Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a key architect of President Biden’s biggest legislative accomplishments, has sought to keep his caucus unified behind the embattled president, even as cracks have appeared.
Schumer has stayed in close contact with the White House and Senate colleagues since Biden’s disastrous debate in Atlanta.
He spoke with Biden on Wednesday and has talked to White House chief of staff Jeff Zients multiple times since the debate, not wavering in his support despite calls from some corners for the president to make way for another candidate.
Aides said Schumer is clearly trying to give time for Biden and his campaign to steady his campaign as the dam of support around him threatens to break.
“Schumer’s going to hold the line for leadership as long as he can. It’s hard to predict if the dam will fully break, but the dam is crumbling,” said a Senate Democratic aide.
A sign of that came Friday when The Washington Post reported that Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), an influential centrist, is trying to pull together a group of Democrats to ask Biden to step aside.
“It tells what people’s real opinions are when you have the leader saying one thing” and a prominent Democratic committee chair going in a different direction, the Democratic aide said of Warner’s behind-the-scenes maneuvers.
The aide also said it would be difficult for Schumer and other leaders to maintain unity among their members around Biden, whether they want to or not.
“There’s just no way everyone is going to be aligned with because if you watched the debate … That debate was a disaster,” the source added.
Still, there are real debates within the Democratic Party about whether it would be better off this fall with or without Biden.
Some Democratic sources say Schumer’s caution reflects the stubborn fact that Biden has amassed 3,894 pledged delegates and has the votes to win the Democratic nomination in Chicago no matter how much Democratic senators and donors complain about it.
“I don’t think he will stick with the president until the last second, but he’ll stick with the president as long as the odds are that Biden will remain the nominee,” said Steven S. Smith, a professor of political science at Washington University in St. Louis.
“I don’t think he really has much choice at this point,” he added.
Smith said Schumer must be careful not to trigger a civil war within the Democratic Party, which may happen if Biden steps aside and leaves it to competing factions to battle over the next nominee.
“It’s also what might transpire should Biden be forced out or if there’s a fractious convention to choose a replacement. Someone like Schumer is likely to be a bit risk averse,” he said. “The possibility of new divisions emerging among candidates and even deeper dissatisfaction with the ultimate replacement, the safest bet for now is to go with Biden and hope in the next couple weeks he overcomes all the bad news coverage he’s been getting.”
The Biden campaign is still going ahead with a packed schedule of fundraising events over the next several weeks.
The Biden Victory Fund will hold a fundraising event with former Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) in Washington on July 10, a reception with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) in Baltimore on Thursday and a dinner with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who will attend in a personal capacity, in Minnesota on Friday, according to a copy of the event schedule obtained by The Hill.
Biden insisted at a campaign rally in Wisconsin on Friday that he’s not dropping out.
“They’re trying to push me out of the race,” he told a cheering crowd. “Well, let me say this as clearly as I can: I’m staying in the race.
“I’m not letting one 90-minute debate wipe out three and a half years of work,” he said.
Democratic strategists have warned that Biden, despite his flaws, is a well-known and tested candidate and that jumping to Vice President Harris or any other candidate to lead the Democratic ticket poses all sorts of hard-to-predict risks to candidates down ballot.
“The chattering is nonstop: ‘Is he going to stay in the race?’ This thing has really hurt him,” said a Democratic fundraiser.
But the strategist said Harris hasn’t distinguished herself as vice president.
“I don’t see where she’s distinguished herself in anyway like Dick Cheney did or Al Gore did,” the strategist said, referring to George W. Bush’s and Bill Clinton’s vice presidents.
“I don’t see a lot of enthusiasm around her. Really, I don’t. And if you talk to Republicans, they’re ready to paint her as a socialist,” the source said.
But some Democratic aides say that whatever risks there might be in nominating Harris or another candidate instead of Biden, the political situation can’t get much worse.
Biden’s national approval rating has hovered at below 40 percent for much of the past year and now stands at 36.9 percent, according to a compilation of polls by FiveThirtyEight.com
“I don’t know how it can get much worse,” said the Senate Democratic aide. “I don’t know how Harris can be worse.”
Biden has trailed Trump in the polls for months, and the debate in Atlanta was supposed to be a “reset” for the president’s campaign. Instead, it put him in an even deeper hole.
A New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,532 registered voters nationwide published Wednesday showed Trump had widened his lead over Biden to 6 points after the debate.
Jim Kessler, a former Schumer aide and current executive vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, said Democrats in tough races are now wrestling with the question of whether they can do better with a different nominee atop the ticket.
“Every Senate candidate in a swing state has been outperforming Joe Biden up to this point, and if you look at these candidates, and most of them in 2012, and most of them have experience running in a state that’s not necessarily friendly for a Democratic president,” he said, adding that Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) “all outperformed the top of the ticket in 2012.”
“I imagine all of them would say they were in a better position predebate than postdebate. Biden’s numbers have dropped nationally since the debate, and that means they’ve dropped in their [battleground] states,” he added.
Kessler noted that Schumer’s job as majority leader is to protect his most vulnerable colleagues.
“I expect he’s listening very carefully to what’s happening in those states,” he said. “His day-to-day job is to protect this caucus as best as possible in an election year.”
Democratic strategists say Schumer is wary of rushing into a decision Democrats may later regret and is wise to let the tsunami of negative media coverage abate some and allow pollsters to have more time to test just how big a hit Biden’s political brand took from the debate.
“People are going to wait for a round of polling that comes in the aftermath of the debate. Pollsters will say we need a few days before we can really go into the field and find out what’s going on,” said a second strategist.
“People will start going into the field after July Fourth [weekend]. That’s when you’re going to get the real numbers on what impact the debate had and whether or not Biden is hurt fatally and has an opportunity to get back in the race,” the strategist said. “I think they’re going to wait for that wave of research to come in.”
For months, Schumer has taken the lead in voicing strong confidence in Biden’s abilities to remain commander in chief.
Schumer has confidently predicted that Biden will win reelection and that Democrats will keep their majority, allaying the private concerns of Senate colleagues who have worried for months that Biden’s age had become a major political headwind.
Biden has ignored calls from major Democratic donors such as Disney heiress Abigail Disney to step down from the ticket, but it would be much harder to dismiss a joint call from Schumer, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and other senior Democrats on Capitol Hill.
Instead, Schumer gave Biden a much-needed endorsement last week during an event in Syracuse, telling reporters: “I’m with Joe Biden.”
The Democratic leader highlighted their shared accomplishments, and declared “we’ve delivered a lot for America and for Central New York.”