latest elected Democrat to urge Biden to stand down, is known to be close to the former speaker.
“The speaker does not want to call on him to resign [as the Democratic nominee], but she will do everything in her power to make sure it happens,” Politico reported one Pelosi ally as saying.
In another ominous sign for Biden, Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the president’s main advisers and a co-chairman of his campaign, has told him that donors have stopped giving money to his campaign.
A Biden adviser told the New York Times that the decision on whether to withdraw from the race boiled down to three factors – polling, money and which states were in play. All three were moving in the wrong direction for Biden, he said.
The reports on Biden’s receptivity come just after the Democratic National Committee backed away from a plan to fast-track a virtual roll call vote to solidify his nomination this month. On Wednesday, the DNC said that it would not start early voting in July.
As renewed speculation about Biden’s thinking intensified on Thursday, his supporters continued to insist that the position was unchanged.
“When it comes to if he’s open or being receptive to any of that, look, the president has said it several times: he’s staying in this race,” Quentin Fulks, the Biden campaign deputy manager, told reporters on the sidelines of the Republican national convention in Milwaukee.
“Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not at the top of the ticket,” he added.
