Today’s installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Sen. Peter Welch yesterday became the first sitting Democratic senator to call on President Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign. The Vermonter made his case in a Washington Post op-ed.
* Meanwhile, in the U.S. House, the number of Democrats calling for the president to pass the torch also continues to grow: Reps. Hillary Scholten of Michigan and Earl Blumenauer of Oregon have joined the growing list.
* As a growing number of Democratic senators hedge on Biden’s candidacy, with varying degrees of subtlety, senior members of Biden’s political team are scheduled to meet behind closed doors with Senate Democrats today.
* A new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that most Democratic voters want the incumbent president to forgo his re-election plans. The same survey found Vice President Kamala Harris faring slightly better than Biden in hypothetical general-election match-ups. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
* Speaking of polling, a new national survey from the Pew Research Center found Trump leading Biden by three points in a head-to-head match-up and four points with third-party candidates in the mix. (Click the link for information on the survey’s methodology and margins of error.)
* In case the incumbent president’s political troubles weren’t serious enough already, there’s also a fundraising problem to consider: NBC News reported that Team Biden “has already suffered a major slowdown in donations and officials are bracing for a seismic fundraising hit, with the fallout from a debate nearly two weeks ago taking a sizable toll on operations.” One source said, “The money has absolutely shut off.”
* And while abortion-rights proponents in Arkansas apparently collected enough signatures to force a vote on a constitutional amendment, it seems this will no longer happen: Republican Secretary of State John Thurston concluded that there was a technical problem with organizers’ paperwork.