WASHINGTON — As leading Democrats publicly expressed their support for the president Joe Biden Throughout the weekend, his advisers worked privately on Sunday to push back on suggestions he would step aside, with his campaign manager describing the mechanisms to replace him on the ticket as messy and impractical.
During a tense phone call with a group of about 40 of Biden’s top financial investors, campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez explained what could and could not be done with the campaign’s infrastructure if Biden were to resign. She emphasized during the conversation that he had no intention of doing so.
The bulk of the campaign’s substantial war chest would go to Vice President Kamala Harris, Chavez Rodriguez said, according to two people familiar with the discussion. Only a smaller amount of money would be held by the Democratic National Committee.
While several donors floated what one participant mockingly described as fanciful “West Wing”-style scenarios for replacing Biden, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., who attended part of the call, emphasized that the process is “messy.” and predicted that Harris would ultimately be the nominee.
Sunday’s call was just one of a series of similar conversations that top Biden advisers and campaign officials have had with Democratic officials and donors after Biden’s faltering debate performances roiled the party elite.
The conversation was one of the most candid the campaign has had with a larger group in recent days, addressing the sensitive question of who exactly might succeed Biden if he were to resign.
Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chairman, will also hold a call with a larger group of donors on Monday evening, according to two sources familiar with the plans.
Meanwhile, Biden’s family — the people most influential to him — gathered to discuss the future of his campaign at a long-planned meeting in Camp David, Maryland, NBC News first reported.
The message from Biden’s children and grandchildren, who were gathered Sunday for a photo shoot with famed photographer Annie Leibovitz, was to “keep fighting,” according to two sources familiar with the conversations.
In recent days, some of Biden’s family members have expressed deep frustration with the aides and advisers responsible for preparing him for the debate, a sentiment that continued in conversations over the weekend, multiple sources said. A senior Biden adviser called such suggestions false, while a campaign spokesman said Biden still has confidence in his top staffers.
“The aides who prepared the president have been with him for years, often decades, helping him through victories and challenges. He continues to have great confidence in them,” Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement. a statement.
The campaign’s public stance Sunday was intended to draw attention to the positive, or at least neutral, reaction voters and grassroots supporters have had to Biden’s first debate against former President Donald Trump.
“Every time Donald Trump opened his mouth, those dials went down. They just completely crashed,” Biden campaign pollster Molly Murphy said on MSNBC, referring to live panels the campaign held on Thursday.[Voters] felt that the president came across as someone who cared about the American middle and working class, and compared to Trump, he came across as more presidential, more sympathetic and more honest.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in another MSNBC interview, “It was certainly a setback. But of course I believe that a setback is nothing more than preparation for a comeback.”
During the call with donors, Chavez Rodriguez noted that the campaign has raised $33 million since the debate and has even received hundreds of new registrations from people wanting to join the campaign.
Coons also made a “fiery” case for Biden, pointing to his performance at recent international rallies and his campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday and saying there is no evidence that Thursday’s debate was anything other than a bad night.
One participant said that many on the call were still firmly behind Biden, but that “a lot of participants are scared.”
“There were some harsh comments from participants on the call. Some were angry that all they heard was campaign talk,” the participant said, adding that some donors even asked for their contributions to be refunded.
Another senior Democratic official who has spoken directly to Biden and members of his campaign team said he is reassured that Biden remains in the race and described his team’s stance as “perseverance.”
But he also said he had had many “one-off texts and conversations” with his colleagues and predicted the next two weeks would be crucial.
“We’ll do polls and we’ll do a money count. If they’re good, it looks like he [remains in the race]. And if not, then everything is ruled out,” the official said. It will be “decided more on data than emotion. It’s too early to make a decision.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
