REHOBOTH, Del. — As President Joe Biden faces a wave of new calls from elected officials to end his re-election bid, his political allies are actively exploring ways to publicly demonstrate he still has widespread support among key elements of the Democratic Party’s base, according to three Democrats familiar with the discussions.
The new effort is aimed at turning the pressure campaign against Biden back on party insiders by seizing on anger and frustration among some voters who feel disenfranchised by attempts to push the candidate they cast their ballots for aside, the Democrats said.
In some cases, the demonstrations of support are organic, coming from organizations and constituencies that are concerned the party infighting is hurting their goal of defeating Donald Trump. They include Black clergy members, Latino community leaders and progressive activists, showing grassroots support for the president.
But the Biden campaign is also seeking to leverage that and integrate it into its own defense of the president, according to the three Democrats familiar with the discussions.
“If the Democratic elites push Biden out and disenfranchise 14 million voters like me, the Democratic legislators are no better than Republicans,” said one top Biden surrogate focused on reaching Black voters. “Democrats lose the so-called save democracy argument, and it will appear racist.”
Rallying the core of the Democratic Party base, particularly Black and Latino voters in battleground states, is a warning shot of sorts to high-dollar donors, party leaders in Washington, D.C., and candidates on the ballot this November who will need those voters to win their own elections — and to be successful in defeating Trump, regardless of who his opponent is. It comes as Biden faces diminishing options for turning around a campaign that is shedding support from lawmakers and donors.
During a call with Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday that was organized by the Biden campaign, some top Democratic donors heard that warning explicitly from leaders of organizations mobilizing Black and Latino voters in battleground states.
“While we have continuously amplified a message about saving our democracy, within our own party right now, that democracy is currently being commandeered by party elites, donors [and] the media, as opposed to being led by voters and the will of the people,” Melissa Morales, founder of the group Somos Votantes, said, according to a participant on the call.
If Biden were to drop out of the 2024 race, Harris could be the most likely beneficiary of that move. As his running mate, she’s first in line to potentially inherit the campaign’s massive war chest. If she were at the top of the Democratic ticket, she would be the first Black woman to be a major-party nominee.
The effort to amplify grassroots support is the latest turn in a war within the Democratic Party that has sharply escalated in the three weeks since Biden’s uneven debate performance, as he has so far resisted growing calls to end his campaign and is seething over longtime allies who are pushing him to do so.
One Democratic official involved in congressional races said the Biden strategy of trying to turn his voters against his critics reflects the limits of his options and influence.
“That’s something you say when you’re grasping for straws,” the official said.
Republicans are seizing on the idea that Democrats who have argued that protecting democracy is a top issue in the 2024 election — and that Trump is a threat to America’s democratic process — are trying to overturn the will of the voters.
“We can’t have a bunch of elite Democrats all of a sudden decide to do a switcheroo just because they look at the polls and say, ‘Oh, it’s bad.’ That’s undermining democracy,” Ric Grenell, a Trump ally, told reporters Monday during a Bloomberg News roundtable on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention.
“He was elected as the Democratic nominee by every single state,” Grenell added. “Why are we talking about undermining the democratic process so easily?”
The goal of the Biden advisers’ strategy, according to people close to the president, is to build on what they felt was a successful test run at a rally in Detroit a little over a week ago. During the event, a Black pastor offered a stirring introduction to Biden to cap a speaking program that included local supporters and progressive allies in the key battleground state.
It’s an attempt to make tangible the argument Biden began making a week after his poor debate performance, that party elites are at odds with ordinary voters — especially the Democratic base.
“There’s some anger out there over the feeling that people are trying to chase the president off the ballot that they voted for,” a senior Biden aide said.
Yet for many voters, there wasn’t much choice. Prominent Democrats opted against running this cycle, and the primary calendar was tailored for the incumbent president. Democratic primary voters, in many cases, had no one to choose but Biden — aside from long-shot candidate Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.
And concerns about Biden’s age were exacerbated by his debate performance last month after many people had cast their ballots.
Some Democratic candidates are hearing from voters who are worried about Biden’s ability to carry out his campaign and serve another four years in office.
Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., told NBC News that while campaigning across his state — a critical 2024 battleground — a lot of people who mention Biden “express real concerns about him going forward.”
“And that’s a concern that I’ve got to be responsive to or listen to,” said Casey, a longtime Biden ally who is in a competitive re-election fight.
On the Friday call with Democratic donors, Harris simply projected confidence, according to people on the call.
“We are going to win this election,” she said, according to the people on the call.
Indeed, while some of Biden’s advisers and members of his family are discussing what a potential announcement to exit the race might look like — and the president has privately shown a willingness to do so if he has no path to victory — his campaign also is crafting plans for him as if he’s continuing with his candidacy.
Biden said Friday he looks forward “to getting back on the campaign trail next week” in a written statement responding to Trump’s speech accepting the GOP nomination.
The president remained at his Delaware beach home on Saturday recovering from Covid-19, as nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers joined the growing list of elected officials calling for Biden to end his campaign. And a key group of the president’s advisers continued to assess his political health.
The view of many of those close to Biden is that Democrats worried about their own elections this fall are putting their own self-interest ahead of the party’s, but without fully considering what a vacuum at the top of the ticket might do. A top Biden campaign official alluded to this in a memo released Friday morning.
“He’s the presumptive nominee, there is no plan for an alternative nominee,” battleground states director Dan Kanninen wrote. “It is high past time we stop fighting one another. The only person who wins when we fight is Donald Trump.”
Kanninen’s memo argued that despite the public attention to Democratic infighting, voters the campaign was targeting in recent weeks remained open to supporting him.
Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told campaign staff during a call Friday that they should stay focused on their work and shut out the speculation about Biden’s future.
“The people that the president is hearing from that are saying, stay in this race and keep going and keep fighting, and we need you. Those voices will never be as loud as the people on TV, but remember that the people in our country are not watching cable news,” she said, according to a source familiar with the call.
When Biden faced humbling defeats in the first two nominating contests in 2020, he dismissed calls to drop out by arguing that the true base of the party — Black voters, especially — had not yet been heard. It’s an argument that was validated with his dominant win in the South Carolina primary, a victory bolstered by the endorsement of Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., who continues to back Biden.
Now, Biden’s team and other supporters argue that forcing the president off of the ticket would be a betrayal of the voters who supported him in 2024 primaries.
Clyburn said Saturday in an interview on MSNBC that he hasn’t spoken to Biden since they were together early this past week in Nevada but has been on the phone with donors and voters.
“And of what I’m hearing, 85% of the people that have contacted me are all in for the president,” he said.
