The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden, Defiant, Is Not Going Anywhere But The Campaign Trail

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

Over the weekend, a number of high-level congressional Democrats called for the president to step back from the ticket. He sent a letter on Monday that said, in short, fat chance. And, for now, it appears that Biden has largely stopped the bleeding.This episode: national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and congressional reporter Barbara Sprunt.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Hannah from Newcastle, UK. I'm currently listening to the NPR Politics podcast on the train journey to London. This podcast was recorded at 12.33pm Eastern Time on Tuesday, July 9th, 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll still be amazed that I get the chance to travel to such cool places for work. Okay, here's the show. Having just been in Europe, I's the show. I cover the White House. Today on the podcast, a rigorous weekend of campaigning for President Biden and a stern letter to congressional Democrats. The message was clear. President Biden says, I'm not going anywhere. So, Tam, you were out traveling with the president this weekend following that really difficult debate performance we've been talking so much about.

Tell me what you saw. Yeah, the debate performance at this point was like almost two weeks ago, and we are still talking about it. But what I saw was a man campaigning like he had something to prove. Biden started his Sunday going to a black church in Philadelphia, where he was absolutely greeted with warmth and prayers, prayers to stay in. Like literally, the whole church did a call and response expressing their love for the President of the United States. And Biden himself made multiple stops, and some of them unscheduled stops, shook every hand, took selfies with everyone. He was in full on campaign mode. And at a campaign field office, he spoke to a group of supporters who did not expect him to be there. They were just coming to knock doors, but there he was. And he referenced dark Brandon, which is like the laser eyes version of Joe Biden. And memefied version. Yes, the eyes version of Joe Biden.

The memefied version? Yes, the memefied Joe Biden. I tell you what, dark Brandon's coming back. And in part, Biden spent the weekend actually trying to pivot to literally running the campaign he needs to run, which is against Donald Trump and not the campaign he's been running for the last 10 days, which is essentially campaigning for his political life against members of his own party who don't think that he has what it takes. Right. You said he's you said he's campaigning like he has something to prove to him because clearly he does. Oh, he absolutely has something to prove. And a lot of Democrats are absolutely freaked out that he can't win and he's going to drag them down with him. But one Democrat who was not freaked out is John Fetterman, the senator from Pennsylvania,

who, as you might remember, also had his own catastrophically bad debate performance. And he said Joe Biden stood by him. But he also made the case that Biden really should be running and he was campaigning with him in Pennsylvania. You know, that was over the weekend. Then on Monday, President Biden sent this letter to Democrats in Congress. What was that about? Yeah, this was a two page letter on the spicy side, basically saying, I've heard your concerns. Now drop it. He said, I'm staying in the race. He implied that all of this hand-wringing about whether he should remain in the race, whether he should back out after that terrible

debate performance, all of that helps Trump. And there's one quote from the letter that I pulled because it just really struck me. He says, quote, the question of how to move forward has been well aired for over a week now, and it's time for it to end. And this came like right as, you know, everyone is coming back to the Hill after a recess. And it sort of just put a line in the sand, like, stop it, stop it now. And in a way, he was preempting their return, because while members of Congress were away, there were a lot of discussions happening. And a lot of people saying that they hoped that he decided to do what was best for the country. And what this letter said was, no, no, I think what's best for the country is me to stay

the nominee. And that's what I'm doing. And he also called into Morning Joe and was absolutely defiant on Monday morning. I'm getting so frustrated by the elites. Now, I'm not talking about you guys, but about the elites in the party who they know so much more. If any of these guys don't think I should run against me, go ahead, announce the president. Challenge me at the convention. So, Barbara, President Biden says he's staying in. He's got some allies around him saying he should stay in. But obviously, as we've been talking about, there are some high ranking Democrats who say he should step aside. I mean, who are the people that are calling for Biden to drop out?

There's a little less than about a dozen lawmakers and peers keeping a tracking of this online calling for Biden to stop his campaign. And that happened mostly during recess. It includes members like Mark Takano of California, Angie Craig of Minnesota, a frontline member who's fighting to retain her seat in a tough district, and perhaps most notably Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. And he said that Biden hasn't been able to make his case to the public and continuing this campaign is a mistake in his view. I have to say, I think like some of the more notable statements are actually from Biden allies who aren't necessarily calling for him to step aside, but are making these very heavy, strongly worded, you know, statements about the stakes of the election. And it's a lot of what I heard yesterday, particularly on the Senate side

on the Hill. One example, the Senate President pro tem, Patty Murray of Washington, she had a really strong statement yesterday saying Biden has to do more to demonstrate that he can campaign strong enough to beat Trump and that he has to seriously, I think she put it, consider the best way to preserve his legacy. I mean, that's pretty heavy stuff. Another interesting reaction, Colorado Senator Michael Bennett, he said Democrats have to have like an open family conversation this week about Biden remaining in the race. And when he was asked how complicated it might be if Biden did choose to step aside after so many people have cast primary votes, you know, here's what he had to say.

I think we have a moral obligation to the country to establish that we can win. So a lot of Democrats acknowledging that there is a concern here, essentially, but stopping short of saying what should happen next. I mean, do we have a sense? Has Biden staunched the bleeding here? I think going into this week, there was this big idea that the dam is going to break. There's going to be this critical mass reached of Democrats coming out of the woodwork once they're all back together on the Hill saying, we're calling on him to step aside. And that hasn't happened yet.

House Democrats had their morning caucus meeting this morning for about two hours. A few members said they expressed to the group that they thought Biden should go, but in no way did it feel like a wave. In fact, I mean, it felt heavy. You know, it felt like it was a difficult conversation. People seemed a little downtrodden at times. One member told our colleague, Claudia Grisales, that it kind of had the vibes of a funeral. There are still strong, notable folks in both the Senate and the House who are vocally supporting Biden staying in the race. You know, while I was out with Biden on Sunday, it very much had the feel of, you know, are we watching the last days of Democratic nominee Joe Biden? And then coming back, there have just been a number of

things, as Barbara mentioned, that makes it look very much like the snowball did not turn into an avalanche. This again is why we always say things may have changed by the time you hear this. Anyway, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in just a second. And we're back. Tam, part of what's amazing about all of this and has been habitually true of Joe Biden is he's just a very tenacious politician, very tenacious campaigner. I would say that defiance is his superpower. It can also be his Achilles heel at times. And we will find out in November what it was this time. But he is someone who feels that he's always being discounted, that people always underestimate him, and that he always proves them wrong. And this is, this is, you know, basically built into the

Biden DNA and the political DNA of everyone who works for him or with him. As a result of that, you know, he is not someone who responds well to people telling him what to do, or to members of Congress saying you're going to lose because he just doesn't believe it. You know, that is extremely frustrating to a lot of people who look at the polls and he is losing his campaign will tell us he is behind in the polls. His campaign also believes and even some outside Democrats who I talk to still believe he can win, even right now at this very low point. Whatever Democrats may say, whatever his critics and his allies may say, this is a decision that rests with Joe Biden. If he doesn't want to go anywhere,

fundamentally, he doesn't have to. Well, this is the thing about like all these conversations and hand-wringing that's happening on Capitol Hill. You know, members of Congress can wage a pressure campaign, and it's possible that that could become a more intense campaign than it is now. But it's still just a pressure campaign. They have no real power to change anything about the process here. They recognize that. And I think that they realize there's a window of time where it is perhaps less politically dangerous to talk about what they see as the weakness of the person at the top of the ticket. And of course, as we talked about with that letter, you know, Biden thinks it's already dangerous to be talking about it as long as they have been. The interesting thing is that Democrats are not like Republicans in this way at this time. Like, Joe Biden is not a cult of personality. Democrats in Congress and donors and voters are not like,

oh, Joe Biden, he is the one, he is the only one. But Republicans are different. Former President Trump was not that long ago convicted in a jury trial of multiple felonies and Republicans solidified behind him. There were there were no calls for him to step aside in the way that there were calls for Joe Biden to step aside. We've got just under four months until the election. I mean, is this is this the way the rest of the campaign is going to be? I think on the Hillside, there's an interesting dynamic that we're going to see unfold. Everything that's to come is going to be even more amplified and studied and talked about than it would have been otherwise. And the bar was already high.

It's a presidential campaign. But every gaffe that Joe Biden has after that very poor debate performance is going to be held very closely under a microscope. And it's going to affect every Democrat in Congress, some more than others, certainly. But they're going to get a taste of what Republican members had to deal with all the time during the Trump administration, when he would go out and say something that caused some, you caused some uproar. And all these reporters would say, well, what do you think? What's your position on this? What's happening with Trump? This is now going to happen to all of these House members and senators, as many of them are campaigning for their own seat.

They're already worried about whether this hurts their chances of reclaiming the House. And now, for the next four months or so, they're going to be having to address Biden's strength as a candidate every time there's an issue. I think that this campaign is going to be ugly and unpleasant. And it already was. Even before the debate, the Trump campaign had super cuts of Joe Biden, like slipping on the stairs and all of these other things. So I think that we are going to see a lot of discussion of cognitive tests and cognitive abilities between now and November. And I think also what we might see is more of President Biden doing the things that someone who wants to be president would do. That is more campaign stops. He's going to be in Michigan on Friday, Nevada next week. I will say that previously that his staff sort of treated him like a Fabergé egg. It didn't let the press get very close to him. And this weekend was notable because we were very close while he was doing all of that handshaking and selfie taking with supporters. On Thursday, he has a solo press conference at the conclusion of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C.

President Biden has done remarkably few solo press conferences as president. So this is notable. Who knows whether they added this after the very bad debate performance or whether it was always in the plan. But I think that they are having him go off script more. He's doing a call tonight with Democratic mayors. He's working to shore up his coalition, going to NAACP, meeting with AFL-CIO. He's going to UNIDOS. Like, he's really trying to shore up the Democratic coalition and say, all right, guys, now let's

get to work. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign. I'm Barbara Sprint. I cover Congress. And I'm Tamra Keith. I cover the White House.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.