Some longtime aides and advisers to President Joe Biden are reportedly trying to convince him to drop out of the presidential race.
Those in favor of Biden quitting have not yet determined the “ways to persuade him that he should” quit, three people briefed on the matter told the New York Times:
They said they have to make the case to the president, who remains convinced of the strength of his campaign, that he cannot win against former President Donald J. Trump. They have to persuade him to believe that another candidate, like Vice President Kamala Harris, could beat Mr. Trump. And they have to assure Mr. Biden that, should he step aside, the process to choose another candidate would be orderly and not devolve into chaos in the Democratic Party.
Those discussions were recounted by three people familiar with them who, like others in this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. There is no indication that any of the discussions have reached Mr. Biden himself, one of the informed people said.
“Unequivocally, this is not true,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the Times. “President Biden’s team is strongly behind him.”
Some of Biden’s longest-serving advisers and family members believe Biden should stay in the race, according to the report, and Biden believes he remains the best person to defeat former President Donald Trump.
Ron Klain, a top Biden ally and his former chief of staff, said on Thursday that polls that show Trump beating Biden are “in the ballpark” of being correct, but he insisted there is still a path, the New Republic reported.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, is conducting a survey between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump to gauge if Harris might be the better Democrat candidate, the Times reported:
The survey, which is being conducted this week and was commissioned by the Biden campaign’s analytics team, is believed to be the first time since the debate that Mr. Biden’s aides have sought to measure how the vice president would fare at the top of the ticket. It was described by three people who are informed about it and insisted on anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information.
They did not specify why the survey was being conducted or what the campaign planned to do with the results. It could be read as the team gathering information to present a case to the president that his path forward is slim, or to argue that Mr. Biden is still the strongest standard-bearer for his party.
The effort comes as some longtime aides and advisers to Mr. Biden are said to have become increasingly convinced that he will have to step aside from the campaign, and in recent days have been trying to come up with ways to persuade him that he should, The New York Times reported on Thursday. A growing number of prominent lawmakers have called for Mr. Biden to drop out or suggest he should reconsider his plans to run.
A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll showed Thursday that the race is virtually tied between Trump and Biden, though Harris performs a little bit better if she replaces Biden.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.