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      Major Democratic Donors Devise Plans to Pressure Biden to Step Aside

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      The president appears intent on remaining on the ballot, while wealthy donors are discussing plans to put their money elsewhere.After several days of quiet griping and hoping that President Biden would abandon his re-election campaign on his own, many wealthy Democratic donors are trying to take matters into their own hands.Wielding their fortunes as both carrot and stick, donors have undertaken a number of initiatives to pressure Mr. Biden to step down from the top of the ticket and help lay the groundwork for an alternate candidate.The efforts — some coordinated, some conflicting and others still nascent — expose a remarkable and growing rift between the party’s contributor class and its standard-bearer that could have an impact on down-ballot races, whether or not the donors influence Mr. Biden’s decision.The president on Wednesday reaffirmed his commitment to stay in the race amid criticism of his weak debate performance last week. But that has not placated donors or strategists who worry that he cannot win in November.A group of them is working to raise as much as $100 million for a sort of escrow fund, called the Next Generation PAC, that would be used to support a replacement candidate. If Mr. Biden does not step aside, the money could be used to help down-ballot candidates, according to people close to the effort.Supporters of potential replacements like Vice President Kamala Harris are jockeying to position their preferred successor. Other donors are threatening to withhold contributions not only from Mr. Biden but also from other Democratic groups unless Mr. Biden bows out.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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      Biden Tells Governors That He Is Staying in the Race

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      President Biden told a group of Democratic governors on Wednesday that he was staying in the 2024 campaign, as the group peppered the president with questions about the path forward after Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week.After the meeting, a handful of governors spoke with reporters outside the White House, with one, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, declaring, “President Joe Biden is in it to win it, and all of us said we pledged our support to him.”Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the chair of the Democratic Governors Association, said: “He has had our backs through Covid, through all of the recovery, all of the things that have happened. The governors have his back, and we’re working together just to make very, very clear on that.”But he added, “A path to victory in November is the No. 1 priority, and that’s the No. 1 priority of the president.”Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland echoed the sentiment.In a statement, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said, “I heard three words from the president — he’s all in. And so am I.”And Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan posted her support on the social media site X.The meeting closed with Vice President Kamala Harris describing the threats to democracy that a victory by former President Donald J. Trump could pose, tossing at least one expletive into her remarks, according to a person briefed on what took place.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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      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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      Tim Ryan Says Kamala Harris Should Replace Biden as Democratic Nominee

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      Tim Ryan, a former Ohio congressman, called on Democrats to replace President Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the party’s ticket in the November election against former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Ryan, in a Newsweek opinion column, wrote that he had lost confidence in Mr. Biden’s ability to defeat his rival after watching the president struggle in Thursday’s head-to-head debate with Mr. Trump. He noted that Mr. Biden had said he would be a bridge to a new generation of Democratic leaders, an idea he said he liked. “Regrettably, that bridge collapsed last week,” he wrote.“Witnessing Joe Biden struggle was heartbreaking,” Mr. Ryan wrote of the debate. “And we must forge a new path forward.”In 2020, Mr. Ryan endorsed Biden after his own bid for the party’s nomination failed. During the midterm elections in 2022, he lost his bid for Senate in Ohio to J.D. Vance, a Republican who is said to be on Mr. Trump’s shortlist of running mates.Since Mr. Biden’s poor debate performance last week, the noise has intensified about whether Democrats should replace him as the party’s nominee. He is scheduled to accept the Democratic nomination at the party’s convention in August in Chicago.While figures such as Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom, the governors of Michigan and California, have drawn attention as potential replacements, Mr. Ryan wrote that Ms. Harris gives Democrats their best shot at holding the presidency. “Those who say that a Harris candidacy is a greater risk than the Joe Biden we saw the other night and will continue to see are not living in reality,” he wrote. “It is not just utterly preposterous for the haters to say that, it is insulting.” More

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      There’s No Reason to Resign Ourselves to Biden

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      Though Joe Biden’s debate performance last week was among the most painful things I’ve ever witnessed, it at least seemed to offer clarity. Suddenly, even many people who love this president realized that his campaign has become untenable.For years, loyal Democrats have been suppressing their private anxiety about Biden’s decline. In the debate’s miserable aftermath, there was finally space to acknowledge the obvious: Biden is too old for this. “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” James Baldwin wrote. The Democratic Party’s predicament is an awful one, but there was a cold, flinty relief in being forced to reckon with it.Since then, however, the Biden campaign has quickly moved to squash that reckoning, framing the divide in the Democratic Party as one between naïve, hysterical outsiders and savvy, resolute insiders. Biden surrogates fanned out to discount the debate as a single “bad night.” A campaign email slammed those calling on the president to step aside as the “bed-wetting brigade,” and offered tips for responding to “your panicked aunt, your MAGA uncle, or some self-important podcasters,” an apparent reference to the former Obama officials who host “Pod Save America.” On Monday, I listened to a recording of a Zoom meeting with Biden’s national finance committee in which his deputy campaign manager, Quentin Fulks, accused the media of blowing the debate “out of proportion,” and his campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, compared it to Barack Obama’s lackluster performance against Mitt Romney in 2012.Some allies of the president have even suggested that Democrats learn from Donald Trump’s unswerving followers. “If Republicans are standing lock step” with the 78-year-old disgraced criminal Trump, said the MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart, “then Democrats damn well should be standing lock step with their ethical and morally decent 81-year-old president.”I don’t blame people in the Biden camp for doing everything they can to tamp down an intraparty revolt. That’s their job, and I take some comfort that they’re doing it as well as is possible, since if Biden is the nominee, it’s imperative that he defeats Trump. But as long as there’s time to replace Biden, Democrats should not allow themselves to be bullied into fatalism and complacency.More than a setback, Biden’s showing at the debate was a revelation, confirming the worst fears of his doubters. Since then, several news reports have made it clear that the Biden we all saw onstage is familiar to those who see him behind the scenes. Axios reported that, according to presidential aides, Biden is alert and engaged from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., but not necessarily outside of those hours. The Wall Street Journal reported that European officials were worried about Biden’s “focus and stamina” even before the debate, “with some senior diplomats saying they had tracked a noticeable deterioration in the president’s faculties in meetings since last summer.” This is not a fixable problem.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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      How Democrats Got Here With Biden

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      What Kamala Harris, Jaime Harrison, Ron Klain and other party leaders have said about the liabilities of their candidate’s age.Listen to and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeListen: How Democrats Got Here With BidenProminent party members on concerns about age.As you may have heard, Thursday night was the first debate between President Biden and former president Donald J. Trump. In short, it was not a great night for Mr. Biden.The president’s debate performance triggered significant panic among top Democrats, who for months have been dismissing concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.So, how is this happening? Despite all the concerns polls showed about age, how has the Democratic Party arrived at this moment?That’s a line of inquiry The Run-Up has been putting to senior Democratic leaders for the past 18 months. And we wanted to revisit some of those conversations now in a special episode.They include our interviews with Vice President Harris, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison and Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former White House chief of staff.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAbout ‘The Run-Up’“The Run-Up” is your guide to understanding the 2024 election. Through on-the-ground reporting and conversations with colleagues from The New York Times, newsmakers and voters across the country, our host, Astead W. Herndon, takes us beyond the horse race to explore how we came to this moment in American politics. New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Who Might Replace Biden on the Top of the Ticket?

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      President Biden’s stumbling performance in the debate against former President Donald J. Trump has some Democrats raising the possibility of nominating an alternative candidate and mulling over a roster of names. High on the list is, of course, Vice President Kamala Harris, whose status as Mr. Biden’s running mate might make her an easy candidate for delegates to turn to during a difficult moment. But a crop of Democratic governors and other figures are often mentioned, too.A candidate switch would most likely require Mr. Biden to step out of the race, something his campaign says he has no intention of doing. And the risks are real. Some of the highest-profile potential stand-ins listed below have never endured the vetting and road test of a presidential race. There is a long list of candidates who looked great on paper and withered on the campaign trail.“It’s not as easy as it sounds,” said Barbara Boxer, the former senator from California. “Being vetted for president is like no other vetting. We don’t know how these people would do.”Here are a few of the contenders being discussed:Doug Mills/The New York TimesKamala HarrisVice President Harris, a former prosecutor and senator of California, has at times struggled to define her role at Mr. Biden’s side. Initially charged with addressing polarizing and intractable issues like illegal migration and voting rights, she has been viewed by Democratic donors and supporters of Mr. Biden as a potential political liability. Though those concerns have eased, she has been weighed down by low approval ratings that are barely higher than the president’s.Still, Ms. Harris has for months stumped for the president as one of his main campaign surrogates. She has recently become the White House’s lead voice as a defender of abortion rights. In March, she met with abortion providers at a clinic in St. Paul, Minn., in what is believed to be the first visit by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic. And Ms. Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, has worked to shore up Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities with Black and young voters.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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      In Her Crisp Defense of Biden, Harris Builds a Case for Herself

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      Vice President Kamala Harris tried to calm Democratic fears as her allies wondered what could be next for her.Less than 24 hours after President Biden’s faltering performance at a debate in Atlanta, Vice President Kamala Harris was standing before a crowd of supporters in a crucial battleground state on Friday, defending his record and his fitness for office.But with Democrats openly discussing replacing Mr. Biden on the ticket, Ms. Harris was also effectively making a case for herself.She spoke clearly about Mr. Biden’s record, in ways that the president did not the night before. She tried to draw a contrast between Mr. Biden and his opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, whose lies and falsehoods were on full display at the debate.But another striking contrast — between Ms. Harris and her boss — was on the minds of Democrats as well. Although the prospect of removing Mr. Biden from the ticket remains far-fetched, Ms. Harris would most likely be one of a half-dozen candidates vying for the presidential nomination if Mr. Biden pulled out.“You have to ask, how did we get here?” former Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said on Thursday evening, after Ms. Harris gave a strong post-debate interview on CNN. “How do we get to the point that we’re spending a whole lot of time talking about the vice president tonight, instead of talking about the president?”Ms. Harris, 59, has spent much of her time as vice president struggling to distinguish herself in a role that is by definition a supporting one. Her polling has remained stubbornly low, tracking with Mr. Biden’s. And as recently as last year, some Democrats were privately fretting that she was a liability for the campaign.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