The Journal. - Will Biden Stay in the Race?

Episode Date: July 3, 2024

Pressure is mounting on President Joe Biden to step back as candidate for president. A new WSJ poll shows Biden has fallen six points behind Donald Trump and that 80% of respondents said they worry about Biden’s age. WSJ's Annie Linskey explores the rising panic inside the party, and how Biden’s tight inner circle is urging him to stay the course.  Further Listening: - Behind Closed Doors, Biden's Age is Showing  Further Reading: - Tight Inner Circle Urges Biden to Press On  - Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new Wall Street Journal poll taken after last week's debate shows that President Biden has fallen further behind in the 2024 race. Trump is now leading by six points. And 80 percent of those polled said Biden is too old to run for a second term. Our colleague Annie Linsky covers the White House, and she says that since last week's debate, there's been one question looming over her beat. Has Biden definitively decided to stay in the race? His team and he are saying that is the case.

I think the situation right now is very fluid. I don't know what's going to happen next, but it's a very fluid situation. The president has signaled and the president's team have signaled he wants to stay in the race. Why do you describe the situation as fluid? Because right now, Democrats are talking and they're consulting each other and they're trying to figure out, should they call on him to get out of the race?

Is he going to drag them down? Before the debate, you know, it seemed like Democrats could very well take the House back in this coming election in November, and they could, you know, maybe hold on to the Senate. I think that's always been harder. But now there are Democrats who are saying, my God, if we stick with Joe Biden, we could lose the White House, we could lose the Senate, and we could lose the House. And so Democrats are taking this as an existential moment where they have to decide, can they stick with Joe Biden? Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Leinbach.

It's Wednesday, July 3rd. It's Wednesday, July 3rd. Coming up on the show, the rising panic in the Democratic Party. Hey, everybody, I'm Kai Risdahl, the host of Marketplace, your daily download on the economy. Money influences so much of what we do and how we live. That's why it's essential to understand how this economy works. At Marketplace, we break down everything from inflation and student loans to the future of AI so that you can understand what it all means for you. Listen to Marketplace right here on Spotify.

What adjectives would you use to describe the panic among Democrats after the debate. Emotional sadness, anger, disbelief, horror, depression, anxiety. Look, Democrats, many Democrats, see the possibility of a Trump White House to be a threat to democracy. That's how they see it. And what they saw on Thursday night was what they believed to be their best defense for that crumbling. And so they are now in this spot of trying to decide between, from their perspective, party loyalty or opening the door to what they've been saying for years is a threat to democracy.

And that puts them, that just makes, for Democrats, the stakes feel so high and so hard and so difficult to reckon with. The next day, Biden headed to North Carolina to hold a midday rally at a fairgrounds. The event was packed. Nine overflow parking lots were full. And people were eager to see how the president would perform.

I'd watched some of the debate last night. Honestly, I was pretty concerned about how Biden did. So I wanted to come out and see for myself how he was in front of a crowd. Even if people weren't crazy about his performance last night, you know, people are still crazy about him and fully support him for president. I thought he was incoherent, and I think that what we saw was that he's not fit to be president.

He seemed like he didn't have the best energy. He seemed tired, like maybe he had a cold. And I was worried. On stage, reading from a teleprompter, Biden put on a stronger performance. 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 I know what I do know.

I know how to tell the truth. I know, I know, I know right from wrong. But I know how to do this job. And, you know, he performed much better in that environment. I don't think that speeches and rallies in the middle of the day are going to ease the concerns that Democrats have. That's a different situation than a debate, than an unscripted back and forth that's sustained for a long period of time. You're standing up in a rally with a bunch of your supporters who are providing energy, who are cheering. But what Democrats are saying he needs to do is do some town hall meetings, do some interviews with reporters, not this sort of

going around to cheering audiences in the middle of the day and acting like a politician. They need to see the sort of executive functioning working. As a White House reporter who's covered Biden and gone out with him to events, what have you witnessed? The president, he's very capable of being quite lucid in many moments. I mean, I've certainly been with him where he's had engaging back and forth with reporters. And I have, you know, taken quick questions on a variety of topics without notes, without any preparation, just kind of a quick 10 minutes. I was in one gaggle with him in Tahoe. I think it was maybe like seven minutes long and he probably took seven or eight questions and he made news in like four different ways. And it was

very quick back and forth. And there was just no sign of what we saw on Thursday night. But it's uneven because there are other times where he'll be giving a speech and say things that are just really jarring. I was at a Jewish American Heritage Month event in the Rose Garden, and he said that one of the hostages held by Hamas was there in the audience and then corrected himself because that person is being held in Gaza and is still a hostage. You know, like there are moments like that that, you know, where he just isn't quite as strong. And you see the age and you see the decline. So as this was going on and there's this panic happening among Democratic strategists, elected officials and so forth, what did you hear from inside the campaign and inside the White House? The response from inside the campaign and inside the White House and among Biden's allies was he has been a great president. He is a great president.

His record is strong. We can still run on that strong record. And there was a rallying around effect. There was very much an attempt to project confidence from the White House and from top aides. Here's White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre yesterday. But I will say this, and the president said this over the past couple of days, certainly right after the debate, he knows how to do the job. And he knows how to do the job, not because he says it, because his record proves it.

Even as the White House and Biden proxies have sought to reassure voters, calls for him to drop out of the race have been mounting. The New York Times released a statement Friday calling for President Biden to end his campaign. And it's not just them, the New Yorker, the Economist, many other publications have done the same. Former Ohio Democratic Congressman Tim Ryan says Vice President Kamala Harris

should be his party's new nominee for president. Vice President Kamala Harris should be his party's new nominee for president. And on Tuesday, some Democrats started publicly expressing worries about Biden's age and abilities. Here's Nancy Pelosi on MSNBC. Again, I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? A Democratic congressman from Maine, Jared Golden, wrote an op-ed saying he thinks Trump will win. And Marie Gluskin-Perez, a House Democrat from Washington state, echoed that sentiment, saying she thinks Biden will lose in November. One Democratic congressman went even further.

We must have the strongest possible candidate, and I don't believe that's Joe Biden. That's Lloyd Doggett from Texas. The risk to our country is so great, and we need to have the strongest candidate possible. In response, a spokeswoman for the Biden campaign said he is, quote, absolutely not dropping out. campaign said he is, quote, absolutely not dropping out. Is there a point when this pressure could be too much? You could have other members doing that as well. It becomes a kind of a dam and is the dam beginning to break is the question. We don't really know. That's not enough, just him, but he could be the start of something. And if he's the start of something, that could be quite influential. But Biden and his closest advisors are still standing firm. That's next. Amid calls for Biden to drop out of the race,

the president and his inner circle of advisors have been resistant. So the president has been in politics for a really long time. And over that period of time, he has picked up and become close with a select group of aides. And so some of those people who have been with him forever, moved to the White House and are with him now and are kind of the key people who are able to really tell him hard truths. These people are not sycophants. They don't leak, so they are a very kind of strong wall around the president. But from what I understand, on the inside of that wall,

they are willing to give him very frank, very clear-eyed advice. So there's a trust there. And who are the key players in Biden's inner circle? They include Mike Donilon. He's a strategist who's worked with Biden in various roles since 1981. So this is a long, long, long time aide. Another person is Anita Dunn. She's a communications person.

She's previously served as communications director in other White Houses. And she was a little skeptical, quite frankly, about whether Biden should run in 2020. But ultimately, she very much got on board. Another one is Steve Reschetti. He's another longtime Washington hand. He's got very close ties in the business community and on Capitol Hill. He's sort of playing a role of trying to reassure

both the business community and members of Congress about Biden's sort of standing in the campaign. And how do these close, like, long-term advisors interact with Biden's family? And what is the role of the family in that circle? The family is really very much organized around Joe Biden and Joe Biden's political career. And they have participated in many of his runs for office in the past. I mean, his sister Val ran his first Senate campaign that he won in 1972. And then, of course, there's his wife, Jill Biden, the first lady. And she too has been part of the Biden aura and involved in decisions that he has made, whether to run, whether not to, for the length of his career.

And there's this very, very famous anecdote. Biden's thinking about running for the White House in 2004. And his aides wanted him to do it. And there was a meeting at his house in Wilmington where they were trying to talk him into it. And she famously walked by this group wearing just a bikini and on her stomach was scrawled the word no right on her belly in a black sharpie. I think we all know that Joe Biden did not run in 2004. Biden spent Sunday at Camp David with his family, where they urged him to keep going with his reelection campaign, according to people familiar with the conversations. One of the people said there was a strong consensus for him to continue on.

And this inner circle is pushing Biden forward? The reality is we just don't know. Okay. We know what they are saying publicly. Publicly, they are making the case that he can still win this thing. He's the best bet for Democrats. They need to get on board.

So they are making a case to lawmakers, to donors, that he can do it. But I'm not in the room when they're talking to him privately. The Biden team is taking steps to put the president out there to show he's fit to run for another term. They've announced campaign events in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And on Friday, Biden's planning to sit for an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

So we've talked about, like, the inner circle building a wall around Biden. Yeah. What factors could they be looking at that would make them change their opinion? I mean, so one thing is polling. If the president's numbers drop by 10 to 8 points, I mean, that makes it pretty hard. I think voters all along have seen Biden as old,

and many of them, big numbers of them, have said he's too old to be president. But they have supported him anyway out of concerns about Trump. And so I think that the debate in some ways was a wake-up call for elites who have not believed that he was too old versus voters who have sort of seen this all along.

In today's Wall Street Journal poll, two-thirds of Democrats said they would replace Biden on the ballot. And in private calls, many Biden donors have called for him to step down as nominee, according to Wall Street Journal reporting. Where did donors fit in in this moment? Well, there is a saying that money is sort of the mother's milk of politics. And there are donors who are considering moving away from the president and Democratic donors who would want to give their money instead to House and Senate races because they fear that if Donald Trump wins,

they want to shore up the two chambers of Congress. On Tuesday, the Biden re-election campaign said June had been their best fundraising month, raising a total of $127 million, including $38 million since the debate. Okay, but it's July, and November is like a long, long ways away. How much do you think voters are going to remember this debate performance? It's really hard to know. You know, it's important not to be predictive in these moments.

If there's anything that the last five years of politics, really last nine years of politics, has taught us is that there's a lot of upside and benefit to just gutting it out and holding on and not backing down. You know, there are lots of strong incentives not to back down. And one of them is exactly what you're saying, is that four months is a long time in politics. I mean, it's forever, really. I mean, I feel like the challenge for the Biden campaign and Democrats broadly is that this is the conversation that is being had and not sort of championing his

achievements in office or attacking their rival, Trump. Yeah. I mean, that's not great. That's not the conversation that Democrats want to be having. And it's not a winning conversation. It's not a winning message. What are the stakes for Biden in terms of his personal legacy? Well, look, if he stays in the race and he loses to Donald Trump, he will be a pariah in the Democratic Party. And I can tell you that because Jimmy Carter, who ran for second term and he lost, was absolutely a pariah in the Democratic Party. I mean, Joe Biden, in fact, when Carter was considering re-election, when he was down in the polls,

when he was doing badly, a young Joe Biden kind of polled his fellow senators and asked, should there be a brokered convention? Should we replace this guy? Is this the best person? He went around and surveyed other senators. And so he ended up endorsing Jimmy Carter's reelection campaign. After Jimmy Carter lost, he was a pariah, his top staff were a pariah, and that's what it would look like for Biden if he loses. And his legacy would be in really rough shape.

If he loses and his legacy would be in really rough shape. So, Annie, what's going to happen? Is there a chance that he might not stay in the race? You know, I've got a crystal ball on my desk and we can consult to see what's going to really happen. What I can say is there is a desire to give him space to make that decision. And part of giving him space is to kind of construct a wall and say that he's still running. If he gave any hint that he wasn't running, it would all collapse. So right now, the White House and he are saying that he remains a candidate for president. Right.

There's also the separate question, which is a very real one, not a political question, but the very real question of what is going on with the president's health. Can he govern? And I think that's a question that Democrats are also asking each other. I know it's a question they're asking each other. That's all for today, Wednesday, July 3rd. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Victoria Dominguez, Ken Thomas, and Aaron Zittner. Thanks for listening. We're off tomorrow for July 4th.

See you Friday.