The Democratic Party crisis after Biden's debate spirals with no clear ending

NEW YORK (AP) — For more than two weeks now, the Democratic Party has been mired in crisis. And yet there is no sign that the threat to Joe Biden’s reelection is nearing a conclusion, as the president digs in and a growing chorus of Democratic officials, donors and strategists calls for him to step aside.

Donors and high-profile endorsers are repudiating Biden, morale inside and outside the campaign is weak, and some top Democrats are pondering whether to make a move against the embattled president. One of Biden’s allies privately described a cycle of alternating hope and despair in the style of the movie “Groundhog Day.”

The extraordinary intra-party debate still rages 15 days after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, with the president’s Thursday news conference doing little to quell fears about his prospects against Republican Donald Trump. Another five Democratic members of Congress called on Biden to step aside in the hours since the president’s high-profile press conference, bringing to nearly 20 the total number of Democratic U.S. representatives and senators publicly pushing Biden to leave the race.

Biden’s acknowledgment Thursday that delegates were free to vote their conscience at the party’s August convention — or in a virtual roll call vote that could come much sooner — sparked a new wave of urgent conversations among Democratic officials on Friday.

“I’m in that box of delegates who are really reconsidering if they’re going to cast their vote for President Biden,” said Joe Salazar, a Democratic National Committee member from Colorado.

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Biden insists he will not step down. And indeed, other delegates say they’re firmly behind the president.

The president’s team is aggressively pushing back against a collection of new data shared among Democratic officials in recent days arguing that he’s now at a considerable disadvantage in his bid to defeat Trump in November. In fact, fear is pervasive among donors and strategists working on House and Senate races that Biden’s weak standing could undermine the party’s outlook even in blue states.

Hours after his campaign issued a new strategy memo announcing a renewed focus on three pivotal Midwestern states — the so-called “Blue Wall” that has long been must-win for Democrats — one of the campaign’s field organizers in Wisconsin quit.

The lower-level staffer’s departure, announced during an internal staff conference call Thursday, was attributed directly to post-debate frustration, according to two people familiar with the matter granted anonymity to share details of the private discussion. A Biden campaign spokesperson confirmed the staff departure.

While one person leaving a campaign of more than 1,000 people isn’t proof of a larger exodus, other signs of trouble continued to pop up.

One lawmaker, Rep. Mike Levin of California, told Biden directly on Friday that he should step down in a virtual call hosted for members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the private meeting.

The call began with Biden soliciting feedback on how to appeal to the Hispanic vote and what campaign events he should join over the next few months. When the call was opened to questions, Levin raised his hand to give Biden a talk about his Southern California district, with voters telling him that the president should not be on top of the party’s ticket for 2024.

Levin, according to two of the people, then encouraged the president to listen to those constituents and step down.

“I have deep respect for President Biden’s five-plus decades of public service and incredible appreciation for the work we’ve done together these last three and a half years,” the lawmaker said in a statement. “But I believe the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch.”

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries issued a letter to his caucus on Friday describing a private meeting he had the night before with Biden. Notably, he did not include any endorsement of the president in the brief letter.

“In my conversation with President Biden, I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward that the caucus has shared in our recent time together,” Jeffries wrote.

A private debate is playing out among the party’s donor class in particular, which is far from united on whether Vice President Kamala Harris should inherit the nomination should Biden ultimately step aside, according to conversations with more than a half-dozen donors granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Some donors believe Biden still offers the best chance of defeating Trump, despite Democratic voters expressing widespread doubts in polling about his age and readiness.

That’s even as fundraisers are being canceled and some larger donors refuse to fund any Democratic campaigns until Biden is no longer the nominee. Others are putting money behind political action committees aimed at supporting down-ballot candidates who have openly called for Biden to step aside.

Others would prefer an open convention that would allow hundreds of delegates gathered in Chicago next month to select the nominee from a collection of top-tier prospects that also includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, among others.

But Harris, who is the first woman, Black woman and person of Asian descent to serve as vice president, commands deep loyalty from key Democratic constituencies. Even if donors persuaded someone to run in a potential open primary, that candidate would be in a position of challenging and trying to sideline someone who has set those historic firsts.

The Biden-Harris campaign is in a position of implicitly undercutting Harris’ prospects to protect Biden’s.

Biden’s campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon released a memo Thursday conceding “increased anxiety” within the party, although she suggested that movement against the president, “while real, is not a sea-change in the state of the race.”

And O’Malley Dillon wrote that there is “no indication that other Democratic candidates would outperform the president against Trump.”

Salazar, the DNC member from Colorado, declined to say whether there was an organized effort among delegates to rally behind another presidential nominee when asked. But he criticized DNC leadership in Washington for declining to answer key logistical questions about how or when delegates could nominate a Biden replacement should they wish to.

Biden’s nomination could be sealed in a matter of days due to a virtual roll call that would make him the nominee well before the convention opens Aug. 19. The DNC originally set up the virtual roll call to preempt an Ohio ballot requirement that could have kept Biden off the ballot there.

Ohio has since changed its law. But despite numerous inquiries from The Associated Press and other media, the DNC won’t say whether it will keep the virtual roll call or when it will hold it.

The virtual vote to make Biden the nominee could be as soon as July 19, Salazar said, although a DNC spokesperson said the vote could not take place before July 21.

Meanwhile, Trump’s fundraising is surging. And the presumptive Republican nominee has only just begun to spend on television advertising, while Biden has poured tens of millions of dollars into battleground-state advertising in recent months.

Biden’s allies are hoping for a respite in the coming days with the Republican National Convention opening Monday in Milwaukee.

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley said the GOP was prepared to win this fall regardless of whether Biden steps out of the race or not.

“I think if Kamala Harris steps in, she is going to run on the exact same platform that Joe Biden has been running on, and it is a failed platform based on failed policies that have really hurt American families,” he said. “The Democratic Party is in complete disarray.”

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Associated Press writers Farnoush Amiri, Will Weissert, Brian Slodysko, Mike Balsamo and Colleen Long in Washington contributed.