It shouldn’t shock anyone that top Democrats are concerned about Joe Biden. The June 27 debate obliterated the party’s hopes for a successful election season. The top of the ticket got exposed, with questions about Biden’s fitness for office permeating the national discussion. Even with an ABC News interview and Biden’s NATO presser tonight, it hasn’t wiped away most of the questions about the president's health—he referred to Donald Trump as the vice president.
Joe Biden never had the chops to be president. Obama knew it, so he quickly backed Hillary to succeed him, a move that the Delaware liberal has resented immensely. It’s also why he hasn’t yielded advice from his former boss or those around him. Nancy Pelosi also poked the bear this week, coming right to the edge of calling on Biden to drop out. Reportedly, both Democrats are in contact with one another, colluding to find a way to get Biden to exit the race. The problem is that they don’t know how to make that happen, which is the predicament facing everyone in the ‘dump Biden’ camp.
In a lengthy CNN piece by Jeff Zeleny and Edward Isaac-Dovere, the article delves into the Obama factor behind the scenes, where the two men have spoken less since the Biden presidency and where public displays of affection belie a cooler relationship. Obama is also aware that any further involvement besides his reported hands-off approach in sifting through this mess engulfing the Democratic Party will likely find its way into a Trump rally. The last thing Obama wants is for Trump, whom he despises, to say something along the lines of ‘even Biden’s former boss, Obama, wants him out.’ He’s also aware that he could be viewed as being the proverbial Brutus in pushing out his former VP (via CNN):
Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have spoken privately about Joe Biden and the future of his 2024 campaign. Both the former president and ex-speaker expressed concerns about how much harder they think it’s become for the president to beat Donald Trump. Neither is quite sure what to do.
Democrats are desperate for the dispiriting infighting to end so they can get back to trying to beat the former president. And they’re begging either Obama or Pelosi to help them get there, aware that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t have the trust of Biden and that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t have the depth of relationship to deliver the message.
CNN spoke with more than a dozen members of Congress, operatives and multiple people in touch with both Obama and Pelosi, many of whom say that the end for Biden’s candidacy feels clear and at this point it’s just a matter of how it plays out, even after Thursday night’s news conference.
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Many of Pelosi’s colleagues are hoping that she can bring an end to the turmoil that has engulfed Democrats for the last two weeks. And to a good chunk of them, that end can come if and when she tells Biden that he has to drop out.
Pelosi has spoken to Biden since the debate, but in the time since, the California Democrat has made clear that she does not see Biden’s decision to stay in the race as final. But she, through an aide, declined to comment further.
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But Obama’s deepening skepticism about his friend’s ability to win reelection is one of the worst kept secrets in Washington.
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In conversations with some Democrats over the past two weeks, Obama has swatted away the notion that he could push Biden one direction or the other even if he wanted to, which underscores their long-running complicated, yet loyal, relationship. And it’s been complicated even further during their time apart: since leaving office behind – and their weekly lunches at the White House for eight years – the two have spoken far less than some of their advisers have often intimated.
If the former president did try to steer Biden to get out, people who know Obama say, he is aware the prism through which it could be seen. Biden has written that he felt Obama was not encouraging of his jumping in late to the Democratic primaries in the months after his son Beau died in 2015. Though Obama believes that he was trying to help his then-vice president focus on his grief and not wade into what would have been an incredibly hard primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, that may not be how another conversation would go.
“Biden would say, ‘Well, Mr. President, you already used that chip in 2015 and it got us Donald Trump,’” speculated a longtime 2020 campaign aide. “I think it would harden him more.”
One point of contention is the damning New York Times op-ed by George Clooney, who called on Biden to drop out, saying that the Biden we all saw on debate night was the president the nation witnessed getting demolished by Trump. Clooney was in contact with Obama before the op-ed was published. While the former president didn’t explicitly order the essay, he didn’t try to dissuade him from writing it—a pure Tony Soprano move.
Yet, the lack of action on this topic is a throwback to one of Obama’s biggest flaws, which was to become afflicted by paralysis by analysis. If Biden can’t win, and there are scores of Democrats who think it’s over, then how do they prevent going off the cliff?