WASHINGTON — Four days after his disastrous debate performance, President Joe Biden still had not personally called top Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill to shore up support, five sources told NBC News, though White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients was making calls.
Biden’s team has been working to quash questions swirling in the party about whether he can continue in the race against former President Donald Trump. Yet there’s growing frustration at the president’s inner circle for being overly “insulated,” said a Democratic lawmaker, who added that the president isn’t doing the type of personal outreach they’d expect.
Biden has not personally reached out to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both New York Democrats, or to other Hill leaders after his halting debate — a decision that has stunned some lawmakers.
“It’s troubling,” a House Democrat said, adding that White House staff should be transparent — at least in private calls with lawmakers — about whether Biden’s struggles on the debate stage were a one-off or if they have seen this problem before.
Schumer and Jeffries have not publicly expressed any disappointment at the outreach. Schumer’s office had no comment, while Jeffries’ office did not respond to questions.
The Biden campaign did not comment specifically on Schumer and Jeffries but said the president had talked with some elected officials.
“The President has spoken personally with multiple elected officials on the Hill and across the battlegrounds since the debate,” campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt said.
Top White House officials have been in touch following the debate. Zients called Schumer and Jeffries after the debate, three sources said, and he’s continued to trade calls with Schumer to discuss “staying aligned on next steps,” one of those sources said. Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president, also was making calls to the Hill.
While Democratic lawmakers are all standing by the president publicly, at least four told NBC News that they privately believe Biden needs to drop out now — four months before Election Day — to avoid a lopsided defeat for Democrats at the ballot box.
“It’s a very tough call. But because he will continue to decline, and because if he continues as our nominee we risk some catastrophic event after the convention that prohibits him from continuing as the nominee, he should step aside and allow for a nominating process at the Convention in August,” said one Democratic lawmaker, who spoke candidly on condition of anonymity.
Asked if Biden should gracefully bow out now, one moderate House Democrat replied, “yes,” adding that they still would like to see whether Biden’s approval drops precipitously in new polling after the debate.
Another Democratic lawmaker said colleagues will decide what to publicly say about Biden once they see the impact of the debate on House swing district polls. Democrats need to flip just a handful of seats to flip the House to Democratic control while the party faces a tough map to hold onto the Senate.
“That has to be the firewall” against a potential Trump presidency, the lawmaker said.
Another House Democrat, this one a vulnerable moderate lawmaker facing a tough re-election this fall, said they were still processing what happened last week and not yet calling on Biden to drop out of the race. But this lawmaker expressed anger and pointed the finger at the people around the 81-year-old commander-in-chief for letting Biden step on that debate stage.
“I hold his family and his advisors directly responsible for this mess,” the vulnerable lawmaker said in an interview. “They are closest to him and they should have pulled him out before this happened.”
The person added: “Just hoping someone above my pay grade figures this out.”
Rep. Annie Kuster, D-N.H., the chairwoman of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, also reiterated frustration with the Biden team’s handling of the debate and said that Democrats need more information to assess “what happened” as they defend their seats.
“Obviously, we saw what we saw. We saw what 50 million Americans saw, and we have concern for the president’s well-being. We were disappointed and worried for him. … Many of us have been upset with his team of advisors that he was put in that situation,” Kuster said in an interview Monday.
“And I think we need to get a clear understanding of what happened, both in the debate preparation and during the debate. He’s obviously been much more energetic since then at the rallies.,” Kuster said. “We all have a lot of concern for him. I hope he’s fine. And so the first stage is to assess what the impact is in these tough races.”
The Biden campaign, his political allies and top Democratic Hill leaders have chalked up the president’s debate performance to a “bad night” and said he should be judged on his long list of legislative accomplishments and the fact that the alternative, Trump, is dangerous to the country. An energetic Biden acknowledged at a campaign rally Friday, “I don’t debate as well as I used to,” but said he still plans to win in November.
Many Biden allies and family members have spent the past several days circling the wagons, and some campaign aides and Biden donors have argued that trying to nominate a replacement so late in the game could create an even worse scenario for the party.
“This magical thinking about the delegate selection process is people using mushrooms,” said Orin Kramer, a Biden fundraiser and a veteran of Jimmy Carter’s White House. “They have to get rid of the drugs and focus on the future of civilization. He’s been a great president.”
During an appearance on MSNBC over the weekend, Jeffries called Biden’s debate showing an “underwhelming performance” and said House Democrats would be having conversations by phone and virtually during the July Fourth recess about the path forward. But he said he was standing by Biden, whom he described as a “good man, an honorable man” running against a “con man.”
“I support the president’s decision to stay and fight — the American people respect those with resilience and grit,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board, told NBC News on Monday.
But one Democratic lawmaker who has been in touch with members who face competitive races this fall described them as “scared.”
“The ones that are in the worst position are front liners in the swing states who already were feeling as though they had to carry the president … and then the catch-22 of trying to go out there and campaign. … It’s hard not to be panicky,” the lawmaker said. “It’s a lot of pressure. It’s a lot of anxiety.”
Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a Biden ally who led the team of impeachment prosecutors after Trump’s involvement in the Jan. 6 attack, acknowledged Sunday that there are “honest and serious conversations are taking place” in the Democratic Party about Biden’s political future.
Two Democratic officials in Washington said the way for Biden to recover would be to get out more in unscripted settings to prove the debate was simply an off night — getting on TV, doing interviews or town halls, holding press conferences.
That’s the “only way to fix it,” said one of the Democrats. “Gotta get him out there.” The other said Monday it’s “damning” that four days after the debate, Biden still hasn’t held an event where he speaks without a teleprompter.
