Democratic governors to Democratic congressmen: Drop dead.
That may be an exaggeration of the message spread by a group of the country’s governors on Wednesday night, but it’s not far off.
By traveling to Washington to meet with President Joe Biden and then publicly expressing support for the embattled president from the West Wing, the governors have hampered efforts by congressional Democrats to remove him from the ballot.
Panicked at having to be on the same ballot as an irreparably wounded candidate, Democratic lawmakers turned fiercely against Biden this week, albeit in private.
Most Democrats in Congress see no way to win back the House of Representatives and retain their majority in the Senate if they are led by a president who, according to new polls, a large majority in the country considers too old for the job.
But by showing up at the White House and then, more importantly, making public declarations of support, the governors have only emboldened a standard-bearer many lawmakers believe is doomed — and will condemn them. Most House Democrats are ahead of Biden in their internal polls, people familiar with the results tell me. But they know they can’t overcome his deficit if he loses their seats by 15 points instead of a median. “That’s why there’s such terror,” as one aide who works on Democratic congressional elections explained.
Even more galling for Democrats on Capitol Hill is the personal politics they sense in the governors’ endorsements. Few governors are running for reelection this year, but more than a handful of them are eager to run for president in 2028. And there’s no path for any of them if Vice President Kamala Harris is President Harris seeking reelection by then. Moreover, if she makes a credible, last-minute run and narrowly loses this year to former President Donald Trumpit may still be difficult to deny her the nomination in four years.
“Sink Kamala so she’s not the nominee in both ‘24 and ‘28,” as one House Democrat texted when he heard the governors were backing Biden.
Of course, not all governors are so cynical. And I don’t think any of them want to see Trump back in the White House.
Yet many top executives are now deeply skeptical that Biden can stop him.
One of the governors I spoke to emerged from the West Wing after his speech convinced that the president was still in denial. He told them that the polls haven’t gotten much worse and that he just needs to sleep more and campaign more.
Furthermore, my colleagues reported that two governors, Janet Mills of Maine and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico, told Biden directly that they were concerned that their Democratic-leaning states were now in danger.
Still, it is no exaggeration to say that the incentives for members of Congress who will face voters in a few months are significantly different from those for some governors who are already voting longer term.
Despite all the talk of a compressed mini-primary this summer, the governors vying for the presidency know that Harris would almost certainly be the Democratic nominee if Biden dropped out. Even if she were to pick a governor as her running mate and they lost, how would her running mate catch up with her in 2028, when she would surely run again to finish the job she began under the most difficult circumstances? The case is clear.
The path for aspiring governors is clearer if Harris heads to the polls this year on a Biden-led ticket — if, to put it bluntly, that happens with Dan Quayle in 2028.
For vulnerable congressional Democrats, however, Harris looks like something else entirely right now — a potentially better alternative to Biden. And even that potential is now tantalizing.
Losing to Trump by three points instead of six points nationally could be the difference between losing at least a dozen seats in the House of Representatives and the difference between losing three or four seats in the Senate versus seven or eight. In other words, it’s a matter of personal survival.
For example, a group of Democrats woke up Thursday to a new internal poll from the must-win state of Wisconsin showing Biden trailing by seven points and in the 30s on a ballot of third-party candidates.
It’s not that congressional Democrats have a profile for courage, though. The gulf between their public remarks and private feelings about Biden is at levels not seen since, well, the Republican Party during the Trump presidency. The majority of congressional Democrats, I’m told by other lawmakers and aides close to them, want the president out of office. But as the old saying goes about tough votes, they’re voting yes when they hope no.
That could change next week, especially if Biden shows no signs of reconsidering. As one connected Democrat in the House of Representatives told me, “The polls are going to get a little worse, and people are going to lose their minds even more.”
But for now, the governors offered Biden a temporary lift, even though that wasn’t their intention. They just didn’t want to tell the president to his face, let alone the TV cameras on the White House driveway, what they actually thought.
“Trust me,” one Democratic governor told me after the White House hearing, “the governors I know are not supportive and want change.”
