Biden remains publicly defiant amid growing Democratic opposition: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, we break down the latest on the state of President Joe Biden’s struggling campaign, including analysis from chief political analyst Chuck Todd and national political correspondent Steve Kornacki.

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Biden remains publicly defiant as Democratic opposition grows louder

By Adam Wollner

More than three weeks after President Joe Biden’s debate debacle, the chorus of Democrats calling on him to exit the 2024 race is only growing louder. Publicly, Biden is remaining defiant, while privately, his family is discussing what ending his re-election bid might look like. And Vice President Kamala Harris’ allies are beginning to map out a potential campaign if she were to take over the top of the party’s ticket.

Here’s the state of play as of Friday evening:

Mounting pressure: Thirteen more congressional Democrats called on Biden to drop out of the presidential race today, bringing the total to 35, Scott Wong, Ali Vitali and Rebecca Kaplan report.

The new defections include two close allies of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Reps. Jared Huffman and Zoe Lofgren of California, and two senators, Sens. Sherrod Brown of Ohio (first reported by Henry J. Gomez) and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico.

Brown in particular is significant, as he is one of the most vulnerable Senate Democrats seeking re-election this year.

Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts re-upped his call for Biden to exit in a Boston Globe op-ed, writing that the president “didn’t seem to recognize me” at a D-Day event in Normandy last month. 

But Biden also received a boost from Capitol Hill today, as BOLD PAC, the political arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, endorsed his campaign. 

Public defiance, private discussions: Biden continues to be sidelined as he deals with Covid (White House physician Kevin O’Connor said his symptoms have “improved meaningfully“ since yesterday). But his campaign was still plenty active — and the president pledged to be back in action soon.

Biden attacked former President Donald Trump’s GOP convention speech, saying in a statement this afternoon that he looked “forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week.” In a new memo, his campaign said the party has “no plan for an alternative nominee.” And campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to relay the message that Biden is “absolutely” still in the race. “He’s not going anywhere,” she said.  

In an all-staff campaign call this afternoon, O’Malley Dillon encouraged her team to focus on the work and the voters who are voicing support for the president, Mike Memoli reports. 

The Democratic National Committee also carried on with business as usual, moving forward with the plan to nominate Biden via a virtual roll call in early August. Ben Kamisar and Alex Seitz-Wald note that while party rules provide a clear path for Democrats to replace Biden before or after that vote, a decision to replace him for political reasons later than that gets into thorny territory, effectively becoming a lost cause by early September. 

Privately, however, members of Biden’s family have discussed what an exit from his campaign might look like, Carol E. Lee, Monica Alba, Sarah Fitzpatrick, Jonathan Allen and Natasha Korecki report.

The overall tone of the conversations has been that any departure plan — should Biden decide to take that step, as some of his closest allies increasingly believe he will — should put the party in the best position to beat Trump while also being worthy of the more than five decades he has served the country in elected office.  

Harris in the spotlight: A group of Democrats who believe Harris should be the party’s nominee if Biden steps aside have begun quietly mapping out what her presidential campaign apparatus would look like and what her path to victory could be in November, reports Yamiche Alcindor.

 The effort, which Harris has not sanctioned, comes as many are concerned that the vice president does not currently have the personnel or organization needed to quickly make the pivot to the top of the ticket.

Harris held a call with major Democratic donors this afternoon, expressing confidence that she and Biden will win the election, Vitali and Alba report. She also made a Biden-esque move earlier in the afternoon, making a stop at a new ice cream shop in Washington, D.C., owned by Tyra Banks. 

Stay up to date on all the latest 2024 election developments with our live blog →

A whole new campaign

By Chuck Todd

Six weeks ago, it seemed fairly clear the country was uninterested in the Biden-Trump rematch. Even the ratings for the first debate, consequential though it was, were shockingly low. At 51 million viewers, it was the lowest-rated first general election debate for a presidential race since we started tracking TV viewership for these things. 

Polling also indicated lower interest in this campaign and an extreme distaste for the choices the two major parties were offering. North of 50% of voters were regularly saying they’d like to see anyone other than these two run for president. 

In short, voters were telling us in all sorts of ways that this matchup was one they didn’t want and they weren’t going to tune in to — until, perhaps, the last possible minute. After all, these two candidates, as far as voters were concerned, were well defined. What new information would voters think they needed?  

Well, there’s a reason we political reporters like to utter the cliché that sometimes a month (or a week) is a lifetime in politics. Because right now, we’re in the midst of experiencing a second or a third lifetime politically, just since that June 27 debate.

We are now going from a presidential campaign that left the public disinterested and at times disgusted to a campaign that I could see generating an electorate that might be as interested, if not more so, as in 2008 and 2020, two of the highest-turnout elections in the last 50 years. 

And the more the public tunes in, the more volatile this election could become again.

Before the assassination attempt, there wasn’t a scenario in which I believed Trump could persuade skeptics to give him a second look, let alone win over voters who decided not to support him in 2020 — especially after his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, in particular. And perhaps he still won’t be able to win these folks over. But I do have a feeling that these skeptics will be curious enough about whether Saturday changed Trump to at least check him out, maybe by tuning into some of Thursday’s acceptance speech. And that’s an opportunity.

Meanwhile, if the Democrats do end up with a new nominee — and it’s looking more likely by the hour that they will — that, too, is likely to suddenly trigger interest in what the new nominee has to say, which in turn could engage the electorate in a way that the pre-debate version of this campaign just didn’t.

Bottom line: We are getting awfully close to the moment when it might be fair to say, “Throw out everything you thought you knew about this election.” 

Read more from Chuck →

A party can get it wrong — and has before

By Steve Kornacki

Battleground polls look bad. Forecasting models are gloomier. States assumed to be safely in their column now seem in play. 

The realization that their presidential candidate has no realistic path to victory is sweeping the party. Panicked leaders are speaking out, more and more by the hour. Dozens are now publicly demanding their candidate exit the race. And the other party is licking its chops, thinking big not just about a win but about a landslide up and down the ballot.

It’s happening now with Democrats and Biden, yes, but it’s also happened before. It was eight Octobers ago when Republicans erupted in panic at the latest — and most dramatic, to date — uproar around their nominee. The release of the “Access Hollywood” tape convinced scores of major Republicans that Trump’s path to victory had gone from small to nonexistent, and a frantic 36-hour push to dislodge him from the top of the ticket ensued. You know the rest. 

How and why Trump prevailed, even after his party’s leaders disowned him, is worth keeping in mind as Biden refuses to relent to similar pressure.

There will always be debate over what exactly put Trump over the top, but however you arrive at it, one critical variable does stand out: his opponent’s profound unpopularity.

Read more from Steve →

That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

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