Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) reportedly gave President Joe Biden an ultimatum: bow out of the presidential race “the easy way or the hard way.”
Politico reported Monday, a day after Biden’s announcement that he would step aside as the presumptive 2024 Democrat presidential nominee, that the former Speaker and still top Democrat powerbroker put her foot down after weeks of Biden publicly insisting he would plow forward with his campaign despite major fallout from his disastrous debate performance on June 27.
“Nancy made clear that they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” one Democrat source, speaking anonymously and familiar with the conversations, told the outlet. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way.”
According to the outlet, the “hard way” would have entailed Pelosi taking what had been private efforts she was a part of to get Biden to bow out of the race into the public discourse.
This reportedly carried the threat of publicizing internal Biden campaign polls conducted last week, which show he was behind in every battleground state and was in jeopardy in other states that Democrats bank on in presidential elections, including New Mexico and Virginia.
These damning internal surveys were presented to the president in a key meeting with two of his advisers, Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon, on Saturday that seemingly factored into Biden’s decision Sunday, Politico noted:
In addition to presenting new concerns from lawmakers and updates on a fundraising operation that had slowed considerably, they carried the campaign’s own polls, which came back this week and showed his path to victory in November was gone, according to five people familiar with the matter, who, like others interviewed for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Biden asked several questions during the exchange.
The only other people with Biden in the residence when he arose Sunday were first lady Jill Biden and two other trusted aides: deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini and assistant to the first lady Anthony Bernal. At 1:45 p.m., he notified a somewhat larger group of close aides that he had decided the night before to end his quest for another term, reading his letter and thanking them for their service. A minute later, before any other campaign and White House staffers could be notified, he posted the historic letter from his campaign account on the social media site X.
The reported pressure campaign from Pelosi and others against Biden came after he won every Democrat nominating contest and secured 14 million votes in the primary after the DNC helped ensure he staved off a real primary challenge. Now, some 4,600 delegates will decide the nominee for Democrat voters at the convention in August.
Biden followed up his initial announcement with an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him at the top of the ticket. Harris appears to be the frontrunner for the nomination, as she is quickly consolidating support among party officials and leaders.
WATCH — Pelosi: ‘Legitimate’ to Ask If Biden Debate Was an Episode or a Condition
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.