But increasingly ominous signs were mounting for the president. Two Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to exit the race, while a leading ally publicly suggested how the party might choose someone else. And senior aides said he might have only days to show he is up to the challenge before anxiety on the left boils over.
“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running … no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call with staffers from his reelection campaign. “I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end, and we’re going to win.”
Still, despite his efforts to salvage a faltering reelection — whether it was his impromptu appearance with campaign aides, private conversations with senior lawmakers, a weekend blitz of travel and a network television interview — Biden was confronting serious indications that support for him was rapidly eroding on Capitol Hill and among other allies.
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) told the New York Times that although he backs Biden as long as he is a candidate, this “is an opportunity to look elsewhere.” What the president “needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat — and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.”
Senior advisors say the 81-year-old Biden may have mere days to mount a convincing display of his fitness for office before his party’s panic over his debate performance and anger about his response boil over, according to two people with knowledge who insisted on anonymity to more freely discuss the issue.
The president accepts the urgency of the task — having reviewed the polling and mountains of media coverage — but he is convinced he can do that in the coming days, they said.
At the White House on Wednesday night, Biden met in person and virtually with at least 20 Democratic governors for more than an hour. Afterward, they described the conversation as “candid” and said they were standing behind the president despite being concerned about a Trump victory in November.
“The president is our nominee. The president is our party leader,” Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said. In the meeting, Biden “was very clear that he’s in this to win.”
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, a major Democratic donor, also called on the president to exit the race.
“Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous,” Hastings said. The statement was first reported by the New York Times.
All that followed Rep. James E. Clyburn, a longtime Biden friend and confidant, saying he’d back a “mini-primary” in the run-up to the Democratic National Convention next month if Biden were to drop out. The South Carolina Democrat floated an idea that appeared to lay the groundwork for alternative choices by delegates during the Democrats’ planned virtual roll call before the more formal party convention, set to begin Aug. 19 in Chicago.
On CNN, Clyburn said Vice President Kamala Harris, governors and others could join the competition: “It would be fair to everybody.”
Clyburn, a senior lawmaker and a former member of his party’s House leadership team, said he has not personally seen the president act as he did on the debate stage last week. He called it “concerning.”
And even as other Democratic allies have remained quiet since Thursday’s debate, there is a growing private frustration about the Biden campaign’s response to his performance at a crucial moment in the campaign — particularly in the president waiting days to do direct damage control with senior members of his party.
One Democratic aide said the response has been worse than the debate itself, saying lawmakers who support Biden want to see him directly combating the concerns about his stamina in front of reporters and voters. The aide was granted anonymity to candidly discuss party dynamics.
Most Democratic lawmakers are taking a wait-and-see approach, holding out for a better idea of how the situation plays out through new polling and Biden’s scheduled ABC News interview, according to Democratic lawmakers who requested anonymity to speak bluntly about the president.
When Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett, who called on Biden to leave the race this week, sought support from other Democratic lawmakers, he had no takers and eventually issued a statement on his own, according to a person familiar with the effort granted anonymity to discuss it.
But there was also a sense that the waiting period will soon expire if Biden does not step up his outreach to Capitol Hill or otherwise prove that he’s up to the job.
Some suggested that Harris was emerging as the favorite to replace Biden if he were to withdraw, although those involved in private discussions acknowledge that Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan remain viable alternatives. But for some insiders, Harris is viewed as the best prospect to quickly unify the party and avoid a messy and divisive convention fight.
Even as pressure around Biden mounted, he and Harris made a surprise appearance on an all-staff reelection campaign call and offered a pep talk. They stressed how important it was to beat former President Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, in November and returned to Biden’s post-debate vow that when he gets knocked down, he gets up again.
“Just as we beat Donald Trump in 2020, we’re going to beat him again in 2024,” Biden said.
Harris added: “We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight, and we will win.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked during her briefing with reporters whether Biden would consider stepping down.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
“I cannot lay out something that would change the president’s mind,” Jean-Pierre said about Biden continuing to seek a second term. She added that he “is clear-eyed. And he is staying in the race.”
Still, Democrats are unsatisfied with the explanations of Biden’s debate performance, from both White House staff and the president himself. And there is a deeper frustration among some in the party who feel that Biden should have handled questions about his stumbling debate performance much sooner and that he has put them in a difficult position by staying in the race.
The Leadership Now Project, a group of business executives, academics and thought leaders, said in a letter that the “threat of a second Trump term” is great enough that Biden should “pass the torch of this year’s presidential nomination to the next generation of highly capable Democrats.”
Trump’s campaign issued a statement noting that “every Democrat” now calling on the president “to quit was once a supporter of Biden.”
Trump, 78, had a slight lead over the president in two polls of voters conducted after last week’s debate. A poll conducted by SSRS for CNN found that three-quarters of voters — including more than half of Democratic voters — said the party has a better chance of winning in November with a candidate other than Biden.
About 7 in 10 voters, and 45% of Democrats, said Biden’s physical and mental ability is a reason to vote against him, according to the CNN-SSRS poll.
And about 6 in 10 voters, including about a quarter of Democrats, said reelecting Biden would be a risky choice for the country rather than a safe one, according to a New York Times-Siena College poll. The results found Democrats split on whether Biden should remain the nominee.
Biden campaign pollster Molly Murphy said “today’s polling doesn’t fundamentally change the course of the race.”
In a further effort to boost morale, Biden Chief of Staff Jeff Zients urged White House aides during an all-staff meeting to tune out the “noise” and focus on the task of governing.
Biden began making personal outreach on his own, speaking privately with senior Democratic lawmakers such as Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, former House Speaker and Rep. Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons and Clyburn.
Kim, Weissert and Amiri write for the Associated Press. AP writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Zeke Miller, Colleen Long, Josh Boak and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.