Joe Biden has said he might consider getting out of the presidential race if the Lord Almighty comes down from heaven and tells him to. And Biden doesn’t expect that: “The Lord Almighty’s not coming down,” he predicted last week.
Some Democratic lawmakers are starting to wish he would — or that Biden would at least be willing to listen to their advice too.
Democrats in both the House and Senate are increasingly calling on the president to make way for a new candidate who might stand a better chance against Donald Trump and not hurt their own chances at reelection. As they urge him to step aside, their influence is being put to the test.
More House members joined calls for Biden to pass the torch almost as soon as his Thursday night press conference ended. And Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington went beyond that, suggesting he isn’t even fit to hold office now.
“I doubt the president’s judgment about his health, his fitness to do the job and whether he is the one making important decisions about our country, rather than unelected advisers,” she told a local news outlet.
Those members probably won’t be the last ones to break ranks. Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, who thinks Biden should throw in the towel, told NOTUS this week he believes “there will be a lot more” of his colleagues saying the same thing soon. Quigley isn’t sure if those statements will actually make a difference in Biden’s thinking, but “maybe polling, maybe donors dropping off” will.
As for that line about the Lord Almighty? “I’m pretty sure he was kidding,” Quigley said. “I hope he was.”
Democratic lawmakers largely tried to show deference to Biden this week as foreign leaders were in town for a NATO summit. But an undercurrent of dread was clear anyway. In Capitol hallways, as Democrats faced questions about whether Biden should stay on the ticket, they offered plenty of meaningful silences and thinly veiled messages about the stakes.
“He’ll do what’s in the best interest of the country,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire told NOTUS when asked if Biden should be the party’s nominee.
And Sen. Chris Van Hollen said it “is a decision for the president.”
“The president understands the stakes, and I trust the president’s judgment,” he told NOTUS.
Others offered similar statements, while many refused to talk about it at all. Some of that silence is out of respect, with a number of lawmakers seemingly hoping Biden will reach what they think is the right decision without being more overtly pressured.
“It’s important at this moment, as he’s going through a process, for restraint,” said Sen. John Hickenlooper of Colorado. “Not passing judgment or making demands.”
But Hickenlooper was passing judgment in his own way: He was refusing to accept Biden’s stated intention that he will keep running. Biden has said repeatedly since the debate that he is “firmly committed” to the race and will be the Democratic nominee, including in a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday.
On Thursday, Hickenlooper wasn’t so sure.
“I don’t know whether he’s going to stay in or not,” he told NOTUS when asked if Biden will win reelection. He added: “As you get new information or understand things in different ways, sometimes people change their minds.”
Even Hickenlooper’s explanation for why Democratic senators aren’t openly pressuring Joe Biden to drop out included some language implying Biden might need to drop out.
“Joe Biden has spent his entire adult life in public service,” Hickenlooper told NOTUS. “He has done as much for this country as any person I know. It’s always been about the country. It’s always been about the common good. And it’s not about him as an individual or an ego. And I think if you start telling him he’s got to do this or do that, you diminish that patriotism, that history he has of doing the right thing for the right reason.”
Still, Hickenlooper thinks senators can have some sway in Biden’s maybe-final-maybe-not decision.
“Certainly senators provide information,” he said. “We’re not the arbiters, though.”
Sen. Tammy Baldwin, for one, has tried to provide information in the aftermath of the debate.
“I continue to share what I’m hearing from my constituency,” Baldwin — who said all week that people in her state of Wisconsin have concerns about Biden — told NOTUS on Thursday.
And Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia plans to share his own thoughts, telling reporters as he left votes on Thursday that he hopes to speak directly with Biden this weekend.
Others are steering clear, or they’re at least suggesting they are.
When asked if senators have any influence in this situation, Sen. Jeff Merkley answered, “You’ll have to ask President Biden.”
One of them has been willing to come out and say it explicitly, joining a growing cadre of House Democrats: In a Washington Post opinion piece this week, Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont called on Biden to end his campaign.
“The stakes could not be higher,” Welch wrote. “We cannot unsee President Biden’s disastrous debate performance. We cannot ignore or dismiss the valid questions raised since that night.”
Maybe it’s all having some effect. During his press conference Thursday, after hearing from concerned Democrats all week, Biden revised his threshold for reconsidering whether to stay in the race.
Perhaps it wouldn’t take the Lord Almighty to tell him to get out: He now says he’d think about it if his team told him it’s impossible to win the election.
But, Biden told reporters, “No one’s saying that.”
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Haley Byrd Wilt is a reporter at NOTUS.