The Daily - Will Biden Withdraw?

Episode Date: July 1, 2024

President Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week set off a furious discussion among Democratic officials, donors and strategists about whether and how to replace him as the party’s nominee.Peter Baker, who is the chief White House correspondent for The Times, takes us inside those discussions and Biden’s effort to shut them down.Guest: Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: President Biden’s allies can no longer wave away concerns about his capacity after his unsteady performance at Thursday’s debate.Mr. Biden’s family is urging him to keep fighting.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Natalie Ketroef. This is The Daily. President Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance last week set off a furious discussion among Democratic officials, donors, and strategists about whether and how to replace him as their party's nominee. Today, Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker takes us inside those discussions and Biden's effort to shut that conversation down. It's Monday, July 1st. Peter, you've been reporting on what I think can be best described as the great Democratic freakout that started basically from the moment the debate began at 9 p.m. on Thursday

night. Tell us about the aftermath. Yeah, I've been covering politics for 38 years, and I've never seen a political panic like we saw after that debate. It was like a run on the bank. Everybody in the Democratic Party was suddenly confronted with what they didn't want to admit up until then, which is that they have an 81-year-old candidate who would be 86 at the end of a second term, and it's very possible that he was not capable of completing this campaign in a vigorous and competitive way against Donald Trump. That's what really it comes down to for many Democrats.

Can Joe Biden take the campaign to Donald Trump and stop what they think is an existential threat to the country? I want to know more about who you were hearing from. Who are the people that are calling you? What are the big questions they're asking? What are they struggling with? Yeah, I don't want to get into too many names.

A lot of people don't want to be out front, but you did see even publicly people like Senator Claire McCaskill. Joe Biden had one thing he had to do tonight, and he didn't do it. The former senator from Missouri, red state Democrat, was on MSNBC just minutes after the debate. He had one thing he had to accomplish, and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age. And he failed at that tonight. She talked about, you know, this was a crisis. The her phone

was blowing up with a lot of Democrats. And she was very forthright about it. It's very striking that she said that. I think there's a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now. People like Van Jones, who was on CNN. He used to work in the Obama White House. We're still far from our convention. And there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward if he will allow us to do that. He very candidly talked about how this was going to raise questions about whether the president should continue as the candidate. Some Democrats are calling for Biden to step down. Andrew Yang.

Andrew Yang, who ran against Biden in 2020 for the Democratic nomination, popular with some younger voters. He said on social media it was time for Biden to step aside. Those are some of the public people. And obviously in the hours and days that followed, more came out and said, well, this is something we need to think about. But the people I was talking to were people behind the scenes, people who have run White Houses before, people who work for President Biden in this administration. I heard words like, he can't win. This is a disaster. This is a nightmare. And they were very, very concerned that he could not beat Donald Trump. concerned that he could not beat Donald Trump.

Right. And you saw these really prominent media figures, outlets, The Times as an actor in this situation, calling for Biden to step aside. Our editorial board did this. We should say this is entirely separate from our newsroom, from the show. But there was this real crescendo. And there was a sense that this was a turning point, right? Absolutely. But it's not just the media. I think what the Biden campaign would like it to be is about the media. It's just that the media tends to be more out front and say things more openly than Democrats were saying. It really was rank and file Democrats. It really was high ranking Democrats. And they were absolutely flipped out. Right. These doubts are coming from all over, from many corners.

Take me through, Peter, the argument for why this poor performance meant that Biden should be replaced. How do they explain that thinking? Well, look, what a lot of people who defended President Biden will say is that incumbent presidents don't do well in their first debate. And that is true. Historically, that's been true. Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, all lost, arguably, their first debate when they were running for re-election. But the difference is if Obama, you know, doesn't register a good performance against Mitt Romney, first of all, nobody thought that Obama wasn't

capable of being president as a result. And second of all, he had another debate about a week or two later in order to try to recover. Neither of those factors works here. Biden's problem from this debate is much more existential, is much more profound because it's about whether he is able to perform the office of president, not just for the next few months, but for the next four and a half years. And there's not going to be another debate until September. So he doesn't have another big audience opportunity to change people's minds, to show that, in fact, he does still have it

and can run the country. And that's a real problem for him. And there's this broader context here, right? Voters have been telling pollsters for a year now that Biden's age is a major concern for them. We've seen Biden's age before our very eyes. We've seen him stumble in speeches and public appearances. And, Peter, we had talked to you about this very issue a few months ago after a special counsel investigating Biden's son Hunter issued this report focusing on Biden's mental state.

issued this report focusing on Biden's mental state, in part, you know, saying that the president was, quote, a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory and had, quote, diminished faculties in advancing age. But at the time, the White House dismissed that report as a partisan hit job. So in a sense, this debate performance was the capstone of something that's been in the air for a very long time. It's just that this time it was undeniable. There was no spinning it. Well, I think that's exactly right. There was no spinning it. One Democrat put it to me. He said, you know, for a long time, the fear of Trump stifled Democratic criticism of Biden. People didn't want to criticize him because they desperately want to beat Trump. But now that same fear, he said to me, now meant that they could no longer stand behind Biden,

that they worried that he had been diminishing over a period of time and that his staff and the people around him had hidden that from the public. There's a real anger out there among some Democrats. Now, what the Biden circle would tell you is, no, we didn't hide anything from you. Yes, he does have moments where he is not as lucid as you would want him to be,

but that broadly speaking, when they see him operate, when they're sitting with him in the Oval Office or in the Situation Room, he is sharp. He asks good questions. He understands and grasps the issues that he is confronting. And I mean, we all have good days and bad days, but when you're 81, your good days and bad days may be more pronounced. And if he has good days and bad days, well, Thursday night was a very bad night. Peter, I want to ask you about that,

about your view on all of this, because I do think all this has raised this fundamental question for a lot of Democrats, for a lot of journalists, for voters, which is what you're getting at. Was what we saw on the debate stage the real Biden and had the White House been hiding him from us? Or were the people around him just unable to recognize the perils of this themselves? Like, have they been gaslighting us all, or are they in denial? Yeah, it's a good question. That's the question in some ways, right? I think that people who work closely with the president and like him, admire him, respect him, want to see the best in him, and want everybody else to see the best in him. And they have been unwilling to admit whether or not he has, you know,

slipped in the last three and a half years. And part of it may be strategic. They recognize in their view that he is the president. They've got to build him up and make him as successful as possible. And they have shielded him as much as possible from public scrutiny. He hasn't given as many interviews

or as many interviews or as many press conferences as any of his predecessors going back to Reagan. He's never given an interview to the New York Times or the Washington Post or the Wall Street Journal or the LA Times or any other newspaper, which is, I think, the first president, certainly in my lifetime, who hasn't done that. And that's been part of a pattern of them trying to protect him. And I think there's kind of a reckoning right now among other Democrats wondering whether they went too far. Okay, so we have this huge reaction to this moment, the debate from the Democrats in the news media. Can you walk us through how the Biden team responds to the full-blown panic?

how the Biden team responds to the full-blown panic. His campaign was thrown into full-blown damage control over the weekend. And the president himself set out to do two things. First, privately, he met with donors and assured them, yes, he's still a viable candidate and that they should still support him. And then publicly, he went on a campaign blitz traveling to seven events in four states. publicly he went on a campaign blitz traveling to seven events in four states. And his first stop on Friday, in fact, was at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was already scheduled before the debate, but it gave him an opportunity to both show that he can do the job.

Thank you, North Carolina. To demonstrate vigor and vitality. I don't know what you did last night, but I spent 90 minutes on the stage debating a guy who has the morals of an alley cat. And to address his own performance. I know I'm not a young man. State the obvious. Well, I know. And he says pretty candidly, he says, yeah, I'm not a young man. Let's take the obvious. Well, I know. And he says pretty candidly, he says, yeah, I'm not a young man. I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But he goes on. Well, I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.

I know how to tell right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know like millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up. And, you know, he comes across as pretty vigorous, pretty energetic. Of course, he's reading from a teleprompter. Always a lot easier to read from a teleprompter. But I think more important than that was the body language and the spirit that he brought to the moment. It sounds like teleprompter or not, the Biden who appears at the rally is meaningfully different,

at least in style, from the president that we saw on the debate stage. I'm wondering if you think this has changed anything. Has the conversation changed? No, not fundamentally. I think fundamentally that people still recognize that there's an issue here. Now, there was pushback among Democrats saying, okay, take a breath, get a hold of yourself. He's not dropping out.

I don't think you judge a person's, the body of their work on one night. They don't always go the way you want to. I have confidence in the president because he's delivered. I understand that, you know, he had a raspy voice, but like I've told folks, who cares? We have a choice this November between someone that's a good person,

a good president with a real record of results and someone that has brought shame on the presidency. Don't let 90 Minutes define a career of a president who's been in office for three and a half years, been in politics for 50 years and overshadow the important issues that he stands for. And so you heard that line of thinking in the spin room and on TV. Look, I think Joe Biden had a bad debate night, but it doesn't change the fact that Donald Trump was a bad president. And by the way, Trump did terribly too, which is a fair point. Trump may have been more lucid in the sense that he sounded stronger. But if you actually looked at what he said, listen to what he said,

he said so many things that were just not true. And it helped Biden that former President Barack Obama put out a statement saying, hey guys, I've seen bad debates. It's fine. Don't freak out in effect is what he said. And Jim Clyburn. And if he asked my opinion,

I would give it as I always do. Who is his very close ally in Congress from South Carolina, the congressman who helped get him the nomination in the first place, said, stay the course. He should stay in this race. He should demonstrate going forward his capacity to lead the country. So it was important to have those voices out there among prominent Democrats trying to calm the waters. But it only went so far because the waters are still churning underneath. Peter, I'm curious how his donors are reacting to all this. I mean, you mentioned that part of his full-court press is to reassure them

that he's got the mental acuity to run. How successful has he been at that? Yeah, I think that there's certainly some donors who are resigned. They feel like there's not much choice. But there are others who actually are considering jumping off the boat, jumping on what Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe called the hysteria train. And I think that it's an open question. But part of the thing is, of course, they're waiting to see how the polls really shake out. The initial polls after any debate are often not really representative of how an event settles into the political narrative. And the polling and data so far have been kind of contradictory. On the one hand, it shows that Trump clearly beat Biden,

that Biden clearly lost, and that Biden has only reinforced the doubts that most voters had about his age and mental capacity. That's absolutely true. At the same time, there's some polling showing that the overall horse race number, who are you gonna vote for, hasn't moved dramatically yet, if it does at all.

And that, you know, it's possible this is baked in, that people who are gonna vote against him are still gonna vote against him. The people who are gonna vote for him, holding their nose, may not be happy about it, may still be voting for him. But there's a tell. The tell was from the Biden campaign. When they put out a memo by Jen O'Malley Dillon, who's his top political person at the campaign. And she says, if you see polls go down in the next few

days or weeks, what's telling is that she is in fact anticipating that polls would be bad for them and trying to set expectations for supporters and voters and donors saying, don't let that panic you any further. That's normal and we'll get past that just as we have other bumps in the road. It seems like the Biden effort over the weekend has, in some sense, quieted some public doubts from key Democrats, right? There's not a, we didn't see a deluge of senior lawmakers going on Sunday talk shows and saying, Mr. President, step aside. But from what you're saying and based on the reporting that we've seen from our colleagues, the effort has not by any means ended the discussion about replacing Biden. That is very much still happening under the surface. Yeah, that discussion is very much alive among Democrats.

Will Biden and should Biden remain as the candidate? And the question then becomes is, if he doesn't, what then? We'll be right back. We'll be right back. Peter, given that this discussion of Biden stepping aside is still, as you said, very much alive, what would it look like for someone to replace him on the presidential ticket at this point in the campaign just a few months before Election Day? It sounds like it would be pretty daunting. Yeah. I mean, look, we have never had a situation like this, not certainly in modern times. No president has ever dropped out of the race so late in the cycle. And you have to remember a couple of things. First of all, the Democratic National Convention, which would anoint a new

nominee, is in late August. But they're actually scheduled to take a roll call before the convention begins on August 7th. So that means we have five weeks between now and when the roll call is scheduled to be held to decide a nominee. If the president were to drop out, that would create this truncated, incredibly intense, incredibly wide open, incredibly volatile,

short campaign to figure out who would be the nominee. And it's complicated logistically. It's complicated politically. It's complicated in all sorts of ways. And we don't really know what's going to happen or how it would happen because we've never seen it before. But it is conceivable. It is possible. The president has to decide that he's not going to run. If that doesn't happen, then there's no contest. There's no way anybody sees of forcing him off the ballot if he chooses to continue to run. There doesn't seem to be any appetite for trying to find a way to undo his nomination other than with his consent.

He controls the 3,900 delegates that are going to be at the convention. They're obligated to vote for him on the first ballot. So it has to be, first, his decision on whether he continues to run. If he does, then that's it. That's the end of that question. But if he doesn't, then it's jump ball. Would his replacement automatically be Kamala Harris

as the vice president? No, not at all. If they were after the convention and they were both nominated and then he stepped aside the last minute, then they probably would simply go to Kamala Harris because she had been ratified by the convention as the vice presidential candidate. That's possible. But if we're talking about a situation before the convention, it's anybody's guess. attention is anybody's guess. There's about a dozen other prominent Democrats out there who are looking at jumping in if suddenly the nomination is up for grabs. But so who are we talking about? What are some of the most prominent names that have come up? Well, other than Kamala Harris, you have a number of governors, particularly Gavin Newsom of

California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Jamie Pr. Pritzker of Illinois there are of course those who ran last time who might jump back in in theory Senator Cory Booker Senator Amy Klobuchar potentially even maybe Pete Buttigieg who is currently the transportation secretary but the ones who are going to have the best chance are those who have an apparatus already who have a set of donors and fundraisers who can raise money instantly and who have the ability to get on TV and get media attention without having to work as hard for it. And that does suggest, obviously, a sitting vice president or a sitting governor. Basically, hitting reset on the whole nomination process requires embracing a moment of genuine political chaos. I mean, that's the

theoretical downside of this. But of course, I mean, there's also a potential upside, right? Massive media attention, potentially, for whoever the replacement Democrat is. The possibility that that replacement could energize a lot of Democratic voters and independents and even potentially moderate Republicans out there who dislike Trump but just couldn't get excited about Biden. Yeah, absolutely. Whoever emerges will have a certain advantage of freshness, right?

And that person will have a generational argument to make against Trump because whoever it would be would be younger than Trump. And suddenly Trump is then the old candidate. He's 78. And that new Democratic candidate will be able to say, I'm the next generation. This guy is also too old to be president.

And if your concern about our guy was, can he make it through four years, then you should be picking me because the other guy can't make it either through four years. Now, the downside, of course, is these are people who are largely untested on a national stage, at least in this kind of an environment. And you don't know how people will do once they actually jump in. They didn't have the advantage of a year-long primary contest to prove themselves. Before you jump into a race, you can look really attractive. Look at Ron DeSantis.

Before he jumped in to the Republican primaries, on the Republican side, they all thought, wow, he's really great. Didn't turn out to be so great once he got on the campaign trail. The magic didn't actually appear. So that's the danger here is we don't know which of these Democrats, if any, would have the ability to shine when the big giant Kliegelites are on

them. And we're clearly in a delicate moment right now, but are any of these potential contenders trying to signal interest at this point? I mean, what does that look like? It sort of seems like the art of raising your hand for something, but not wanting it too publicly. Yeah, it's a really good question because you obviously can't do anything that seems disloyal to Biden, right? Nobody's willing to take on Biden directly and say, I'm now running and you should take him down. So the trick here is you have to be loyal, loyal, loyal, right up to the minute that Biden says he's not running, at which point then suddenly you're off to the races. And doing that from a standing start

is not a good idea for any campaign. So they have to find ways of talking to their people, lining up donors, thinking about what kind of a campaign would look like, who might be their strategist, without letting anybody know that they're doing that, at least not let anybody in our business know that, because it would obviously backlash on them. And that's a very hard thing to do. I mean, I've heard that there are people out there

making phone calls who want to run, but nobody's going to admit that outright because it would be damaging to them. And in terms of logistics here, I know this is all very hypothetical, but if a new candidate were to become the nominee, do they get all the money Biden raised? Do they get his campaign team? Or are they literally creating a presidential campaign from scratch with four months to go? I mean, presumably they would adopt a lot of Biden's apparatus. As for the money, a lot of the money these days is in kind of super PACs and the sort of amorphous structures that can go immediately to a different candidate. And everybody who contributed to Biden can now contribute to the new candidate. And then Biden can still spend his

money as he chooses in support of whoever the candidate is. So there's that advantage in a way could actually increase some fundraising. But you're right, they would be starting from scratch in a lot of ways, at least in terms of a national organization. And obviously, for this to even happen, it relies on Biden stepping aside here, as you said. Everything you've laid out so far suggests that he is for now at least closed off to this suggestion. And I have to ask what you think from your reporting would change that. Well, President Biden is a proud man. He's a stubborn man. As a lot of people of any age are, he is reluctant to confront and face his own weaknesses. And he's not going to be talked out of running by a bunch of media chattering class pundits and junior Democrats. I mean, think about it. He's been running for president since 1987.

And the idea that he is now in office and running the country, and as he thinks it, running it pretty well, that he's going to simply step aside because a bunch of people tell him he should, he reacts viscerally to that. Of course, he doesn't want to do that. In fact, when you talk to Democrats, they're very conscious of not trying to push him because it could have the opposite reaction, right? It could trigger him to want to stay even more. The people who have influence with him, not that many people.

I mean, at this point, he's been in politics since 1972 when he was elected to the Senate. And the people he considers his peers, most of them are gone, right? He's not surrounded by people whose opinion he truly respects. Obama and Clinton, the only two former presidents out there other than Jimmy Carter who are Democrats, I don't know that if they told him it was time to pull the plug that he would listen to that. In fact, he might, again, do the opposite. He still resents Obama for discouraging from running in 2016. Obviously, congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hakeem Jeffries, Jim Clyburn, people like that could have an influence if they were to go as a group to him in a way like the Republicans went to Nixon in 1974 and said that he wasn't going to survive.

Maybe that might influence him. But I don't think they're likely to do it. It doesn't look like they're likely to do that. Who does have his ear? I mean, who does he really listen to? Who do we know he's going to be listening to in this moment? Well, the real people he listens to the most are his family. The very family-oriented guy.

Remember, he went home to Wilmington almost every night when he was a senator. Even now, as president, he flies home to Wilmington most every weekend. And he's at Camp David this weekend with his family. They're there because they had already planned to be together for a photo shoot, ironically, with Annie Leibovitz. So the family was already gathering at Camp David, which gives him an opportunity, right? It gives him an opportunity to have a heart-to-heart conversation with the people who mean the most to him, in particular, Jill Biden, of course, the First Lady, his sister, Valerie, the kids and the grandkids. We don't know what that

conversation looks like. I mean, that's as private as it comes. Someday there'll be histories written and memoirs written, and I'm fascinated to read what's happening this weekend at Camp David, because I think it's kind of pivotal. But what we do know is that up until now, at least Jill has been all in. She's been encouraging him to run, and it sounds like she's been encouraging him to stay in. And a lot of people think her voice is the most important voice in this. And just to pause on this for a second, Peter, it sounds like you're saying something pretty remarkable, actually, which is that this very small handful of people have influence over what is going to be a massive decision that

affects hundreds of millions of Americans and really the entire world. Well, don't underplay it. But yeah, that's exactly right. And you're right to point out the stakes here, because it's not just about Joe Biden and his future. It is about this presidential race, and it is about whether you want Donald Trump back in office. That's the way most Democrats look at it. And the difference between a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency is about as stark as you can imagine. And this will have consequences that will ripple out for years to come. Peter, I kind of want to end where we began this conversation, which is

with this question of Democrats' mindset right now post-debate and the question of what's motivating them in this moment. Privately, they're talking about replacing Biden. They seem too scared to do that publicly for all the reasons we've discussed, including that the White House is basically telling them to stop talking about it and that Biden probably won't step aside anyway, so all of this may just be useless hand-wringing. And all of that raises a pretty essential question for me, which is, are Democrats about to recommit to a damaged nominee who had a disastrous debate, who may only get worse over time out of loyalty to President Biden? Or do you think on some level they really believe this is all just overblown,

that it's one debate, everybody has bad days, and Biden really can recover from all this? I think there's a lot of doubt in the party that he can really recover from this. It is the argument, obviously, the Biden campaign is making. And it's really the only argument they have available to them to say, look, don't overreact here. It's just the media hyperventilating. We will recover like we've recovered before. And it is what they have to say because they don't have anything else that they can say. But almost every Democrat outside of the inner circle that I talk to says this was a complete disaster. They are not sugarcoating it. They saw what they saw with their own eyes, and they think that it's not tenable for the campaign

to pretend otherwise. And it's particularly devastating because the weakness of the Biden campaign has always been concerns about his age. People have expressed that to pollsters and in interviews with reporters going back more than a year. And now they just saw it for themselves on TV in their living rooms, more than 50 million of them. And to convince them not to believe what they saw with their own eyes is just a monumental task politically. So for Biden's team and for the Democrats, it's a big roll of the dice. Do you stick with him and try to correct the damage in the four months you have, or do you say it's time for somebody else, which is going to be a roll of the dice itself? the dice itself. And assuming Biden continues, Peter, it sounds like we won't know if that bet,

that bet that, you know, he's the only one that ever beat him, he's the only guy that can get this done, if that was solid or deluded thinking until November 5th. On November 5th, or whatever day the election is resolved, we will know how history judges this. And maybe everybody looks back on this and says, well, that was close, but you know, they were right to stick it out, you know, because they won. Or in fact, it was a disastrous decision and they wasted an opportunity to fix a campaign that was already having trouble. Hindsight will be perfect, but there's no question that this weekend will be remembered as perhaps the most decisive of this campaign. Peter, thanks for coming on.

Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. After we spoke with Peter, the New York Times reported that while at Camp David, Biden's family urged the president to stay in the race, arguing that, yes, he could still show voters he's capable of serving another four years. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Early projections show that France's far-right National Rally Party won a decisive victory in the first round of voting for the country's National Assembly on Sunday. National Rally, an anti-immigrant party long on the fringes of the French political scene, captured about a third of the vote, according to polls,

and now appears poised to become the largest force in the lower house of Parliament. The results dealt a blow to French President Emmanuel Macron, who took a gamble by dissolving Parliament last month and calling for snap elections. But his bet that the far right wouldn't repeat its recent success in European parliament elections backfired. A runoff election between the leading parties will be held on July 7th. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chaturvedi, Rochelle Banja, Will Reed, and Rob Zipko, with help from Olivia Nat and Lindsay Garrison.

It was edited by Lexi Diao, with help from Ben Calhoun, Paige Cowett, and Mike Benoit. And special thanks to Michael Barbaro. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Natalie Kitcheroff. See you tomorrow.