Pressure mounts for Biden to drop out of presidential race after testing positive for Covid

Joe Biden can’t catch a break. Things didn’t seem to get much worse for the president after he was diagnosed with Covid-19 on Wednesday, forcing him to cancel a public appearance with a Latino rights group and dashing his hopes of diverting attention from the Republican National Convention.

This was followed by a flood of leaks that senior Democratic Party leaders personally warned Biden that he was unlikely to defeat Donald Trump and that he was putting his allies in Congress in grave danger.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Biden he would be better off dropping out of the race, ABC News reported. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told the president his candidacy jeopardized Democrats’ hopes of maintaining control of either chamber of Congress, according to the Washington Post. And former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told Biden in a private conversation that he could not defeat Trump, according to CNN.

These private statements were followed by public signals that Democrats remain unconvinced that Biden’s campaign is viable. Early Wednesday, Adam Schiff — the California congressman and Democratic candidate in that state’s Senate race — renewed his call for Biden to drop out of the race, urging him to “pass the torch”.

Separately, Schumer and Jeffries worked to shut down an attempt by some Biden allies to hold an early virtual vote. Had that been successful, Biden could have formalized his nomination in the coming days, helping to quell the revolt.

Instead, the president retreated into physical and metaphorical isolation at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, alone, searching for ways to right a campaign once again mired in chaos.

At the White House, spokesman Andrew Bates insisted that Biden’s campaign was going full steam ahead.

Biden told congressional leaders “who is the party’s nominee, who plans to win, and who is looking forward to working with both of them to pass his 100-day agenda to help working families“Bates said in a statement.

But the Covid episode has kept the president away from the election campaign and put his health back in the spotlight. It is a critical moment in which he is trying to prove that fears about his age and mental acuity are exaggerated.

And Biden further fueled the melodrama by suggesting in an interview taped at BET on Tuesday that he would consider dropping out of the race if new health concerns arose, and that he would be open to passing the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris if new medical conditions surfaced during a second term.

Even Biden’s allies were struggling to defend the president. Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the progressive members who have come to Biden’s defense in recent days, admitted in an interview with the New Yorker that Biden was having trouble completing sentences.

Worse, Biden’s troubles contrasted with scenes from the Republican Party convention, where Republican candidate Trump appeared on stage sporting a bandaged ear following the failed assassination attempt last weekend.

Trump’s fist-pumping, defiant response to the shooting was instantly iconic and dispelled doubts within the Republican Party in his favor. On Tuesday night, Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, former primary foes, took the stage in Milwaukee to make their case for supporting Trump’s candidacy.

The events contributed to a growing sense of two campaigns heading in opposite directions: one on the rise, the other in turmoil.

Public opinion polls underscore reasons for concern for Democrats.

Nearly two-thirds of Biden’s own party think he should drop out of the race, according to an Associated Press-NORC poll released hours before his Covid diagnosis. Only three in 10 Democrats are very or extremely confident in his ability to serve effectively as president.

Offside

Biden had hoped to reverse those perceptions on a three-day trip.

The president was originally scheduled to travel to Austin, Texas, on Monday to deliver a speech marking the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. The White House had seen the speech as an opportunity for Biden to tie himself to earlier Democratic efforts to expand protections for minorities while casting Trump as an enabler of new restrictions on abortion and voting.

But the event was canceled following Saturday’s shooting at Trump’s rally, and the planned interview with NBC News was moved to the White House. Without the event as a backdrop, the interview devolved into a tense, combative exchange focused largely on Biden’s rhetoric and questions about his age.

“Come sometime and tell me what we should be talking about“Biden told NBC anchor Lester Holt in closing.Agreed? About the topics”.

Biden resumed campaigning Tuesday with an appearance at the NAACP national convention, but he bungled the centerpiece of his speech: a new proposal to cap rent increases by corporate landlords at 5% annually.

Instead, Biden appeared to struggle to read his teleprompter, eventually saying the limit would be $55.

Medical problem

Following the event, BET News published excerpts from an interview with Biden in which he appeared to open the door to reconsidering his re-election bid if his doctors advised him to do so.

“If I had some medical condition that came up, if someone, if doctors came to me and said, you have this problem and that problem“Biden said.

On Wednesday, things didn’t improve. Biden had a call with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood executive leading his fundraising campaign, and was told that donations were drying up due to concerns about his age, Semafor reported. Katzenberg later issued a statement to the outlet calling it “amisinterpretation of a private meeting”.

The president then went to record a radio interview with Univision, but left feeling unwell. A Covid test confirmed his infection and the president quickly headed to the Las Vegas airport to return home to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

The only positive news for the president was that his symptoms were mild, according to the White House: runny nose, cough and “general discomfort”.