WASHINGTON — Several of President Joe Biden’s closest allies, including three people directly involved in his re-election effort, told NBC News that they now see his chances of winning as zero — and that he is more likely to unseat his fellow Democratic candidates.
“He should drop out,” said one Biden campaign official. “He will never recover from this.”
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For two weeks, Biden has been struggling to stabilize his campaign after the debate in late June. His ongoing cleanup effort, scheduled for one-on-one meetings with Democratic senators and a presidential news conference Thursday, has done little to placate lawmakers and party officials.
On the contrary, the opposite happens.
The group of Democrats who felt they had to reconsider their decision to stay in the race grew to include aides, operatives and officials tasked with steering their campaign to victory. Those who spoke to NBC News said the view that he should drop out of the Democratic nomination and let it go to someone else — likely Vice President Kamala Harris — is widespread even within the campaign ranks and outside Democratic establishments that support him.
“No one involved in this effort thinks he has his way,” said a second person who worked to elect him.
Third-person current state close to re-election campaign – questions swirling around Biden’s cognitive abilities, lack of fundraising and more polls showing Biden losing support and other candidates doing better — not sustainable. This person also said they don’t see how the campaign will win.
They all spoke on condition of anonymity because they don’t want to appear to be doing more damage to the 2020 candidate they value for his victory over then-President Donald Trump and his policies in the White House. But two people close to Biden told NBC News that while they have not given up hope of a comeback, they see it as an increasingly unlikely outcome. And they believe that the goal of defeating Trump in November should take precedence over supporting Biden.
“The question for me and for many of us is: Who is the best person to defeat Donald Trump? said another person working to elect Biden. “Many of us who are true blue are questioning our initial thinking about it.”
Ultimately, the decision rests on whether Biden stays, and the president insisted this week that he is not going anywhere. But those sources say it’s over whether Biden is released before November or loses to Trump on Election Day.
Hours after NBC News asked Biden aides about that outcome, campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez sent a memo to staff Thursday explaining why they believe the president can still win.
“Our internal data and public polls show the same thing: this remains a margin-of-error race in key battleground states,” they said. “The movement we’re seeing, while real, is not a sea change in the state of the race — while some of that movement is from undecided voters to Trump, much of the movement has historically been toward undecideds by Democratic constituencies.”
O’Malley Dillon and Chavez Rodriguez said they still see Georgia and Arizona — states that Biden won in 2020 but are now trailing in the polls — as winnable, along with the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
“No one denies that the controversy was a failure,” they wrote. “But Joe Biden and this campaign have failed before. We clearly see what we need to do to win. As a party, we will move forward and win, so that every day from now until Election Day, we will focus on defeating Donald Trump.”
Biden’s defenders made a sign 538 fall election forecast This shows that the president’s chances of winning are almost unchanged after the debate at 48 out of 100. On an average of 538 points, Biden left Trump behind by 2.1%.
But the Democrats have this week he was looking at the queues In other surveys that raise alarms, including the AARP survey It shows Biden trailing in Wisconsinthis was his best battleground.
“It’s a brilliantly brilliant data point,” said a longtime Democratic presidential campaign strategist. “We have this window and the White House is running out of time, which is very selfish. We’re all waiting for Joe Biden to get back up, which is not a great position to be in.”
NBC News informed On Wednesday, fundraising for the campaign dried up as major Democratic donors and local contributors closed their wallets. Meanwhile, Trump, who is set to accept the Republican nomination next week, is raking in the cash.
The worry for many Democrats is that not only will Biden lose, but he will perform so poorly that he will serve as a prop for down-ballot candidates.
“I’m concerned that the symbol of our party is the person running for president, and it all comes down to down-ballot races,” said one state party chairman, who wants Biden to drop out of his campaign.
But as more Democrats came to the conclusion that Biden couldn’t win and shouldn’t even try, his inner circle shrank to include only family members and a few longtime advisers. the future of the campaign.
Biden’s overt flattery and reliance on an increasingly isolated set of advisers have damaged the confidence of Democratic insiders in his ability to make the best decisions for himself, the party and the country.
A Democratic lawmaker close to Biden said that while he would “never publicly disavow” the president, he believes bowing out would be “the right thing for him and for the country.”
This lawmaker argued that Biden still has a chance to defeat Trump. However, he said Biden’s legacy would be “totally destroyed” if he loses and drags down the Democratic nominees. Public calls for Biden to drop out of the race are “counterproductive” because it makes the president more likely to withdraw, the lawmaker said.