News conference gives Biden a lifeline and Democrats a dilemma
Many Democrats are now in a perverse position in which seemingly good news for Biden — a decent news conference Thursday and a good poll Friday — feels like bad news for the prospects of winning the election.
“He did as well as he could do last night and, on the foreign policy stuff, was very strong,” David Axelrod, who served as political advisor to former President Obama, said in an interview Friday. “But anything that encourages him to believe that his situation is anything other than grave, relative to this election, isn’t necessarily good news.”
Early reviews of Biden’s Thursday news conference were mixed. Voters who watched the entire 59 minutes, particularly supporters, saw a veteran of foreign affairs who could speak with authority about wars in Gaza and Ukraine, with a bit of rambling in between. But many more people likely saw viral clips of him calling former President Trump his vice president — instead of Kamala Harris — and in the hours before, introducing Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky as Russian President Vladimir Putin, the man who invaded his country.
“My gosh, when he does a press conference where he mistakes Zelensky for Putin and Trump for Kamala Harris and everyone goes, ‘Great job’? I mean, blech,” Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said.
Columnist Lorraine Ali says holding our breath every time the president opens his mouth is not ideal heading into one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history.
Smith, one of the highest-ranking Democrats to ask Biden to withdraw, said he continues to have great respect for the president and his tenure, but is increasingly worried that people around him have “fought dirty” and “aggressively” to prevent a serious conversation because they are more invested in his personal fate than keeping former President Trump out of the White House.
“The bar for what’s considered good for Joe Biden has been lowered considerably for roughly 20% of the country, and that is the 20% who are dyed-in-the-wool Joe Biden fans, come hell or high water,” he said. “The bar hasn’t been lowered at all for the other 80% of the country.”
Biden sounded again in Thursday’s news conference like a man determined to stay in the race, even as the number of Democrats in Congress calling for him to pull out grew to about 20 and polls continued to show majorities in both parties want him to step aside.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York told House Democrats in a letter Friday that he had met privately with Biden after the news conference to relay their concerns, a sign that pressure on Biden has not abated. Biden, hoping to hold off more defections, joined two virtual meetings Friday with members of the Hispanic and Asia-Pacific congressional caucuses.
“The cohort of members who are pretty close to breaking” and asking Biden to step aside “is pretty significant,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, a San Rafael Democrat.
Huffman called for a “course correction” after the debate performance two weeks ago, which he said he has yet to see, but stopped short of directly urging Biden to pull out.
“Denying that we have a problem, kind of wishing it away, is not the answer,” he said. “Pretending that we can just keep doing more of the same is not the answer. If we really believe that this is the most critical election of our lifetimes, and we’ve got to win it, we need to be more circumspect and sober.”
Rep. Mike Levin of San Juan Capistrano became the latest Democratic lawmaker to join the group on Friday.
“In private and on the text chains, there’s a real sense of despair” about Democrats’ chances, said Rep. Scott Peters, a San Diego Democrat who urged Biden to drop out Thursday night after seeing the Cook Political Report on Tuesday downgrade Biden’s chances of winning six battleground states, including Arizona and Nevada.
“It’s hard for Californians to understand that, but in the swing states, people are actually thinking about voting for Trump,” he added.
In the aftermath of his calamitous debate performance, Biden said it would take “Lord Almighty” to keep him from running for reelection.
On Thursday he amended that, saying he would leave only if his advisors told him “there’s no way you can win.”
Then, in a dramatic stage whisper, he added: “There’s no one saying that. No poll says that.”
Friday provided some validation for that case. A new Marist poll conducted for NPR and PBS showed him leading Trump 50% to 48% among registered voters nationally. But other polls have shown Trump with bigger leads, nationally and by wider margins in important swing states. And Biden barely won the electoral college vote in 2020 despite winning the popular vote by 4 percentage points.
Biden dismissed polls as inaccurate Thursday but Axelrod and others argued that they can’t be dismissed, especially when political experts and others who have looked at a range of data, including focus groups, see a much darker picture amid a backdrop where concerns about Biden’s age have “metastasized” to the point where Trump is no longer the central issue of the race.
The vice president is a front-runner to replace President Biden on ballots if he ends his run. The California governor continues to vow not to run against her for president.
“The test can’t be ‘Can he win?’ The test has to be ‘What is the probability he will win?’ and the probability isn’t good,” Axelrod said. “I think the people around him know the truth.”
Smith made a similar argument, asking whether a basketball team would want a 30% free-throw shooter at the line with the game at stake instead of a 90% shooter.
It remains up to Biden, however, and not everyone believes his problems are irredeemable or that the path to a potential replacement would be any easier. His allies tried to send the message that his worst problems are behind him.
“Sometimes presidents have bad debates and I promise you he’ll have a better second debate,” Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Biden’s favorite cable news show.
Yet even if Biden withstands the high-level pressure to drop out long enough to preclude a replacement, he will have to grind it out, said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist.
“The challenge is the next 115 days; every day is a test that Joe Biden has to pass,” Marsh said. “But for the debate performance, we would have looked at a press conference like last night, calling Harris Trump, we would have laughed it off.”
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