This is not going in the direction Biden wants

Almost a week after the debate, Biden’s situation grows less tenable by the day.

Lots to get to this morning, but a quick housekeeping note first: There will be no newsletter tomorrow for July 4th. Happy birthday, America! 🇺🇸

My plan right now is to take Friday off as well — but if news intervenes, you’ll find me in your inbox. If all stays quiet (is that even possible?) I’ll be writing next on Sunday, for the weekly R&R newsletter, a private email for paid subscribers. In addition to the usual recap and recommendations, I’ll be emptying my reporter’s notebook from the Supreme Court — giving you more behind-the-scenes details on what it’s like covering the court. If you haven’t already, make sure to upgrade to a paid subscription to read that for yourself.

With that, let’s return to the roiling story of the moment:

Last week’s debate was supposed to be the unofficial start of the 2024 general election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Instead, it seems to have set the clock back a year or so and belatedly kicked off something else: the 2024 Democratic primaries.

After Biden’s disastrous performance, the Democratic Party’s long-deferred conversations about who would make the best nominee in November — conservations that would normally last for months and involve competitive primary contests — have been uncorked for the first time this cycle, except in July (four months before the election) and condensed into the span of just a few weeks. With so little time before Election Day, most Democrats agree that if Biden isn’t pushed out in the coming days, they will soon have to stop the chattering and fall in line behind him.

“There will be lots of discussion and lots of people weighing in,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a leading House Democrat, said on MSNBC last night of the sudden, frenzied talks. “I know this is a moving target. It’s got to happen quickly. But I can guarantee you, there will be massive unity and focus on that task when we get to the end of this process. And it’s happening very quickly, I think.”

Although several Democratic lawmakers have, at this point, acknowledged that such internal discussions are taking place — hardly a promising sign for Biden in of itself — few have publicly called for him to step aside. “Nobody wants to be the first one to knife Julius Caesar,” one party official explained to the The Washington Post.

Well, on Tuesday, the party got its Casca: Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), who has represented Austin in Congress since 1995, became the first Democratic officeholder to call on Biden to step down.

“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson,” Doggett said. “Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same.”

No other Democratic members of Congress have joined Doggett so far, although several have edged closer to raising concerns about the 81-year-old Biden’s mental capacity and ability to take on Trump:

• Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) seemed to implicitly urge Biden to withdraw, telling CNN: “It’s his decision. I just want him to appreciate at this time just how much it impacts not just his race, but all of the other races coming in November … It wasn’t just a horrible night.”

• Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), who caucuses with the Democrats and has worked closely with Biden on several key pieces of legislation, reportedly planned to break with Biden this weekend, but was dissuaded from doing so by other Democrats, The Post reported.

• Two House Democrats in competitive districts — Reps. Jared Golden (D-ME) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) — said Tuesday that they expect Biden to lose to Trump. “We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump,” Gluesenkamp Perez said. “I know that’s difficult, but I think the damage has been done by that debate.”

• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the former House speaker and a key legislative ally for Biden, said it was a “legitimate” to ask whether Biden’s performance last Thursday was “an episode or is this a condition.” (She said she still supports Biden, although she acknowledged hearing from top donors who are “very concerned.”)

The Biden campaign’s actions since the debate have only compounded rising Democratic frustrations with the president.

Many Democrats have reportedly expressed alarm that Biden himself has not played a more public role in the response by trying to quickly rebut the concerns with a full slate of interviews or press conferences. The White House announced Tuesday that Biden will sit down with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos for his first interview since Atlanta — but it will not air in full until Sunday, a whole nine days after the debate. (Excerpts will air Friday.) Biden is not set to hold a press conference until next week, by which time perceptions about his acuity may already have hardened.

Further worrying many Democrats, Biden was slow to conduct any private outreach after the debate as well. It wasn’t until yesterday that he spoke to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY); it remains unclear whether he has spoken with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Pelosi said Tuesday that Biden had not yet called her. (One ally who Biden has conferred with: former President Barack Obama. According to The Post, Obama has been acknowledging privately that Biden’s “already tough path to reelection grew more challenging” after the debate.)

On a group call Monday, many Democratic governors also expressed surprise that they hadn’t heard from Biden, CNN reported. In response, Biden is set to meet with all 23 Democratic governors today, with some attending virtually. Several key leaders, including Govs. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL) and Gavin Newsom (D-CA), are making the trip to Washington to attend in-person.

Top Democrats have reportedly been mystified by several other steps taken by the Biden campaign, including a fundraising email labeling party worriers as “bedwetters” — “Consider me a bedwetter,” one House Democrat told Axios — and Biden’s comment last night that he “almost fell asleep on stage” during the debate due to fatigue after a recent international trip. (Biden had been back for more than a week by the time of the debate. On top of that, per The New York Times, he took an “afternoon nap” each day of debate prep.)

The revelation that the president is taking advice from his son Hunter Biden, a convicted felon — who has reportedly joined White House meetings in recent days, per NBC — but not Nancy Pelosi has done little to assuage Democratic anxieties.

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NBC’s Hunter story and the NYT’s nap anecdote are emblematic of perhaps the best signal of where this thing is headed: the leaks have begun. Biden’s White House had been fairly leak-free until this point, avoiding the steady stream of revelations that plagued, for example, Trump’s administration. No longer. The debate — and affiliated anxieties about the fate of Biden’s re-elect — seems to have unleashed the first real gusher of leaks from inside the West Wing since Biden assumed the presidency.

The nap story in The Times came amid a much longer piece revealing that Biden has “increasingly appeared confused or listless” behind closed doors. Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, reported similarly on CNN. Meanwhile, the backbiting inside the White House appears to have begun, as Politico reports on anger being directed towards Biden’s inner circle, who have kept him “more strictly controlled as his term has gone on,” limiting his exposure even to his own more junior staffers.

As I noted Monday, pushing Biden out of the presidential race will be a Herculean task considering resilience is so central to his personal narrative and pursuit of the presidency has been so central to his life for decades. But, if it isn’t stanched fast — and waiting a week to schedule his first post-debate interview isn’t exactly acting fast — there will come a point when the drip-drip-drip of age-related leaks and worries from his own allies will become unsustainable.

We’re not there yet, to be clear, but the ship is decidedly sailing in the opposite direction than Biden would want six days after the debate.

As of this morning, the betting market PredictIt favors Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee over Biden. Many Democrats are giving Harris — long dismissed as unelectable — a second look, fearing that the debate won’t be Biden’s last face-plant and that any other succession plan would be too messy.

The Harris boomlet gained some steam on Tuesday when a CNN poll found Harris outperforming Biden against Trump among registered voters (she trails Trump, 45% to 47%; Biden trails Trump, 43% to 49%). Other high-quality polls have shown a slight — but not dramatic — shift in Trump’s direction since the debate. A CBS News survey released this morning, for example, found Trump leading Biden by two percentage points among likely voters, compared to Biden’s one-point advantage in the poll last month.

But the polls are peppered with other negative signs for Biden. In the CNN poll, 75% of Democrats said the party’s chances would be better with a different candidate. In the CBS poll, well, take a look for yourself how voters describe Biden:

Graphic by CBS News

Biden is benefiting from negative partisanship a lot here — clearly, huge numbers of Democrats are unhappy with Biden keeping the nomination post-debate, yet his support has only budged slightly in head-to-head polls. If CBS’ numbers are to be believed, there is a camp of Americans who believe Joe Biden is not “energetic,” “tough,” “focused,” “effective,” or “competent” — and yet are willing to pull the lever to vote for him as president of the United States if his opponent is Donald Trump.

Still, anti-Trump partisanship ensuring that the debate will only move the election from an effectively tied race to one with a small Trump advantage will come as cold comfort to Democrats. Biden needed the debate to give him the advantage. A two-point loss is still very much a loss.

Democrats are currently hoovering up any polling data they can get, in order to decide in the next 72 hours whether it’s worth it to make an all-out push for Harris. Zany ideas are floating all over the place. CNN has reported that some Democrats are considering the idea of running a full presidential primary before the convention, potentially including debates, if Biden steps aside. Election forecaster Nate Silver endorsed that idea in his old haunt The Times this morning.

Will a “five-week speed-dating primary,” as CNN called it, take place? No, probably not. Does the fact that it’s even being mentioned represent the level of desperation currently felt within the Democratic Party? Yes, absolutely. For him to have any chance against Trump in November, this is the time Biden needs to be consolidating allies — and working on expanding his base, not tending to it. With each passing day, the opposite seems to be happening, as the Democrats grow more and more fractured and more become convinced that Biden isn’t up to the task of the campaign or five more years in the White House.

The Democrats’ post-debate decisionmaking process is certainly not over, but it sure isn’t heading in the direction Biden wanted.