Biden delays Democratic exit but concerns remain: Politics

Welcome to the online edition From the Political Deskis an evening newsletter bringing you the latest coverage and analysis from the election campaign, the White House and Congress from the NBC News political team.

In today’s edition, our team of political and congressional reporters examine how President Joe Biden’s campaign has largely stopped the bleeding but still faces serious concerns within the Democratic Party. Plus, national political reporter Steve Kornacki looks back at two instances when Democrats made late-game swaps between Senate candidates in key races.

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Biden is slowing defecting from the Democratic Party, but some worry he can’t beat Trump

Scott Wong, Ali Vitali, Rebecca Kaplan, Kyle Stewart

President Joe Biden’s insistence that he will not drop out of the 2024 presidential race appears to have slowed the defection from the Democratic Party, at least for now.

While Biden is not yet in a safe position and many Democrats continue to complain privately and publicly that they cannot beat Donald Trump this fall, he appears to have largely stopped the bleeding as he and his allies work to shore up support for his embattled campaign.

“If the opposition doesn’t unite, it’s in Biden’s favor,” one House Democrat said.

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At a closed-door meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday, only a handful of Democrats privately expressed concerns about Biden’s age and whether he could win the November election, according to a person present. The handful of Democrats who defected included Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) and Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who had already publicly or privately called for Biden to step down, according to the people.

It was a small win for Biden, but the top Democrat on the powerful Judiciary Committee, veteran Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, left the meeting appearing resigned to the fact that Biden was at the top of the list of nominees. In a private call with other committee leaders two days earlier, Nadler had urged Biden to step aside, according to sources.

“It doesn’t matter whether I have concerns,” Nadler told reporters Tuesday. “He’s going to be our nominee and we should all support him.”

The majority of lawmakers gathered at Democratic National Committee headquarters on Tuesday said it was time for the party to endorse Biden.

“There is an overwhelming consensus that Biden has decided to continue his campaign and that we should unite behind him,” a House Democrat and Biden ally said as he left the meeting. “Anyone with concerns should speak up privately. It’s a fait accompli. Biden is the nominee.”

But Biden lost one House Democrat on Tuesday afternoon, when Rep. Mickey Sherrill (D-MN) called on the president to end his reelection campaign, saying “the stakes are too high, and the threats too real, to remain silent.”

Senate Democrats also met behind closed doors for the first time since Mr Biden’s shaky debate performance. The normally talkative senators left the lunch without detailing what was discussed, saying only that the conversation had been “constructive.”

“This was a private family discussion,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich. “Joe Biden has been the best president Michigan has ever had and he’s brought jobs to our state.”

Read more from our Capitol Hill team →

🫏 “Elite” companies: Biden has sought to position himself as a candidate against the “elites” in Washington.

But as NBC News’ Natasha Korecki and Jonathan Allen report, rank-and-file Democrats, party leaders, battleground state leaders and elected officials say Biden thinks exactly the opposite.

They say they have long harbored deep concerns about Biden and have addressed concerns from voters that poll after poll has shown, but felt powerless to act with the White House and the Democratic Party under Biden’s control.

Continue reading Natasha and John →

What happened the last time Democrats switched candidates in a high-profile election?

Steve Kornacki

It is impossible to predict the impact of Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, in part because nothing like this has ever happened before.

Biden is currently the party’s presumptive nominee, which means he has secured a majority of pledged delegates in the primaries and a first-round victory at the Democratic Convention. This is a designation that has been used for the past 50 years, during which time every presumptive candidate from both major parties has been endorsed as the actual candidate. Also, no major party presidential candidate has ever withdrawn during a general election campaign.

So if Biden were to step down now and be replaced by another candidate, we wouldn’t see a parallel at the presidential level. But there are at least some examples that come close at the state level, where parties very rarely change candidates in major competitive races long after they originally selected them.

Perhaps the two most famous cases, both of which occurred in 2002, saw Democrats switch Senate candidates in two closely fought elections for very different reasons, one to Democrats’ advantage and one to their detriment.

New Jersey Ethics Questions: One successful candidate switch occurred in New Jersey, where Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli withdrew from reelection in late September 2002 amid allegations that he had accepted improper gifts and payments from campaign donors.

The state Supreme Court allowed Democrats to replace Torricelli with former Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the November election, which Lautenberg won by 10 percentage points.

Minnesota Tragedy: Halfway across the country, it was tragedy, not scandal, that forced Democrats to change their nominee for the second time in 2002. In Minnesota, Senator Paul Wellston, a sort of national hero for liberals, died in a plane crash on October 25.

The campaign pause ended after the Wellston memorial service, where Democrats were cheered as they entered but some Republicans jeered and many of the speeches were directly political.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale ran for the Democratic nomination to replace Wellstone in the Senate, but was narrowly defeated by Republican Norm Coleman.

Read more from Steve →

That’s all from the Politics Desk. If you have any comments, please email us here. politicsnewsletters@nbcuni.com

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