NEWS
ANALYSIS
On
Capitol Hill, Democrats Panic About Biden but Do Nothing
The
president has yet to do what many Democrats said he must to show he is up to
remaining in the race. But so far, they have thrown up their hands, doing
nothing to nudge him aside.
“This week
is going to be absolutely critical; I think the president needs to do more,”
said Senator Christopher S. Murphy
Annie Karni
By Annie
Karni
Reporting
from the Capitol
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/us/politics/biden-democrats-congress.html
July 9, 2024
Senator
Christopher S. Murphy, an ambitious young Democrat from Connecticut, went on
television on Sunday with a carefully worded warning to President Biden about
the viability of his campaign.
“This week
is going to be absolutely critical; I think the president needs to do more,”
Mr. Murphy said, arguing that Mr. Biden needed to hold a town hall and
participate in unscripted events because “the clock is ticking” for him to put
to rest the doubts about his candidacy raised by a disastrous debate
performance. Multiple times, Mr. Murphy emphasized his deadline, saying that
he, as well as voters, must see more action “this week.”
Senator
Michael Bennet, the Colorado Democrat who briefly ran for president himself,
said Mr. Biden had to “reassure the American people that he can run a vigorous
campaign to defeat Donald Trump.”
Senator
Patty Murray of Washington, a senior member of the Democratic leadership team,
put out a statement that passed for fighting words, saying that the president
“must do more to demonstrate that he can campaign strong enough to beat Donald
Trump.”
So far, Mr.
Biden has done none of that.
And yet,
Democrats on Capitol Hill are stifling their doubts and falling in line behind
him anyway.
Having spent
the last week and a half in various stages of private panic and public
skepticism about Mr. Biden’s viability as a candidate and whispering among
themselves about what the best way to push him aside might be — a strongly
worded letter? a White House meeting? a high-level intervention? — top
Democrats on Tuesday settled on a strategy many of them conceded could be
disastrous: They would do nothing, at least for now.
“As I’ve
said before, I’m with Joe,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the
majority leader, said multiple times at a news conference after a closed-door
Senate lunch. The lunch gave Democrats their first opportunity after a weeklong
recess to gather in person and discuss how aggressive or public they wanted to
be in standing up to a defiant party leader who has unequivocally refused to
step aside on his own.
Representative
Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the ranking member of the Judiciary
Committee, explicitly told colleagues on a private call on Sunday afternoon
that Mr. Biden should withdraw from the race. But by Tuesday as he made his way
into a House caucus meeting, he was backtracking, saying that any concerns he
harbored were “beside the point” and that Mr. Biden was “going to be our
nominee, and we all have to support him.”
Senator
Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, left the Senate lunch arguing that
Mr. Biden and only Mr. Biden would decide his future, and that it was not up to
Congress to pressure him out of the race.
“He has my
support, and I think he is right now the only one who will decide whether he
continues to be the candidate,” Mr. Blumenthal said.
Never mind
that Mr. Biden had done almost none of the kind of unscripted events, town
halls or interviews his critics had said he needed to to show that he was still
fit to run. He was not scheduled to until Thursday, when he is set to
participate in a preplanned NATO news conference.
Instead, a
defiant letter Mr. Biden sent to lawmakers on Monday in which he refused to
drop out of the race — coupled with members of the influential Congressional
Black Caucus vociferously rallying to his side — appeared to have successfully
paralyzed the entire party into a state of uncertainty and inaction during what
it had deemed to be the critical week.
Longtime
party loyalists said they were now reduced to hoping for another major public
misstep by Mr. Biden, such as a serious stumble at his NATO news conference, to
either persuade reticent members of Congress to speak out or to convince the
president that he should leave the race on his own.
The stance
struck the lone-wolf Democrats who have stuck their necks out to publicly call
for Mr. Biden to step aside as preposterous — and even dangerous.
“The idea
that we are going to slow-walk into fascism because we don’t want to hurt
somebody that we respect’s feelings — I cannot even begin to tell you how angry
that makes me,” said Representative Adam Smith of Washington, the ranking
member of the Armed Services Committee and one of seven House Democrats to
publicly call on Mr. Biden to step aside.
On Tuesday
night, Mr. Bennet stopped short of publicly calling on Mr. Biden to end his
campaign. But in an interview on CNN, he confirmed that he told his colleagues
during the closed-door Senate lunch that he did not think Mr. Biden could beat
Mr. Trump. “I think we could lose the whole thing,” he said, referring to the
White House as well as both chambers of Congress.
He added,
“The White House has done nothing since the debate to demonstrate they have a
plan to win this election.”
Privately,
vulnerable Democrats who represent competitive districts were panicking that
there appeared to be no plan to pressure Mr. Biden out of what they expected to
be a losing proposition for all of them. Behind closed doors, there was a
consensus forming among the members in the toughest House seats that Democrats
would have a much better shot of winning the majority with Vice President
Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket.
Their
position was expressed privately to Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York,
the minority leader, who was still in listening mode on Tuesday, debating how
to proceed.
“I think
he’s thinking about logistics and practicality and how do you get all of this
done,” said Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California and the
ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee.
Publicly,
Mr. Jeffries toed the party line. “I made it clear publicly the day after the
debate that I support President Joe Biden and the Democratic ticket,” he told
reporters on Monday. “My position has not changed.”
Ms. Waters
said it was up to Congress to help Mr. Biden win the election.
“We have not
sufficiently educated people as to his accomplishments,” she said. “We all need
to do a better job of that.”
Yet the
consensus among many Democratic lawmakers was that Mr. Biden himself was the
problem. Their unwillingness to say so was reminiscent of how congressional
Republicans behaved during Mr. Trump’s presidency, when they would criticize
and mock him privately but profess total fealty in public — or simply avert
their gaze from his latest incendiary missive.
Representative
Ritchie Torres of New York said it was destructive to call for Mr. Biden to
step aside if he declined to leave voluntarily, adding that Democrats had to
“make the best of a complicated situation.”
“Those
publicly calling on President Biden to withdraw should ask themselves a simple
question,” Mr. Torres told CNN. “What if the president becomes the Democratic
nominee?”
For now, top
Democrats have no appetite for breaking with him. In a statement provided to
The New York Times, Mr. Schumer said, “I’m working overtime with the Biden
campaign and my colleagues to win the presidency and maintain the Democratic
majority in the Senate.”
Catie
Edmondson contributed reporting.
Annie Karni
is a congressional correspondent for The Times. She writes features and
profiles, with a recent focus on House Republican leadership. More about Annie
Karni
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário