Pressure for Joe Biden to step aside as the Democrats’ presidential pick to face Donald Trump had eased since the Republican survived an assassination attempt last weekend, but began to rise again on Wednesday.
The tension rose as Biden was diagnosed with Covid and cancelled events to self-isolate at his home in Delaware.
Adam Schiff, the influential US representative from California, said publicly that Biden should quit, becoming the most well-known lawmaker so far to do so openly.
Then ABC News reported that Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader and the most senior Democrat in Congress, had told Biden in a meeting on Saturday it would be better for the country and the Democratic party if the president ended his re-election campaign.
However, a spokesperson for Schumer called the report “idle speculation”.
“Unless ABC’s source is Senator Chuck Schumer or President Joe Biden, the reporting is idle speculation,” the spokesperson said. “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday.”
Later on Wednesday a second report from CNN said the former house speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden that polling showed he could not beat Trump, and that would affect the Democrats’ chances in the House of Representatives this November.
Also on Wednesday afternoon, David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama as president, increased his persistent pressure campaign on Biden as he warned that the president had not done enough to relieve voters’ concern about his age since last month’s hapless debate performance.
“I’ve said for a long time, it’s not in any way a commentary on his record, which I think will be honoured more by history than it is by voters right now, but it’s a very hard case to make that anyone should be elected president in the United States at the age of 82, not for political reasons but for actuarial reasons,” Axelrod told the Guardian in Milwaukee.
Having already riled Biden with criticism of his re-election bid, Axelrod continued the attack at an event on the sidelines of the Republican national convention, where Trump is expected to receive the official party nomination on Thursday.
Asked whether he thought Biden can survive as the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, the chief strategist for the 2008 and 2012 Obama presidential campaigns replied: “That’s entirely in his hands.”
His and Schiff’s comments followed those of a “prominent strategist” who, in a sign of how sharply divided the party stands, was moved to say of the internal rebellion against Biden’s candidacy: “It’s over.” The strategist spoke anonymously to the Hill.
At a press conference in Milwaukee, Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor and a party grandee, said Biden would be confirmed as the Democratic nominee by virtual vote between 1 and 7 August, before the Chicago convention.
Walz told reporters: “We need to get these things done. We need to get the roll call done. But it won’t happen before 1 August.”
The debate over Biden’s age and cognitive fitness is likely to stoke more nasty public splits.
On Wednesday morning, as a new ABC-Norc poll found nearly two-thirds of Democrats saying Biden should withdraw, the blogger and podcaster Nate Silver linked to video of moments in a speech in Las Vegas the night before, in which the 81-year-old president seemed to struggle.
Silver said: “It’s just so weird living through this real-life Emperor Has No Clothes Moment. He obviously shouldn’t be president for four more years. Everyone knows this.”
This is from Biden’s speech to the NAACP yesterday.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 17, 2024
He loses track of what he’s saying constantly. Asking people to ignore what’s right in front of them is absurd. pic.twitter.com/b2IVsFStIe
Schiff followed reports that he had predicted heavy Democratic losses under Biden by going public on the matter.
Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history” but it was time “to pass the torch”, Schiff, now a Democratic candidate for US Senate, told the Los Angeles Times.
“A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Biden insists he is up to the job, telling one interviewer he will be the nominee “unless I get hit by a train”.
The White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement on Wednesday: “The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families.”
Silver also said it was “incredibly revealing which people are willing to lie” about Biden’s age and the problem facing his party.
That was a reference to Silver’s public argument on Tuesday with Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, over plans to confirm Biden’s nomination before the convention, officially related to uncertainty over election law in Ohio and the deadline for ballot inclusion.
Harrison wrote: “Love y’all but when it comes to election law and ballot access, I put my trust in our legal team who make a living understanding these laws and processes and not in the pollster who promised us the red wave. #ClassDismissed.”
He was referring to predictions that the 2022 midterms would see Republicans retake the Senate and strengthen their hold on the House, which did not transpire.
Silver answered: “Jaime, I’m not a pollster and I didn’t promise a red wave. The data is here. Actual experts have weighed in and said you’re spreading misinformation. You should probably stop lying.
“You and the White House have run the whole campaign on the premise that you could bullshit your way through things. It’s early enough so as not to be unsalvageable, but you’ve put Democrats in an incredibly difficult position. Enough with the BS.”
Silver also accused Harrison and the Democratic National Committee of “blatantly lying” about a need to confirm Biden before the convention, adding: “The good news is that there very much will be consequences if they force Biden’s nomination [through] and he loses.”
Harrison said: “Nate … you can call me a lot of things but a liar is definitely not one of them. I know you THINK you know every thing but class is now truly in session. Pull up a chair.”
He then offered an explanation of the plan for an early confirmation, in light of events in Ohio. Silver said he was “trying to gaslight people based on a technicality”.
Elsewhere, the Ohio secretary of state said the election law issue was “resolved”, adding that Democrats “know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio for their own party disfunction”.
Amid it all, Ron Klain entered the chat.
The former White House chief of staff, who remains close to Biden and his campaign, posted a FiveThirtyEight prediction of a Biden electoral college victory and said: “But I thought he had ‘no path’ according to donors and the electeds following the donors?”
Klain added: “Based on working in two campaigns against Trump I am unchanged in my view that Joe Biden is uniquely capable of defeating him – that’s my gut view based on experience.”
Silver said: “You’d say that whether you really believed it or not. But come on the podcast Ron and we’ll see how many mental gymnastics you’re willing to do to defend this position.”
Klain, Silver added, was “the one person on the campaign who might be smart enough to know he’s full of shit and will write a memoir in five years saying Biden’s inner circle was incorrigible and he had to provide the most help he could to Biden under the circumstances”.
Also on social media, Simon Rosenberg, a pollster and strategist who correctly said there would be no “red wave” in 2022, made an appeal for sanity, posting on X, in part: “Fellow Dems, every moment you attack other [Democrats] you are helping Trump win. Stop it.”
Harrison reposted the message.
