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President Joe Biden’s Covid diagnosis on Wednesday afternoon could hardly have come at a more devastating time.
Not only did it cut short a two-day campaign swing in Nevada, but it threatens to deepen Democratic anxieties over — and resistance to — his reelection campaign, which has been teetering for nearly three weeks since his abysmal performance in his first debate with former President Donald Trump.
The news — first announced to a crowd of Hispanic activists awaiting his speech in Las Vegas and shortly thereafter confirmed by the White House — will surely deepen concerns about Biden’s age, health and stamina that have many Democrats calling for him to step aside as the party’s presidential nominee. Perhaps even more importantly, it could create a vacuum that privately skeptical Democrats, now feeling a heightened sense of urgency, may feel inclined to fill by amping up their pressure campaign.
“The timing of this could not possibly be worse,” said a Democrat briefed on internal White House discussions. “It reminds everybody how old Joe Biden is.”
And it only got worse for Biden. Just as Air Force One was beginning its flight back across the country, ABC News reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told Biden in a private conversation over the weekend that the party would benefit from him stepping aside. POLITICO subsequently reported that Schumer told Biden directly in that conversation that he’s concerned about Democratic losses in November, according to one person close to both men. The timing of the story only added to speculation about whether Biden’s abrupt departure from the trail might be something more.
He is hitting pause on his campaign while he recovers. The question, and a matter of increasing urgency for Washington and the country, is for how long?
“I’m sick,” Biden appeared to write from his campaign account on X shortly after leaving Las Vegas. The curious post was soon revealed to be a cheeky fundraising ploy, as the account posted a reply continuing the sentence: “…of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election.”
In responding to the situation with clickbait, and a link to donate, Biden’s campaign sought to lighten the conversation around his illness and, more importantly, his candidacy. Although deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty celebrated the post from his own account, other Biden allies, frustrated at the president’s struggles to get things back on track, privately grumbled that it was glib and unhelpful.
In the face of continued criticism from some lawmakers and donors and as party stalwarts work behind the scenes to nudge the 81-year-old president out of the race, Biden has been adamant he’s staying put, although he has privately told allies he’d reconsider if polls showed a major dip in his support. But after saying in an interview last week that only “the Lord Almighty” could make him reconsider, Biden on Tuesday told BET News’ Ed Gordon that he might think twice about running for another four years “if I had some medical condition that emerged.”
Covid, which the president has had before, is hardly a seldom-contracted virus at this point. Before slowly and somewhat unsteadily climbing up the steps to board Air Force One, an unmasked Biden told reporters he feels “good.” And the official statement from his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, described his symptoms, which first surfaced Wednesday morning, as mild. Aides say he will convalesce at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
But Biden’s disappearance from public view comes just as the newly-minted Republican ticket makes its campaign pitch to the country from the stage at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Besides ceding the stage entirely to Trump and his vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, the president being struck ill for the second time in three weeks further sharpens the contrast Trump’s campaign is focused on: the GOP nominee, days after surviving an assassination attempt and rallying supporters with chants of “Fight! Fight! Fight!,” as the picture of physical strength, as opposed to an aging, stiff-gaited, low-talking Biden, whose frailty has been the dominant story for three weeks following the debate.
Not that Biden’s supporters would agree.
“He’s been campaigning, and effectively, in Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and we can’t afford to lose another week, and that’s too bad,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a national co-chair of the Biden reelection campaign and one of the few members of the Democratic senate caucus who believes Biden remains the party’s strongest nominee. “But he respects public health protocols.”
Biden was joined on this week’s campaign swing by roughly a dozen supportive lawmakers, most of them members of the Congressional Black Caucus. But more than a dozen Democrats in Congress have already gone public with calls for Biden to exit the race, and many more have expressed their reservations about his ability to beat Trump in private meetings. Some in that camp succeeded on Wednesday in convincing the Democratic National Committee to slightly delay a meeting to set a date and time for a roll call vote that would officially make Biden the party’s nominee before the DNC convenes in about a month.
Almost simultaneously, Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic Senate nominee in California and a close ally of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called on Biden to step aside, saying in a statement that he no longer believed the president could win the election.
Amid all the tumult, which three weeks of frantic damage control efforts have yet to calm, and ongoing efforts by major donors and activists to break through to the president, his tight-knit inner circle has remained unshaken in its belief that Biden can still win.
“I don’t know this — I’m not trying to announce something,” Coons said, “but my impression is that he’s going to pull down his campaign” to recover.
All public statements from Biden’s campaign and top aides suggest he will be back on the campaign trail and back at the White House as soon as his doctors give the go-ahead. But, serendipitously, he now has a few days to be alone with only those closest to him and, perhaps, to think more about polling, his party’s deep resistance to his nomination and whether, after all this, he’s had enough.
“Don’t you think there’s a word in German, it’s like, six syllables long, for like, ‘I really didn’t deserve this, but here it comes, and oh my God, but I’ll endure it anyway,’?” Coons asked.
Adam Cancryn and Nahal Toosi contributed to this report.
