Secluded in Delaware, Biden stews at pressure from allies to drop out of presidential race

WASHINGTON – Sick with Covid-19 and abandoned by allies, US President Joe Biden has been fuming at his Delaware beach house, increasingly resentful about what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to drive him out of the presidential race and bitter towards some of those he once considered close, including his one-time running mate Barack Obama.

Mr Biden has been around politics long enough to assume that the leaks appearing in the media in recent days are being coordinated to raise the pressure on him to step aside, according to people close to him. He considers Mrs Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, the main instigator but is irritated at Mr Obama as well, seeing him as a puppet master behind the scenes.

The friction between the sitting president and leaders of his own party so close to an election is unlike anything seen in Washington in generations – especially because the Democrats now working to ease him out were some of the allies most critical to his success over the last dozen years.

It was Mr Obama who elevated Mr Biden from a presidential also-ran to the vice-presidency, setting him up to win the White House in 2020, and it was

Mrs Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer

, the Senate Democratic leader, who pushed through Mr Biden’s landmark legislative achievements.

But several people close to Mr Biden, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal matters, described an under-the-weather president coughing and hacking hundreds of miles from the corridors of power as his presidency meets its most perilous moment.

He has watched with rising exasperation as a succession of news stories appeared, one after the other, reporting that Mr Schumer, Mrs Pelosi, Mr Obama and Mr Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the House Democratic leader, all had warned of a devastating defeat for the party in November.

And he certainly noticed that

Mr Obama has not done anything to help him

in recent days, even as his own former aides publicly have led the way in calling on Mr Biden to withdraw in what was interpreted, rightly or wrongly, as a message from the former president’s camp. The unseen but clearly felt presence of Mr Obama, in particular, has brought a Shakespearean quality to the drama now playing out, given their eight-year partnership.

While Mr Biden and his team publicly insist that he is staying in the race, privately, people close to him have said that he is increasingly accepting that he may not be able to, and some have begun discussing dates and venues for a possible announcement that he is stepping aside.

One factor that may stretch out a decision: Advisers believe that Mr Biden would not want to do it before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

visits Washington on July 24

at the initiative of Republicans to address Congress, unwilling to give the Premier the satisfaction, given their strained relations lately over the war in the Gaza Strip.

Yet Mr Biden bristles at pressure, and those pushing him risk his getting back up and prompting him to remain after all. Two people familiar with his thinking said he had not changed his mind as of July 19 afternoon.

In privately railing against Mr Obama and even aides to former president Bill Clinton, Mr Biden has made clear that he finds it particularly rich that the architects of historic Democratic losses in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections would be lecturing him about how to save the party after he presided over a better-than-expected midterm outcome in 2022. While one person said Mr Biden is not irked at Mr Clinton himself – in fact, he is grateful the former president has been pressing donors to keep giving – others said that Mr Obama is another story.

“We have to cauterise this wound right now, and the sooner we can do it, the better,” said Democratic Representative Gerald E. Connolly of Virginia, who has not publicly called for the President to step aside. He said the barrage of criticism must be difficult for Mr Biden. “I mean, to me, this is very painful. I think it just shows the cold calculus of politics.”

More congressional Democrats publicly called on the President on July 19 to pass the torch to another candidate to take on former president Donald Trump in autumn. Among them were Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and at least nine House Democrats, including Representative Zoe Lofgren, a close ally of Mrs Pelosi, her fellow Californian.

The fact that Mrs Pelosi’s allies have been coming out is seen as no coincidence at the President’s vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. When another of her allies, Representative Adam Schiff of California, spoke out earlier this week, a Biden administration official noted that it might be Mr Schiff’s lips moving, but it was Mrs Pelosi doing the speaking.

It has not just been her allies. Democratic Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, a Pelosi rival, said on July 19 that Mr Biden, “a mentor and friend” who helped him get elected to the House in 2014, “didn’t seem to recognise me” when they met at the D-Day anniversary commemoration in France in June.

“Of course, that can happen as anyone ages, but as I watched the disastrous debate a few weeks ago, I have to admit that what I saw in Normandy was part of a deeper problem,” Mr Moulton wrote in The Boston Globe, repeating his call for Mr Biden to drop out.

Mr Biden pushed back on July 19 with a statement vowing to continue in the race

. “I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America: one where we save our democracy, protect our rights and freedoms, and create opportunity for everyone,” he said.

The White House and the Biden campaign have denied that he is about to drop out. “Absolutely, the President is in this race,” Ms Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chair, said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on July 19, one of the President’s favourite shows and a regular venue for Democrats speaking to other Democrats. “You’ve heard him say that time and time again.”

She acknowledged, though, that the campaign has seen erosion. “I’m not here to say that this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign,” she said. “There’s no doubt that it has been. And we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support, but it has been a small movement.” She argued that polls show the race was “hardened already” before the debate, and not that many voters have shifted since.

“The American people know that the President is older,” she said. “They see that. They knew that before the debate. Yes, of course, we have a lot of work to do to make sure that we are reassuring the American people that, yes, he’s old, but he can do the job, and he can win.”

All the political machinations have been occurring as the President is fighting off symptoms from Covid-19 in isolation in Rehoboth. He was still coughing and hoarse on July 19, but he was improving, according to his doctor. His wife Jill was with him, although staying in a separate room.

Mr Biden’s pique at his former partner, Mr Obama, represents the latest chapter in a complicated relationship. While not close when they teamed up to run in 2008, they became friends over their two terms in the White House together, bonding especially when Mr Biden’s son Beau died in 2015.

But Mr Biden has nursed a grudge ever since Mr Obama gently discouraged him from running for president in 2016, steering the Democratic nomination to Mrs Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump. So Mr Obama’s advice may not be particularly welcome in Rehoboth at this point, which is perhaps one reason the former president is not offering it directly, according to people close to him.

Mr Obama last saw Mr Biden at a lavish, record-setting Hollywood fund-raiser before the debate in June, when the two appeared onstage together. At the end, Mr Obama appeared to be leading Mr Biden offstage. One former Obama aide who was present that night said that it was clear the former president was startled and shaken by how much Mr Biden had aged and seemed disoriented.

That fund-raiser was the last big haul for the campaign, which had hoped to raise about US$50 million (S$67 million) in July from large donors for the Biden Victory Fund, just as it did in June. But after the debate, it may collect less than US$25 million in July, an excruciatingly modest sum for a summer month in a presidential race, according to four people briefed on the campaign’s finances. The campaign is not required to disclose its July fund-raising numbers until mid-August, and a spokesperson dismissed the reports as “speculation”.

As they try to influence Mr Biden, many associates are holding back from harsh public statements because they feel empathy for him and worry such statements might backfire. Going public, some said, might cause the President to dig in even more. And some were reluctant to have their names attached to statements because they worry about his reaction to a pile-on from his friends.

While the roughly 40 members of Congress who have publicly called on the President to leave the race represent a minority, privately, dozens more are said to agree. Two House Democrats estimated that, on a secret ballot, 70 per cent to 80 per cent of their caucus would prefer Mr Biden to withdraw.

But Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat and one of the President’s closest allies, made an impassioned defence of Mr Biden’s ability to serve a second term. Speaking from the stage of the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado, Mr Coons cited the President’s work hosting a Nato summit, as well as his recent news conference and campaign events. “There are folks still saying he is not strong enough or capable enough to be our next president,” Mr Coons said. “I disagree.” NYTIMES