Many senior Biden officials believe he should step down as he becomes increasingly isolated

 

President Joe Biden is more isolated than ever, and many senior White House and campaign officials now privately believe he should abandon his second-term campaign — and soon.

“The next 72 hours are important,” a Democratic governor in close contact with party officials told aides Thursday. “This can’t go on much longer.”

In interviews with CNN, more than two dozen sources familiar with the dynamics within the West Wing and the campaign said it is now widely accepted that Biden’s continued presence in the 2024 race is entirely untenable.

“Everyone is saying it privately,” said a senior Democratic Party official. “People are seeing and feeling the walls closing in.”

Another top Democrat close to the White House described Biden as “exceptionally isolated and insular” since the June 27 presidential debate on CNN. Multiple sources have said that some of Biden’s senior advisers, including adviser Anita Dunn, attorney Bob Bauer and campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, faced ire from the president’s family after the debate.

This only had the effect of further narrowing Biden’s already notoriously small and impenetrable inner circle of advisers with unfettered access to the president.

Three weeks after his disastrous debate performance that shocked even his closest aides, friends, and Democrats across the party, a surprisingly small number of his closest aides, chief among them decades-long advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, and members of the Biden family appear to be entrenched with the president. That inner circle has alarmed many Democrats who wonder whether Biden is getting realistic data on the plight of his candidacy.

White House deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, a longtime Biden aide, is joining Donilon and Ricchetti in forming a protective bubble around the president. Anthony Bernal, Jill Biden’s chief of staff, has become even more powerful as the crisis has deepened and has cracked down on any signs of dissent, two sources say, flagging any critics to the first lady. A person familiar with the inner circle of advisers said Tomasini has no role in deciding who the president sees or talks to.

Ricchetti has the clearest view of the challenges Biden faces, two people familiar with the dynamics inside the West Wing said, largely because he remains the go-to guy for lawmakers trying to send a message to the president. Amid a flurry of speculation about Biden’s future, senior advisers to Biden’s West Wing told CNN Thursday night that they had had no discussions among themselves, or with Biden, about his withdrawal from the presidential race.

In response to questions about this story, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden is “proud of the full team he’s assembled.”

“He has made no changes to the group of advisors he consults, who he trusts because they have demonstrated the integrity to tell the truth and to have the well-being of the American people in mind,” Bates said.

Campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said, “Here at headquarters, we’re working hard because to win campaigns, you work hard. There’s a tremendous sense of pride throughout our office, because we know how important and critical the work we’re doing here is to the fate of our democracy.”

Multiple sources also told CNN that the president’s recent response to bad polls has been to question whether anyone else can do better than him. Meanwhile, meetings and phone calls with anyone who might be able to deliver bad news appear to have stopped.

“The phones just stopped ringing,” one prominent Democratic Party official put it.

CNN previously reported that during a tense conversation between former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Biden last week in which the two disagreed about polls, Pelosi asked Donilon, a former pollster, to join the call to review the data.

A spokesperson for Pelosi said Thursday that “the press frenzy fueled by anonymous sources misrepresents any conversations the Speaker may have had with the President.”

“He doesn’t want to hear from anybody. He wants to hear from Mike Donilon and Steve,” said a senior Democrat close to the White House.

A person close to Biden’s inner circle insisted that Donilon and Ricchetti have presented a range of views to Biden and that the president himself has spoken directly with numerous party officials to hear their feedback.

And in a meeting with the top House Democrat, Hakeem Jeffries, Biden forcefully disputed the idea that Jeffries’ colleagues wanted him to step aside, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Unlike on Capitol Hill, where Democratic lawmakers have slowly begun to publicly voice their concerns (so far, 20 House Democrats have come forward to call on Biden to step down), White House and campaign aides have had little choice but to continue doing their day-to-day work. As Biden and his campaign aides continue to publicly insist that the president isn’t going anywhere, the mood in many corners of the White House and the campaign has been one of deep despair.

“There are a lot of people who say, ‘This is my job to do this,’” said one Democrat close to the White House. “But privately, they feel differently.”

Biden’s deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, said Thursday that the campaign is “not working in any scenario” in which Biden is not the presidential nominee.

“Our campaign is not working in any scenario where President Biden is not the frontrunner. He is and will be the Democratic nominee,” he said at a DNC press conference in Milwaukee.

Biden’s shockingly hesitant debate performance, and the downward spiral of his candidacy since, have sparked serious discontent within the White House, with many pointing fingers at senior advisers. Officials inside and outside the administration have quietly questioned the intentions of those in the president’s inner circle, and whether their choice to stay the course at all costs stems from a fear of acknowledging that they misunderstood the situation or a desire to preserve their proximity to power.

“This is not just about Biden,” a former aide who worked with Biden for decades told CNN. “There are other senior advisers who are looking at whether they did the right thing in this.”

Frustration with the president’s advisers has permeated all levels of the White House as staffers grapple with a lack of information and decisions about their professional futures.

“Overall, the staff is just better than the leadership here,” a White House official said.

Several former administration officials told CNN that they have seen a surge in resumes hitting their desks in recent weeks as their former colleagues begin looking for exit plans in the private sector.

As Biden spent Thursday away from home recovering from Covid-19 at his beach house in Delaware, those who spoke to him described him as “receptive” to arguments for abandoning his reelection bid, a senior Democratic adviser told CNN.

Biden is in a “contemplative phase” as he isolates in Rehoboth Beach. A source familiar with the president’s mindset said he is “thinking things through” and “deliberating” how to proceed with his reelection campaign while in isolation. He has privately admitted to others that there is a limited path forward, given all the unfavorable data, the source said.

This source said the president was unlikely to make any kind of announcement before the weekend and warned that anyone who thinks they know what Biden will do actually doesn’t.

That leaves it an open question, frustratingly so for many Democrats, whether Biden has made any new decisions about his future. But even if he heeds calls to step aside, it would set in motion a cascading series of events that officials would need time to prepare for.

Inside the White House, senior administration officials are bracing for Republicans to call on Biden to resign if he doesn’t seek reelection. Those arguments are one of many complicating factors surrounding Biden’s decision.

With Biden’s political future in the balance, the White House is receiving a steady stream of letters, phone calls and texts from Americans, including Democratic voters like Terri and John Hale.

“It is with the greatest respect that we offer this conclusion: You cannot win this race,” the Hales, retirees from Ankeny, Iowa, wrote in a letter to the White House obtained by CNN. “Not because you are not the best man, but because the public, rightly or wrongly, now sees your age and perceived limitations as the primary issue in the campaign.” [CNN]

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