President Joe Biden’s re-election bid kept barreling toward a cliff on Wednesday.
Despite the White House and the Biden campaign’s continued assertions that the president isn’t going anywhere, the pressure on the 81-year-old to step aside as the Democratic nominee grew stronger throughout the day.
There was some hope among party insiders that an early afternoon all-hands meeting at the White House would be the tipping point.
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Yet Biden isn’t just tuning out the noise. He’s having a full blown Wolf of Wall Street moment: He ain’t fucking leavin’.
“Let me say this as clearly as I possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can,” Biden said on a call with campaign staff on Wednesday, “I am running ... no one’s pushing me out.”
The much anticipated “Biden intervention,” as The Daily Beast previously reported, has yet to occur, with the likes of former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, along with the two most important women in Biden’s life—first lady Jill Biden and his sister, Valerie Biden Owens—remaining in his corner and appear to be the only four people who could convince him to fall on his sword.
Biden delegates for the August convention in Chicago began to go on the record with their reservations about him staying in the race.
“After watching the debate, I don’t feel like he’s up to the task for four more years, and I think we need to be electing someone who can serve in that capacity for a full term,” Texas delegate Marilyn Burgess told Politico.
Valerie Moore, a South Carolina delegate, said she and her fellow Biden appointees are “in a stage of grief, possibly, or mourning for what was hopefully going to put Trump away in the first debate and that didn’t happen.”
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attempted to douse the fires burning across the party by insisting the boss is “clear-eyed and staying in the race.”
A senior Democratic strategist told The Daily Beast out of “everybody who is close or familiar with the White House” they know, “no one thinks he is going to drop out.”
Despite a disastrous Tuesday and things only getting worse on Wednesday, the strategist was adamant the public should believe Bidenworld when they say the president isn’t going away anytime soon.
“Everyone I work with on the DNC or the White House all believe he is going to stay in,” the strategist said, requesting anonymity to relay private conversations.
Still, the steady drip of Democratic calls for Biden to drop out keeps going.
Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) became the second sitting member of Congress in Biden’s party to call for him to step aside, following similar calls from Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) on Tuesday. Grijalva told The New York Times on Thursday that if Biden remains “the candidate, I’m going to support him, but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere”
Grijalva, like others who have publicly and privately demanded Biden bow out, leaned on a country-over-party argument.
“What he needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat—and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.”
Biden himself appeared to privately acknowledge the next few days will determine whether he can remain in the race, reportedly telling a key ally that his upcoming public appearances will determine as much, according to the Times.
The White House pushed back heavily on that report, calling it “false.”
“If The New York Times had provided us with more than 7 minutes to comment we would have told them so,” Andrew Bates, one of Biden’s top White House aides, said in a terse post on X.
The senior Democratic strategist who spoke with The Daily Beast said they’re hearing Bidenworld is optimistic they can wait it out until after Labor Day, when they believe a wider swath of the electorate will begin paying attention.
“Once that storm is weathered,” the strategist said, “they can reposition.”
