Biden vows to keep running as signs point to rapidly eroding support

WASHINGTON (AP):

A defiant President Joe Biden vowed Wednesday to keep running for reelection, rejecting growing pressure from Democrats to withdraw after a disastrous debate performance raised questions about his readiness to keep campaigning, much less win in November.

But increasingly ominous signs were mounting for the president. Two Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to exit the race while a leading ally publicly suggested how the party might choose someone else. And senior aides said they believed he might only have a matter of days to show he was up to the challenge before anxiety in the party boils over.

“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running … no one’s pushing me out,” Biden said on a call with staffers from his reelection campaign. “I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.”

In his private conversations, Biden was focused on efforts to course correct from his rocky debate and on the threat that, in his view, former President Donald Trump poses to the country, as he scoured for feedback on what went wrong last week Thursday in Atlanta and took responsibility for his performance.

“We had a direct, open, clear-eyed conversation about the debate, his thoughts on what happened and why it wasn’t his best evening or best debate,” Senator Chris Coons, who spoke with Biden on Tuesday, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “He wanted advice. He was asking earnestly for input and comment on what he should do to restore confidence and support, and what’s the best path forward.”

Coons, the president’s closest ally on Capitol Hill, said Biden clearly understood the urgency, the difficulty and the importance of the election, as the senator advised that the president do more unscripted, open-ended events to restore confidence in his candidacy. The two also spoke about Biden’s schedule and its impact on his political efforts, particularly as he balances that task with critical governing tasks such as the NATO summit in Washington next week.

Biden’s efforts to pull multiple levers to salvage his faltering reelection include his impromptu appearance with campaign aides, private conversations with senior lawmakers, a weekend blitz of travel and a network television interview. But he was confronting serious indications that support for him was rapidly eroding on Capitol Hill and among other allies.

Representative Raúl Grijalva told The New York Times that though he backs Biden as long as he is a candidate, this “is an opportunity to look elsewhere” and what Biden “needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat — and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.”

Senior advisers say they believe the 81-year-old Biden may have mere days to mount a convincing display of his fitness for office before his party’s panic over his debate performance and anger about his response boils over, according to two people with knowledge who insisted on anonymity to more freely discuss strategy. The president accepts the urgency of the task — having reviewed the polling and mountains of media coverage — but he is convinced he can do that in the coming days and insistent that he will not step out of the race, they said.

Biden met for more than hour at the White House on Wednesday night, in person and virtually, with more than 20 Democratic governors who afterward described the conversation as “candid”, but said they were standing behind Biden despite being concerned about a Trump victory in November.

“The president is our nominee. The president is our party leader,” said Governor Wes Moore of Maryland. He added that, in the meeting, Biden “was very clear that he’s in this to win.”