WASHINGTON – To borrow a favorite phrase from the man himself, President Joe Biden is at an inflection point.
Is his on-the-ropes reelection campaign about public service or his ego? About securing his legacy or shaping the future? Such opposing forces of American politics have been clashing with each other since his awful debate with Donald Trump.
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Biden now is weighing whether to bow to the mounting pressure to step aside. His decision will be based not just on this moment but on his long history in public life and the extraordinary personal struggles he has endured since the dawn of his political career.
His party’s swelling crisis of confidence in Biden’s capacity to beat Trump is confronting his legendary self-assuredness. The next days will prove to be critical.
Right now, he's dug in and he and his campaign have insisted he's staying in the race.
In the three weeks since the debate, Biden has banked on inertia and the fear of the unknown — and there are a lot of unknowns — to stem the panic in his party. But Democrats are increasingly seeking to push him out because of what they believe they do know: Biden is currently trailing Trump and threatens to bring them all down with him.
First with private signals, and now with coordinated leaks, some of the most influential Democrats in the country — among them Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer — let it be known they had doubts about Biden’s viability. Some told him so directly. All let it be known publicly. The polls — not great before the debate — are worse.
It suddenly looks like the walls are closing in.
The inflection point
Biden’s orbit, already shrinking, has grown smaller in recent days. He’s down to a few longtime aides as he decides what to do.
His loyalists express frustration that the Democratic criticism of the president is harming his ability to beat Trump. Campaign officials have said Biden has grown even more committed to staying in the race as the calls for him to go have mounted.
But there is also time for Biden to reconsider — a brief opening seemingly being exploited by party leaders trying to plot his exit.
Biden has kept a brisk schedule since the June 27 debate catastrophe, working to convince voters he has not gone to seed, that he is up for the task of another four years, that the debate was merely a “bad night."
After some well-received speeches mixed with so-so TV interviews and a day featuring an extended news conference in which he displayed a nuanced grasp of policy but also committed a few gasp-inducing gaffes, he got COVID-19.
Meanwhile in Milwaukee, energized and united Republicans celebrated Trump's nomination at their convention, their adoration stoked by his defiant response in the seconds after a gunman opened fire at his Pennsylvania rally in a failed attempt on his life.
Biden retreated to Delaware to isolate and recover. His biggest supporter and one of his closest advisers, Jill Biden, is with him.
The trajectory of the race
Some Democrats hope Biden, while off the campaign trail for a while, will take a fresh look at the trajectory of the race and how he wants history to remember him over the coming days.
For Biden’s team it’s whiplash. His aides thought the president had quelled the flaring post-debate concerns about his age and acuity — twice.
First, he made a surprise call into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to make a flat-out challenge: “Any of these guys that don’t think I should run, run against me. Announce for president, challenge me at the convention!”
Then, he held his own for an hour last week at a news conference closing the NATO summit — speaking assuredly in a high-pressure, unscripted setting. Though, he flubbed when he named Trump instead of Kamala Harris as his vice president, after calling Ukraine’s president “Putin” and quickly correcting himself.
After a weekend time-out to let the country absorb the shock of the assassination attempt on Trump, calls for Biden to exit the race resurfaced. Even Joe Scarborough of “Morning Joe” added his voice to that chorus.
It sure didn't seem like isolation was changing his mind. On Friday, he bluntly called for restored unity and sought to shift the focus back to Trump’s agenda. He said he was looking forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to challenge the Republican’s claims, “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.”
“The stakes are high, and the choice is clear,” he said. Together, we will win.”
The president's loyalists are torn. Some believe they can quell the concerns once again, but there's also a new fear that maybe this time it’s for real. But Biden's entire life and history are stacked up against calling it quits. For him, giving up has never been the right answer.
This is a man who has been through so many personal trials and rebounded from the brink, dating back to the days after he was first elected to the Senate, when his first wife and baby daughter were killed in a car wreck that seriously injured his two young boys.
He suffered and survived two brain aneurysms. He has weathered the death of son Beau, the one he has often said should have been president some day. He's dealt with his other son's descent into drug addiction and more recently, conviction on gun charges.
Biden's been counted out politically many times, only to defy the conventional wisdom. He lost the first two presidential primaries in 2020 only to recover and win the election. Pundits predicted the midterm elections in 2022 would be a massive sweep by Republicans, but they were not.
Can he balance the concerns?
So, how does Biden balance these very real concerns — about protecting the institutions he loves in a risky election where he says the bedrock of the nation is at stake, with a stubborn streak built by decades of experience that tells him to press forward through headwinds of doubt?
There are just a few weeks before a self-imposed deadline by Democrats to nominate Biden as their guy for 2024.
It's an effort to restore order — and tamp down any other signs of mutiny. Biden has to decide whether to shut it all out — the polls, the worries, the noise — and wager his public service legacy against Trump. To him, it's a gamble that risks democracy itself, as he’s put it, if he should lose.
Influential Democrats from the highest levels of the party apparatus, including congressional leadership headed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, are sending signals of worry.
Using mountains of data showing Biden’s standing could seriously damage the ranks of Democrats in Congress, frank conversations in public and private and now the president’s own few days off, many Democrats now see an opportunity to encourage a reassessment.
Former President Obama has privately expressed concerns, and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately warned Biden that Democrats could lose the ability to seize control of the House if he doesn’t step away.
Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who called earlier for Biden to quit the race, said Thursday he has had frequent conversations with Pelosi about this. Asked about reports that Pelosi is working behind the scenes to persuade Biden to step down, Smith said no other Democrat has the party's pulse more than she does.
“We respect Nancy right up to the fact that she stepped aside,” he said. “She still was very capable, but she passed the torch to the next generation.”
Smith added, “So I think she’s a good person to listen to about where we’re at right now as a party.” Biden is 81; Pelosi, 84.
Nearly two-thirds of Democrats say Biden should withdraw from the presidential race and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to a new survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Biden has dismissed the polls as an imperfect measure.
And he really is the only person to have beaten Trump. With 108 days until the election, in a year that has already seen shocking twists and turns, there's time for something else to happen to tip the scales one way or another.
There’s also no guarantee that another candidate, such as Vice President Kamala Harris, would fare better, and private squabbles in the party have broken out over who the replacement would be if Biden steps aside.
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, Biden's closest friend in Congress and the co-chair of his campaign, was asked Thursday bout Biden staying in the race.
“I don’t have anything to tell," he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
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Associated Press Writers Zeke Miller and Calvin Woodward in Washington, Darlene Superville in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Ellen Knickmeyer in Aspen, Colorado, contributed to this report.