House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer told President Biden in separate private meetings last week that his continued candidacy jeopardizes the Democratic Party’s ability to retain control of both chambers of Congress next year.
Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met Biden at the White House on Thursday night, and Schumer (D-N.Y.) met with him on Saturday in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. During the meetings, congressional leaders discussed their members’ concerns that Biden could strip them of their majorities, giving Republicans a much easier path to pass legislation, according to four people who were aware of the meetings and who wished to remain anonymous to describe the private conversations.
In a separate one-on-one conversation, a person close to Biden directly told the president that he should end his candidacy because it was the only way to preserve his legacy and save the country from another Trump term, the person said. Biden responded that he strongly disagreed with that view and that he is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.
Democratic leaders issued brief statements after the meetings, acknowledging only that they had occurred but saying little or nothing about their content. The Biden campaign and the White House have also not provided public summaries of the meetings.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden told Schumer and Jeffries in their private meetings that he would remain at the top of the list. “The president told both leaders that he is the party’s nominee, that he intends to win, and that he looks forward to working with both of them to advance his 100-day agenda to help working families,” Bates said in a statement.
Rep. Adam Schiff (R-Calif.), the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in California and a close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), on Wednesday became the latest and most prominent member of the House of Representatives to call on Biden to leave the race. The challenges for the president were compounded when he was diagnosed with COVID-19 on Wednesday, forcing him to curtail his campaign schedule.
Even before last month’s presidential debate, in which Biden repeatedly stumbled, internal Democratic polling showed his support in key districts lagging significantly behind his 2020 levels, according to people familiar with the data. Biden’s team had long hoped the debate would boost those numbers, but that hasn’t happened.
“Democratic polls in the House of Representatives have shown no change in the congressional candidate’s standing since the debate,” said a person familiar with the data, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
In the Senate, Democrats hold a 51-49 majority, but Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a longtime Democrat and independent, is not seeking reelection, meaning the GOP will almost certainly regain his seat. Even if Democrats win all the other contested seats, the result would be a 50-50 split — meaning the Senate would be controlled by the party that wins the White House, because the vice president casts the tie-breaking vote in the chamber.
That has many Democratic senators deeply concerned, as Biden trails Trump in numerous crucial polls in states where Democratic Senate candidates still hold the lead. — a sentiment Schumer expressed to Biden during their meeting. “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus,” said Alex Nguyen, a spokesman for the senator.
In private meetings with larger groups of lawmakers, Biden has disputed the idea that he is losing to Trump or that he is hurting other Democrats. He has cited polls as a defense, though he has not specified which polls support his position, according to two of the people with knowledge of the matter.
The private warnings from Jeffries and Schumer are a striking message from the party’s leaders and reflect the bleak outlook among many Democrats after Biden’s debate performance. Nearly two dozen members of Congress have publicly called on Biden to drop out of the race, and many more elected officials privately share that sentiment.
Pelosi and former President Barack Obama, who have spoken out in recent days about the state of the race, privately expressing concerns about the president’s path forward, according to people familiar with their conversations, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the conversations were private. Obama spoke to Biden after the debate, offering his support as a sounding board and private adviser to the man who was his vice president.
Biden has made a vigorous, sometimes combative, effort in recent days to hear the concerns of his fellow Democrats, meeting virtually with five groups of House lawmakers. He has also spoken privately with party leaders, including Pelosi and Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.).
Biden had a phone conversation Friday with Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which coordinates the party’s House races, according to a person familiar with the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was private. A DCCC spokesperson declined to comment.
While their path to retaining their Senate majority has looked shaky for some time, Democrats have seen a clear path to winning back the House of Representatives, which Republicans now control 220-213. With Trump ahead of Biden in the polls, Democrats fear that a failure to retake the House would give Trump and the far-right faction of the Republican Party free rein to reshape Washington.
The day after his meeting with Biden, Jeffries sent a letter to his Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives informing them of his conversation, noting that he had requested the meeting himself.
“In my conversation with President Biden, I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, candid perspectives, and conclusions about the path forward that the caucus has shared in our recent time together,” Jeffries wrote, referring to the entire caucus of Democrats in the House of Representatives.
After his meeting on Saturday, Schumer said in a statement: “I sat down with President Biden this afternoon in Delaware; we had a good meeting.”
In recent days, Democratic lawmakers and even top strategists working on Biden’s reelection campaign have grown increasingly concerned that the president isn’t getting a full picture of where the race stands. In particular, they worry that he hasn’t met with his campaign’s pollsters and is instead relying largely on the advice of a dwindling circle of longtime aides.
The back-and-forth is playing out alongside a related dispute over whether to proceed with a virtual roll call that would formally nominate Biden, weeks before the Aug. 19-22 Democratic National Convention. Some Democrats say it’s a necessary step to ensure Republicans can’t challenge Biden’s nomination on the grounds that it comes too late; others charge that it’s a ploy to certify his nomination before delegates convene.
On Wednesday, the co-chairs of the congressional rules committee sent a letter saying the virtual roll call would happen, but they promised it would not be rushed and would not take place before Aug. 1. The announcement came after some Democratic lawmakers began protesting the process and urging the party to halt it.
Paul Kane, Marianna Sotomayor, and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.
