Two senior House Democrats tell CBS News they believe that President Biden could leave the 2024 presidential race in three to five days, after a pressure campaign from top lawmakers in his own party, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. The lawmakers did not have insight into the precise timing of such a move.
The two House members said the tide has turned, and each day of indecision from Mr. Biden would be met by more Democratic requests to step aside.
So far, 22 congressional Democrats have called on Mr. Biden to withdraw his relection bid. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana became just the second Democratic senator to call on Mr. Biden to drop out, telling The Daily Montanan that “while I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”
Rep. Jim Costa of California also told CBS News Thursday that he was calling on Mr. Biden to “pass the torch to the next generation.”
In a letter dated July 6, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland wrote Mr. Biden a 3 1/2-page letter that did not explicitly call on him to relinquish the nomination, but urged him to consider it. “The hard questions that have been raised about your mental and physical stamina . . . are not just medical and scientific questions now,” he wrote. “They are also political questions because both political leaders and tens of millions of voting citizens have formed judgments based on the events of the last few weeks.”
He continued, “The judgment you must make in turn, therefore, is not only a private medical judgment about how you feel but a public political one about how others feel because, in the end, the people will decide the fate of this election and of our democracy itself.” Raskin left it to Mr. Biden and his family to make the final decision.
But he told the president, “Everything we believe in is on the line in the next four-and-a-half months. We have an overriding obligation to defeat the forces of resurgent monarchy and oppression. Everything else pales in comparison to this struggle, even your magnificent policy achievements.”
The two lawmakers noted that there’s been an absence of the strongly worded memos that campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon usually sends that proclaim the campaign is running full speed ahead.
They know Schumer, Jeffries, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered Mr. Biden bad news and are barely concealing that with noncommittal statements that don’t come close to denials.
The New York Times quoted an ally of Pelosi’s who said the former speaker told Mr. Biden on a call that she’d seen polling that suggested he couldn’t win. The president claimed he had polls that showed otherwise.
“Put Donilon on the phone,” Pelosi said, in reference to top Biden aide Mike Donilon. “Show me what polls.”
A senior congressional Democratic aide and a senior Biden campaign official acknowledged to CBS News that Pelosi recently spoke to Mr. Biden by phone, and that she spoke with former President Barack Obama about Mr. Biden’s prospects and what she is hearing from Democratic lawmakers. She has remained close to Jeffries and Schumer. The former speaker has been quiet in meetings with the Democratic caucus, but she has privately expressed her views with members.
Meanwhile, historian Jon Meacham, an author of several presidential biographies, told CBS News’ Robert Costa in a text message Thursday night that a “report about my doing anything with a speech is totally false.” According to Costa, Meacham had been talked about by some Democrats as a Biden confidant who might be working on a possible “exit the race speech.”
Among the larger world of Democratic strategists, there is a sense that Mr. Biden’s departure from the race is inevitable and is just a matter of timing and mechanic to timing and mechanics.
As Raskin noted, the decision about whether to run remains in the president’s hands. He has won the vast majority of the Democratic Party’s pledged delegates and its most faithful grassroots supporters.
Robert Costa and Nikole Killion contributed reporting.
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