As of late last week, the debate in Democratic circles about President Joe Biden’s electoral future remained robust. The list of party officials calling on the incumbent to forgo his re-election plans continued to grow, and uncertainty reigned.
And then a gunman tried to assassinate Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, at which point the Democratic conversation came to a sudden halt. It’s not that any of the relevant players had changed their mind, it was simply a situation in which officials were so horrified by the shooting that they informally agreed to temporarily put the discussion aside.
The conversation appears to have made a comeback. The New York Times reported:
Representative Adam B. Schiff, the California Democrat who is running for Senate, warned during a private meeting with donors on Saturday that his party was likely to suffer overwhelming losses in November if President Biden remained at the top of the ticket, according to two people with direct knowledge of Mr. Schiff’s remarks at the meeting.
According to the Times’ report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, Schiff — an influential voice in Democratic politics — told supporters privately, “I think if [Biden] is our nominee, I think we lose. And we may very, very well lose the Senate and lose our chance to take back the House.”
The California Democrat, it’s worth emphasizing for context, is not among the congressional Democrats who’ve publicly called on the president to stand down.
There are a variety of other related data points circulating in Democratic circles on Tuesday morning:
* Biden sat down with NBC News’ Lester Holt and hit some rough spots.
* Separate polls from the Times and Virginia Commonwealth University found Virginia becoming an increasingly competitive 2024 battleground. This is a state Biden won by nearly double digits four years ago, and which Republicans didn’t even try to pursue, but which now appears to be a potential battleground.
* This follows a related Times report from late last week that said, “Down-ballot Democrats, local elected officials and party strategists say Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Virginia — all of which Mr. Biden won comfortably in 2020 — could be in play in November after his miserable debate performance last month.”
* In hypothetical general election match-ups against Donald Trump, the latest Times polling found Vice President Kamala Harris faring a little better than Biden in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
* The latest round of polling from YouGov found Trump leading Biden in literally every swing state, despite the same surveys showing Democratic Senate candidates faring well. It led Matt Yglesias, among others, to argue, “I think a non-Biden candidate would have a good chance of converging toward the polling strength of Senate Democrats, while Biden risks pulling senators down to his level.” * The YouGov polling also found that 70% of voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — the three battleground states Team Biden has emphasized most — believe the incumbent is too old to be president. It might be tempting to think Democrats still have a month to figure out what to do: The Democratic National Convention kicks off on August 19, which is five weeks away. But that’s not quite right: Democratic officials are actually moving forward with plans to formally nominate Biden by way of a virtual process by the end of this month — as in, over the next two weeks. This approach was set in motion by Republican lawmakers in Ohio playing an annoying ballot-access game, and while state policymakers ultimately reversed course, making the Democratic virtual gathering unnecessary, the DNC appears ready to implement the plan anyway. All of which is to say, Democrats hoping to see a change at the top of their ticket will need to speak now or forever hold their peace.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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