WASHINGTON — Sick with COVID and abandoned by allies, President Joe Biden has been fuming at his Delaware beach house, increasingly resentful about what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to drive him out of the race and bitter toward some of those he once considered close, including his onetime running mate Barack Obama.
Biden has been around politics long enough to assume that the leaks appearing in the media in recent days are being coordinated to raise the pressure on him to step aside, according to people close to him. He considers Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, the main instigator but is irritated at Obama as well, seeing him as a puppet master behind the scenes.
The friction between the sitting president and leaders of his own party so close to an election is unlike anything seen in Washington in generations — especially because the Democrats now working to ease him out were some of the allies most critical to his success over the last dozen years. It was Obama who elevated Biden from a presidential also-ran to the vice presidency, setting him up to win the White House in 2020, and it was Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, who pushed through Biden’s landmark legislative achievements.
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But several people close to Biden, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters, described an under-the-weather president coughing and hacking more than 100 miles from the corridors of power as his presidency meets its most perilous moment.
He has watched with rising exasperation as a succession of news stories appeared, one after the other, reporting that Schumer, Pelosi, Obama and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, all had warned of a devastating defeat for the party in November.
And he certainly noticed that Obama has not done anything to help him in recent days even as his own former aides publicly have led the way in calling on Biden to withdraw in what was interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as a message from the former president’s camp. The unseen but clearly felt presence of Obama, in particular, has brought a Shakespearean quality to the drama now playing out, given their eight-year partnership.
While Biden and his team publicly insist that he is staying in the race, privately, people close to him have said that he is increasingly accepting that he may not be able to, and some have begun discussing dates and venues for a possible announcement that he is stepping aside.
One factor that may stretch out a decision: Advisers believe that Biden would not want to do it before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel visits Washington on Wednesday at the initiative of Republicans to address Congress, unwilling to give the premier the satisfaction, given their strained relations lately over the war in the Gaza Strip.
Yet Biden bristles at pressure, and those pushing him risk his getting back up and prompting him to remain after all. Two people familiar with his thinking said he had not changed his mind as of Friday afternoon.
In privately railing about Obama and even aides to former President Bill Clinton, Biden has made clear that he finds it particularly rich that the architects of historic Democratic losses in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections would be lecturing him about how to save the party after he presided over a better-than-expected midterm in 2022. While one person said Biden is not irked at Clinton himself — in fact, he is grateful the former president has been pressing donors to keep giving — others said that Obama is another story.
“We have to cauterize this wound right now, and the sooner we can do it, the better,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-Va., who has not publicly called for the president to step aside. He said the barrage of criticism must be difficult for Biden. “I mean, to me, this is very painful. I think it just shows the cold calculus of politics.”
More congressional Democrats publicly called on the president Friday to pass the torch to another candidate to take on former President Donald Trump in the fall. Among them were Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and at least nine House Democrats, including Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a close ally of Pelosi, her fellow Californian.
The fact that Pelosi’s allies have been coming out is seen as no coincidence at the president’s vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. When another of her allies, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, spoke out earlier this week, a Biden administration official noted that it might be Schiff’s lips moving, but it was Pelosi doing the speaking.
It has not just been her allies. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass. and a Pelosi rival, said Friday that Biden, “a mentor and friend” who had helped him get elected to the House in 2014, “didn’t seem to recognize me” when they met at the D-Day anniversary commemoration in France last month.
“Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, 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, repeating his call for Biden to drop out.
Biden pushed back Friday with a statement vowing to continue the race. “I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone,” he said.
The White House and the Biden campaign have denied that he is about to drop out. “Absolutely, the president is in this race,” Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, one of the president’s favorite shows and a regular venue for Democrats speaking to other Democrats. “You’ve heard him say that time and time again.”
She acknowledged, though, that the campaign has seen erosion. “I’m not here to say that this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign,” she said. “There’s no doubt that it has been. And we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support, but it has been a small movement.” She argued that polls show the race was “hardened already” before the debate and not that many voters have shifted since.
“The American people know that 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 are reassuring the American people that, yes, he’s old, but he can do the job, and he can win.”
All of the political machinations were occurring as the president was fighting off symptoms from COVID in isolation in Rehoboth. He was still coughing and hoarse Friday, but he was improving, according to his doctor. Jill Biden was with him, although staying in a separate room.
Among those with him in Rehoboth this weekend will be his aides Steve Ricchetti and Annie Tomasini. Anthony Bernal, the first lady’s chief of staff, accompanied her. It was unclear if Biden would still return to Washington on Sunday as planned, but he was tentatively scheduled to travel Wednesday to Austin, Texas, for a postponed celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library.
Biden’s pique at his former partner, Obama, represents the latest chapter in a complicated relationship. While not close when they teamed up to run in 2008, they became friends over their two terms in the White House together, bonding especially when Biden’s son Beau died in 2015.
But Biden has nursed a grudge ever since Obama gently discouraged him from running for president in 2016, steering the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump. So Obama’s advice may not be particularly welcome in Rehoboth at this point, which is perhaps one reason the former president is not offering it directly, according to people close to him.
Obama last saw Biden at a lavish, record-setting Hollywood fundraiser before the debate in June, when the two appeared onstage together. At the end, Obama appeared to be leading Biden offstage. One former Obama aide who was present that night said that it was clear that the former president was startled and shaken by how much Biden had aged and seemed disoriented.
That fundraiser was the last big haul for the campaign, which had hoped to raise about $50 million this month from large donors for the Biden Victory Fund, just as it did in June. But after the debate, it may collect less than $25 million in July, an excruciatingly modest sum for a summer month in a presidential race, according to four people briefed on the campaign’s finances. The campaign is not required to disclose its July fundraising numbers until mid-August, and a spokesperson dismissed the reports as “speculation.”
As they try to influence Biden, many associates are holding back from harsh public statements because they feel empathy for him and worry such statements might backfire. Going public, some said, might cause the president to dig in even more. And some were reluctant to have their names attached to statements because they worry about his reaction to a pile-on from his friends.
While the roughly 40 members of Congress who have publicly called on the president to leave the race represent a minority, privately, dozens more are said to agree. Two House Democrats estimated that on a secret ballot, 70% to 80% of their caucus would prefer Biden to withdraw.
“They’re not going to be able to contain this. I think the dam has broken,” Connolly said. Even before Friday’s announcements, he said, “my sense was that a majority of my colleagues were so uneasy, they would welcome a decision to change horses.”
But Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., one of the president’s closest allies, made an impassioned defense of Biden’s ability to serve a second term. Speaking from the stage of 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 folks still saying he is not strong enough or capable enough to be our next president,” Coons said. “I disagree.”
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