To the extent that the assassination attempt targeting Donald Trump halted the conversation about President Joe Biden’s future, that hiatus is over.
Just over the last 48 hours, the political world has seen an avalanche of news related to the incumbent, his party and his prospects. New polling, for example, found nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters want to see Biden forgo his re-election plans. A prominent and influential House Democrat called on the president to pass the torch.
Politico, meanwhile, obtained a polling memo from BlueLabs Analytics that read, “Alternative Democratic candidates run ahead of President Biden by an average of three points across the battleground states. Nearly every tested Democrat performs better than the President.”
Major Democratic donors are also still hoping to wield some influence and nudge the incumbent off the ballot.
But perhaps most important of all is the message Biden has reportedly received from his party’s top congressional officials. NBC News reported:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., presented President Joe Biden with polling data in a “blunt” one-on-one meeting Saturday as Democrats debate whether the president should continue to run for re-election after a weak debate performance last month, two sources familiar with their discussion said. ... The two met without staff in the room at Biden’s home in Rehoboth, Delaware, the sources said.
The same report added that many House Democrats want Biden to step aside, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has told his members that he’s communicated their concerns to the president.
A variety of other news organizations have published related, unconfirmed reports over the last day or so, including a Washington Post report that said Schumer and Jeffries told Biden “that his continued candidacy imperils the Democratic Party’s ability to control either chamber of Congress next year.”
The same report added that House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama have also “expressed concern privately about the president’s path forward.”
Politico ran a related article that said Pelosi, who’s made some provocative public comments about the president’s re-election plans, privately told Biden last week “that she and other Democratic lawmakers worry that he’s dragging down the party, in an extraordinarily candid confrontation that came amid mounting pressure on Biden to end his reelection campaign.”
It’s against this backdrop that a New York Times report, published overnight, said the incumbent, after hearing from Democratic congressional leaders, “has become more receptive in the last several days to hearing arguments about why he should drop his re-election bid.”
The article, which has also not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, added, “Mr. Biden has not given any indication that he is changing his mind about staying in the race, the Democrats said, but has been willing to listen to rundowns of new and worrying polling data and has asked questions about how Vice President Kamala Harris could win.”
I won’t pretend to know what might happen next, but the party is running out of calendar: Democrats are moving forward with a virtual roll call vote during the first week of August. Watch this space.