WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats plan to meet privately Thursday at a special caucus luncheon with President Joe Biden’s senior advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti, as well as Biden campaign chairman Jen O’Malley Dillon, according to Democratic leadership sources and senators.
The meeting comes amid growing anxiety among Democrats that Biden’s stumbling block in the June 27 debate has weakened his standing in the presidential race against President Donald Trump.
Many Democrats don’t believe Biden can win, with polling averages showing a slight decline in his approval rating. They also worry that Biden could undermine the party’s approval rating and lead to Republican control of Congress. Democrats are looking to the Biden team for answers about how they plan to turn things around.
“I want to understand what their winning plan is,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
A senior Biden adviser said the messaging to Democrats will be about the path to victory and the campaign’s view, using data to make the case that there has been little movement in the race overall and making it clear the Biden campaign has a plan.
They also are trying to make the case before the Republican convention that Democrats should come together and refocus on what they see as Trump and Republican extremism, the advisers said.
Just before the meeting, the campaign shared a memo on “the path forward” in which it acknowledged “growing anxiety following the debate” and called it a “setback” for the campaign. But the memo insisted that Biden still had a path to victory, noting that “our internal data and polling indicate the same thing: This remains a race with a margin of error in key battleground states.”
The day before the meeting, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) became the first Democrat in the Senate to publicly call on Biden to drop out of the race, writing in a Washington Post op-ed that Biden’s position had weakened and that the party “now has the people to beat Trump.”
“This is a show-and-tell situation for the president,” Welch told NBC News about Thursday’s meeting. “So it’s useful to talk to us to see how they plan to handle it, but it’s not a conversation with people who have been assessing President Biden for many years. The challenge for him will be to appeal to the public after the debate and ease their fears.”
Earlier this week, Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colorado, said he no longer believed Biden could win.
Democrats control the Senate 51-49 and are almost certain to lose West Virginia. To hold onto the 50 remaining seats they need to maintain their Senate majority, they must also defend seats in Republican-leaning states like Montana and Ohio, as well as purple states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. Their only chance of retaking Republican-leaning seats is in Republican-leaning states Florida and Texas.
Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), the most vulnerable Democrats facing reelection this fall, said they could not attend Thursday’s meeting.
“I have a full-time job here and I’m not interested in campaigning,” Brown said.
Tester said he would have liked to attend but was unavailable, and indicated he would be interested in speaking with Biden in person.
“I always want to meet the president,” Tester said.
Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, the Republicans’ biggest target in the race, has also been meeting with Biden’s advisers. Casey told reporters on Wednesday that he disagrees with some of his colleagues’ views that President Biden cannot win the November election. “That’s just my view,” Casey said.
Democratic skeptics of Biden outside the Senate are not convinced that his meetings with advisers will calm their skepticism.
“It’s very easy to assuage our concerns, just show up and show we deserve this. I don’t think sending in staff is going to solve what everyone’s worried about,” said Aaron Regenberg, a former Democratic state legislator from Rhode Island who is now with Pass the Torch, a volunteer group calling for Biden to step down. “We’re losing big right now.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said three times Tuesday, “I’m on Joe’s side,” when asked about Biden’s issues.
Schumer also denied suggestions that he personally said anything differently, saying, “As I have repeatedly made clear both publicly and privately, I support President Biden and remain fully committed to defeating Donald Trump in November.”
