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      If Biden Drops Out, How Long Do Democrats Have to Pick a Nominee?

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      The party’s official nominating convention is in mid-August, but a virtual roll call vote is supposed to take place beforehand.Editors Note: An earlier version of this article misstated Ohio’s deadline for a candidate to be certified. Ohio legislators passed a bill extending the deadline, and it is no longer before the Democratic convention.If President Biden were to decide to end his re-election campaign, the Democratic Party would technically have until its convention the week of Aug. 19 to nominate a different standard-bearer. But for practical purposes, the deadline may be earlier.That is because Ohio previously required candidates to be legally certified by Aug. 7 in order to be included on the state’s ballot. In response to that, the Democratic National Committee said it would take a virtual roll-call vote before the convention in order to meet the deadline, though the exact date for that vote has not been set.The early roll call is no longer necessary, because Ohio legislators ended up passing a bill — and the governor signed it — to extend the deadline past the convention. But the D.N.C. has indicated that it plans to hold it anyway. It has not announced when.Earlier this year, there was concern that a similar problem might arise in Alabama. But legislators there also ended up passing a bill that postponed the state’s deadline to accommodate the timing of the Democratic convention.If Democrats nominate Mr. Biden in the virtual roll-call vote and then change course later, things would get more complicated.In the event that a ticket of Mr. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were certified to appear on ballots and Mr. Biden later withdrew, it isn’t clear whether Ms. Harris would be able to receive votes for president by virtue of already being on the ballot in the vice-presidential spot.The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, has indicated that it might pursue legal challenges to a substitution. More

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      Biden les dijo a sus aliados que los próximos días serán cruciales para salvar su candidatura

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      Los comentarios del presidente son el primer indicio de que está considerando seriamente si puede recuperarse de su actuación en el debate. La Casa Blanca dijo que el reporte era falso.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]El presidente Joe Biden les ha dicho a algunos aliados clave que sabe que los próximos días son cruciales y que entiende que quizá no pueda salvar su candidatura si no logra convencer a los votantes de que está a la altura del cargo tras su desastrosa actuación en el debate de la semana pasada.Según dos aliados que han hablado con el mandatario, Biden ha enfatizado que sigue profundamente comprometido con los esfuerzos por su reelección, pero entiende que su viabilidad como candidato está en juego.El presidente trató de proyectar confianza el miércoles en una llamada con su equipo de campaña, incluso cuando funcionarios de la Casa Blanca trataban de calmar los nervios en las filas del gobierno de Biden.“Nadie me está echando”, dijo Biden en la llamada. “No me voy”.La vicepresidenta Kamala Harris también estaba en la conversación telefónica.“No retrocederemos. Seguiremos el ejemplo de nuestro presidente”, afirmó Harris. “Lucharemos y venceremos”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Business Leaders Call on Biden to Step Aside

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      A group of business leaders is calling on President Biden to step aside and make way for a replacement atop the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket.Leadership Now Project, a coalition of 400 politically active current and retired executives who mostly but not entirely lean left, issued a statement on Wednesday urging Mr. Biden to “pass the torch of this year’s presidential nomination to the next generation of highly capable Democrats.”The statement is unsigned, but Daniella Ballou-Aares, the group’s founder and chief executive, said that it was supported by an overwhelming majority of the members of Leadership Now Project.The membership includes Jeni Britton Bauer, the founder of Jeni’s Famous Ice Cream; Thomas W. Florsheim Jr., the chief executive of the footwear maker Weyco Group; Eddie Fishman, the managing director of the investment firm D.E. Shaw & Company; John Pepper, the former chief executive of Procter & Gamble; and Paul Tagliabue, the former commissioner of the National Football League.The statement comes as major Democratic donors are increasingly concluding that the party would stand a better chance of holding the White House with a different nominee in the wake of Mr. Biden’s weak performance in last week’s presidential debate with Donald J. Trump. But most donors and big money groups on the left have refrained from going public out of concern about generating a backlash.In its statement, Leadership Now Project called the prospect of a second Trump term “an existential threat to American democracy” and said that at the debate Mr. Biden “failed to effectively make the case against Trump, and we now fear the risk of a devastating loss in November.”The statement added that “we have heard from many individuals who share our deep concerns about the present course but fear speaking out” and concluded by imploring others “to join us in making this urgent call.”In an interview, Ms. Ballou-Aares, a business executive who was a senior State Department adviser during the Obama administration, said she had been disturbed by the messaging from the White House and other Biden supporters in recent days.“This sense that this is a small group family decision is not good for democracy,” she said, calling it “really inconsistent with where people were after watching the debate.”Her group, which consists of nonprofit arms and a political action committee, has endorsed candidates from both parties, and recently hosted at its annual meeting former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an anti-Trump Republican, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat mentioned as a possible replacement for Mr. Biden. More

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      Biden Told Ally That He Is Weighing Whether to Continue in the Race

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      President Biden has told a key ally that he knows he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince the public in the coming days that he is up for the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.The president, who the ally emphasized is still deeply in the fight for re-election, understands that his next few appearances heading into the holiday weekend — including an interview scheduled for Friday with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — must go well.“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the weekend, said the ally, referring to Mr. Biden’s halting and unfocused performance in the debate. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said the claim was “absolutely false” and that the White House had not been given enough time to respond.The conversation is the first indication to become public that the president is seriously considering whether he can recover after a devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta on Thursday. Concerns are mounting about his viability as a candidate and whether he could serve as president for another four years.A top adviser to Mr. Biden, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the situation, said the president was “well aware of the political challenge he faces.”Campaign officials were nervously watching polls, recognizing that bad numbers could fuel the crisis. A CBS News poll on Wednesday showed former President Donald J. Trump edging ahead of Mr. Biden since the debate with 50 percent to 48 percent nationally and 51 percent to 48 percent in battleground states.Mr. Biden is slowly reaching out to Democratic elected officials and has a meeting with Democratic governors at the White House scheduled for Wednesday evening. He is also continuing to reach out to people he has long trusted and has told at least one person that he is open to the possibility that his plans to move on from his debate performance — and flip the focus back to his challenger, Mr. Trump — may not work.Several allies of Mr. Biden, who has huddled with the family and advisers since the debate on Thursday, have underscored that the president is still in the fight of his political life and largely sees this moment as a chance to come back from being counted out, as he has done many times throughout his half-century career.But he is also cleareyed, they said, about his uphill battle to convince voters, donors and the political class that his debate performance was an anomaly. More

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      Biden to Hold Crisis Meeting With Democratic Governors at the White House

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      The president is trying to reassure his supporters that he can still win in November despite his debate debacle last week.President Biden is scheduled to meet on Wednesday with several Democratic governors in a closed-door meeting at the White House, part of a push to reassure the president’s supporters that he can still win the election in November despite his debate debacle last week.The White House has not released the names of the governors who will be meeting with Mr. Biden in the Roosevelt Room, just down the hall from the Oval Office.The meeting was added to the president’s schedule even as he is trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy in the middle of the biggest political crisis since he took office almost four years ago. Before meeting with the governors, Mr. Biden will posthumously present the Medal of Honor to two Civil War Army soldiers for their actions fighting the Confederacy in 1862.But the situation swirling around the president is anything but normal.Democrats are openly talking about whether Mr. Biden, 81, should abandon his bid for re-election because he is too old to effectively campaign against former President Donald J. Trump. Representative Lloyd Doggett, Democrat of Texas, called for Mr. Biden to step aside on Tuesday.At the same time, the first independent polls since the debate are beginning to emerge, showing that the president has lost ground against Mr. Trump. A CNN poll showed Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump by six percentage points, 49 percent to 43 percent. A series of polls by a pro-Biden super PAC leaked to the news site Puck showed the president slipping across the battleground states and in New Mexico, New Hampshire and Virginia, where he was previously winning.Privately, Mr. Biden and his top lieutenants are trying to reassure lawmakers, donors and activists that he can turn things around. Publicly, the White House and the campaign have scheduled a series of events intended to show voters that the debate was just an off night.Mr. Biden will sit for an interview with the ABC host George Stephanopoulos on Friday, his first lengthy interview since the debate. That same day, he will travel to Madison, Wis., for a campaign event. On Sunday, he will campaign in Philadelphia. More

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      Two Vulnerable House Democrats Say Biden Will Lose Against Trump

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      Two House Democrats facing challenging re-election races in rural districts said on Tuesday that President Biden would lose in November to former President Donald J. Trump, adding to widespread pessimism within the Democratic Party about its presidential nominee.The two Democrats, Representatives Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington, did not call on Mr. Biden to step aside, nor did they indicate that any other Democrat stood a better chance of defeating Mr. Trump in the fall.But Mr. Golden and Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, who are some of the most vulnerable incumbents in Congress this election cycle, essentially delivered a warning that they were preparing for Mr. Biden to be a critical liability at the top of the ticket. A poor performance by Mr. Biden in the presidential election could doom their own chances for re-election.In an opinion essay in The Bangor Daily News, Mr. Golden, who represents a district that Mr. Trump won in 2020, said that he had assumed Mr. Trump would win for months now and that he had made his peace with that outcome.“Lots of Democrats are panicking about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party’s nominee,” he wrote. “Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise.”“It also didn’t rattle me as it has others,” Mr. Golden added, “because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months: While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.”In an interview with a local television station, Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez, a first-term Democrat from a rural red district, also predicted that Mr. Biden would lose, blaming his dismal debate performance.“About 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate,” she told KATU News, appearing crestfallen throughout the interview. “I was one of them for five very painful minutes.”After carefully considering her response to a question about whether the president should step aside, Ms. Gluesenkamp Perez said: “The truth, I think, is that Biden will lose to Trump. I know it’s difficult, but I think the damage has been done.”She added that Democratic primary voters had already chosen Mr. Biden and that “a core tenet of democracy is that you accept the results of an election.”“Biden is the nominee,” she said. More

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      Biden Says He ‘Fell Asleep on the Stage’ During Debate With Trump

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      President Biden acknowledged on Tuesday that he “fell asleep on the stage” during his disastrous debate last week, blaming his performance on the fact that he had traveled “around the world a couple times” in the two weeks before the face-off with former President Donald J. Trump.“I wasn’t very smart,” Mr. Biden, 81, told donors at a fund-raiser in Virginia. “I decided to travel around the world a couple times, I don’t know how many time zones.”“It’s not an excuse but an explanation,” he said.White House officials have blamed Mr. Biden’s having a cold at the time for his disjointed debate performance. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, repeated that explanation at a briefing for reporters on Tuesday afternoon.But Mr. Biden offered a different reason to the donors on Tuesday night. He referred to his decision to travel to France for several days two weeks before the debate and return to the United States before heading back to Europe for the Group of 7 summit in Italy.He decided to make that cross-Atlantic trip back and forth, Mr. Biden said, blaming himself for not having “listened to my staff,” which he implied had told him not to do that. He said the decision caused him to be tired during the debate.Mr. Biden’s comments came as the White House struggled to respond to a chorus of anxiety within the Democratic Party about whether the president is capable of mounting a winning campaign against Mr. Trump in November.For more than a year, Mr. Biden and his aides have repeatedly denied that the president’s age has affected his ability to perform his duties. They have repeatedly criticized journalists who raised the issue that large majorities of voters say they believe Mr. Biden is too old to be president.But the debate, which was watched by about 51 million people, raised serious doubts among voters and many Democratic activists. Lawmakers in the party also expressed concerns, with Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas on Tuesday becoming the first Democrat in Congress to call on Mr. Biden to drop out of the race.The president and his campaign have refused to even consider doing that. They say Mr. Biden remains determined to stay in the race and to defeat Mr. Trump, who he says is a threat to democracy in America. More

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      Who Is Lloyd Doggett? Texas Democrat Calls for Biden to Exit Race

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      Representative Lloyd Doggett, a little-known Texas progressive, on Tuesday became the first Democrat in Congress to call on President Biden to step aside as the party’s nominee after a halting debate performance that has raised major questions about his health, age and mental acuity.In going public with his concerns, Mr. Doggett, who has represented his Austin-based district for close to 30 years, spoke aloud what most other Democrats have only dared to say in private since Thursday’s debate.Mr. Doggett is a rank-and-file congressman with little national profile. But his public statement gave voice to a growing sense of doom and worry among Democrats about whether Mr. Biden can continue as the party’s nominee, and if by doing so he might cost the party not only the White House but also any chance of controlling Congress.“President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020,” Mr. Doggett said in the statement. “He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024.”In an interview on Tuesday afternoon, the congressman said he made the decision to break with his party and call for Mr. Biden to take himself out of the race after feeling “alarmed” as he watched the debate with his wife at their Washington home.He was dismayed when Mr. Biden did not even try to debunk many of the falsehoods that former President Donald J. Trump put forward in his answers. He was disconcerted when the president seemed to lose his train of thought and trail off in discussing health care, ending an answer with the words, “we beat Medicare.” And “we were all troubled,” he said, by Mr. Biden’s lack of forceful answers on abortion and reproductive freedom.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More