WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s imperiled re-election campaign ran into new trouble Wednesday as House Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi said only “it’s up to the president” whether he should stay in the race, prominent donor George Clooney said he should not run and Democratic senators and representatives raised new concerns about whether Biden is capable of beating Republican Donald Trump.
The sudden flood of earnest statements, despite Biden’s determined insistence that he will not abandon the 2024 race, has publicly demonstrated how unresolved the issue remains among leading Democrats. On Capitol Hill, one-eighth of the Democrats in the House, Representative Pat Ryan of New York, publicly called on Biden to resign.
“I want him to do whatever he decides,” Pelosi said on MSNBC on Wednesday, rather than declaring Biden should stay in office. Although he has repeatedly said he has made his decision, she said, “We all encourage him to make that decision because he’s running out of time.”
This is a pivotal moment for the president and his party, as Democrats consider what once seemed unthinkable: the resignation of incumbent President Biden, just weeks before the Democratic National Convention where he will be nominated as their candidate for re-election.
Biden is hosting world leaders in Washington this week for the NATO summit, and his schedule is packed with formal meetings, sideline talks and long diplomatic dinners. His next public test will be on Thursday, when he is scheduled to hold a press conference where many will be eagerly awaiting signs of his abilities.
Biden undoubtedly continues to enjoy forceful support from key parts of his coalition, particularly the Congressional Black Caucus on Capitol Hill, whose leadership was instrumental in the president’s victory in 2020 and stands by him as the country’s best option to defeat Trump again in 2024.
“There is too much at stake right now and we need to focus,” Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar told the Associated Press on Tuesday. She said Democrats were “losing ground” the longer they fought for Biden’s candidacy. “Democracy is at stake. Everything that matters to us as Democrats, as a country, is at stake and we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted any longer.”
Pelosi has been closely watched for how leading Democrats feel about Biden’s ailing candidacy, and her comments are seen as essential to the direction of the party as members weigh possible alternatives in the campaign against Trump.
Because of her forceful position as former Speaker of the House and her proximity to Biden as a trusted longtime ally of his generation, Pelosi is seen as one of the few Democratic leaders who could influence the president’s thinking.
The lack of a comprehensive statement from Pelosi supporting Biden’s continued campaign may be what lawmakers noticed most. Her comments came just before actor Clooney, who just hosted a glitzy Hollywood fundraiser for the president last month, said in a New York Times op-ed that the Biden he saw three weeks ago was not the Joe Biden of 2020. “He was the same man we all saw at the debate.”
Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, spoke urgently overdue Tuesday about the danger of a second Trump presidency, saying it was up to the president to “weigh” the options.
Bennet went so far as to call on Biden to drop out, repeating on CNN what he had already told his colleagues in private: He believes that Trump “is well on his way to winning this election – and perhaps even overwhelmingly, and that he will take the Senate and the House of Representatives with him.”
Bennet said: “This is not a political question. It is a moral question about the future of our country.”
Another Democrat, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said Wednesday he was “deeply concerned” about a Biden victory, which he said was of existential importance for the country.
“We need to come to a solution as quickly as possible,” Blumenthal said on CNN.
Democrats are torn between whether to continue supporting Biden after his needy performance in the June 27 presidential debate with Trump and his campaign’s lackluster response to their appeals for the 81-year-old Biden to show voters he is ready for another four-year term.
Biden and his campaign team are currently working harder to secure support for his former counterpart. On Wednesday, the president met with labor leaders, relying on the unions to prove that his past record in office is more essential than his age.
Speaking before the executive council of the AFL-CIO, America’s largest labor federation, Biden told the crowd that even Wall Street recognizes the power of unions and reiterated his vision of an economy built “from the bottom up and the middle out.”
“I said I would be the most pro-union president in American history,” Biden told the cheering crowd. “And you know what? I am.”
While several Democrats in the House have publicly called on Biden to end his candidacy, no Democrat in the Senate has gone so far. Bennet was one of three Democratic senators, including Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, who spoke during a private lunch on Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the meeting who was granted anonymity to discuss the matter.
Pelosi of California said Biden was “a great president” who was popular and respected by Democrats in the House.
The Californian said she saw him deliver a powerful speech at the NATO summit on Tuesday, listing his many accomplishments.
As foreign leaders gather in Washington this week and Biden hosts the event at a critical time for foreign policy on the world stage, Pelosi urged Democrats to “just wait a little longer” before making any announcements about his campaign.
“Whatever you think, tell someone privately, but you don’t have to put it on the table until we see,” she said, “how it goes this week.”
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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.
