Biden’s mixed performance entrenches Democratic divisions over path forward

President Biden’s middle-of-the-road performance at a high-stakes press conference Thursday has left House Democrats in a state of limbo regarding his fate. 

The president’s supporters are pointing to his high notes as evidence Biden still has what it takes to lead the country through the next four years. Critics are highlighting his gaffes in calling for him to bow out for the sake of keeping former President Trump out of the White House. And the ongoing dispute has left the caucus in a position of suspended ambivalence — one that will only intensify the dilemma facing Democratic leaders as they attempt to steer their party to some timely conclusion without triggering a civil war.

“If you have the kind of press conference he had last night, I would say, there were pros and cons to that,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) told The Hill in an interview. “And that kind of muddled the waters.”

Connolly, who was a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was a member, said he’s “torn” over the president’s candidacy — and Thursday’s press conference hasn’t helped him reach any verdicts.

“Like a lot of people last night, I found some reassurance in the press conference, but I also was reminded of the sort of the plague of stumbles that seems to be happening with increasing frequency,” Connolly said.

“It’s always a step forward and a step backward,” he added. “How can anyone believe that’s gonna resolve this issue definitely? It just isn’t.”

Thursday’s press conference, which concluded an annual NATO conference in Washington, was the first for Biden since his disastrous debate against Trump last month in Atlanta, where his faltering performance sounded new alarms about his fitness for office and precipitated a slow but steady drip of Democratic lawmakers calling for him to exit the race. 

Those dynamics raised the stakes exponentially surrounding his appearance before the press, where all sides were watching anxiously to see how he would fare in a high-pressure, unscripted environment.

In response, Biden provided something for everyone.

The president demonstrated a firm grasp of complex foreign policy issues, addressing questions about his position on China, Russia and Ukraine with a show of ease that’s eluded him on other topics, including that of his candidacy. Biden’s allies said it was an affirmation the president is more than capable of continuing his tenure as commander in chief for a second term. 

“This president was on his game yesterday,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) said Friday morning on CNN. “Anybody that watched that press conference had to be impressed with his breadth of knowledge, detail and willingness to go into the extraordinarily important international issues as well as the domestic issues. 

“Fifty minutes standing up there as well as the presentation — it was a tour de force,” he added. “So what’s wrong here?”

Yet Biden also stumbled on numerous occasions during the nearly hourlong press conference, referring to Vice President Harris as “Vice President Trump” and praising the military advice he gets from “the commander in chief” — a title he, himself, holds. And just before the event began, Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin,” the leader of Russia who is waging a war against Kyiv.

“When the president was in his wheelhouse of foreign policy, which he has mastered over 40 years in the Senate and eight years in the vice presidency and these last 3.5 years, he seemed comfortable and of course knowledgeable. So that was pretty solid,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told The Hill. “When he got beyond that, it was shaky, and of course the gaffes are going to continue to dog him.”

Biden did well enough to prevent the trickle of Democrats calling for him to step aside from becoming a flood. But he also wasn’t inspiring enough to stem the bleeding.

Five House Democrats have called on the president to bow out of the race since the press conference — bringing the total number of lawmakers in the lower chamber to 18 — a concerning figure for the campaign, but one that is far smaller than the dozens of defectors who some predicted would emerge after the press event.

Democratic Reps. Jim Himes (Conn.), Scott Peters (D-Calif.), Eric Sorensen (Ill.), Brittany Pettersen (Colo.) and Mike Levin (Calif.) released statements in the 24 hours after the press conference urging the president to pass the torch to a new nominee because, in their eyes, he will not beat Trump in November.

“In 2020, Joe Biden ran for President with the purpose of putting country over party,” said Sorensen, who is running in a competitive race this fall. “Today, I am asking him to do that again.”

Asked Thursday night about congressional Democrats closely watching his press conference, the president said he’s “determined on running, but I think it’s important that I allay fears by seeing, let them see me out there.”

Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he purposely waited to release his statement until after the NATO summit ended — “partisanship and politics should stop at the water’s edge” — while noting his decision did not hinge on Thursday’s press conference per se, but rather on the anxiety and uncertainty that surrounds every one of Biden’s public appearances these days.

“It’s really not about tonight,” Himes said Thursday evening on MSNBC. “One of the, really, kind of sick aspects of this moment is that we are watching every speech, every rally, every debate, and saying, how did he do today? And that’s just not the way to think about the presidency of the United States.”

The absence of any consensus on the question of Biden’s future is creating enormous headaches for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and the members of his leadership team, who have staged a long string of closed-door meetings and private phone calls with various factions of the caucus in the weeks since the June 27 Biden-Trump debate. 

Jeffries, throughout that process, has sought a delicate balance, voicing public support for Biden’s candidacy while also emphasizing that the party’s ultimate goal is to keep Trump from winning a second term — whatever it takes. 

On Thursday night, after the press conference, Jeffries huddled privately with Biden at the White House, where he said he conveyed the mixed messages he’s hearing from within the House caucus. 

“In my conversation with President Biden, I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward that the Caucus has shared in our recent time together,” Jeffries wrote Friday morning in a letter to fellow Democrats. 

He did not say what comes next.

Meanwhile, many Democrats are withholding any formal decisions while they wait to see what polls reveal about the fallout, if any, from Biden’s debate debacle. The president and his campaign team have insisted their internal polls show he still has a good shot of winning, but many lawmakers on Capitol Hill want more proof than just vocal assurances. 

“It’s [one thing] to say subjectively, ‘That was a horrible debate and you need to step down,’” said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.). “It’s a really different conversation if you have objective data that says something different. If they say, ‘Well, we’ve got different polls.’ Great. Show us those polls.”

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), who is calling for Biden to step aside, said he’s already seen enough postdebate polls to conclude the situation is dire.

“We haven’t had a good day since the debate,” he said. “Things are trending toward worse things.”

Biden on Thursday did, for his part, open the door to making a change at the top of the ticket if data says that is the only way to ensure a Democratic victory in November. The president said he would reconsider his decision to stay in the race if his staff informed him “there’s no way you can win,” but he downplayed the odds of that happening.

“No one is saying that,” Biden told reporters. “No poll says that.”

The comments marked a slight departure from the president’s previous tune, which had him rejecting the notion that he would step aside under any circumstances. During an interview with ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos, the president facetiously said “if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that.”

The change in tune was not lost on some lawmakers, who were satisfied with his softened stance.

“I was pleased to hear him express an openness to keep considering new information and changed circumstances,” Huffman said. “That’s not something we’ve heard before.”

Time to consider new information, however, is running out. The Democratic National Convention, which will be the official coronation of the presidential nominee, is set to begin Aug. 19, a date that is acting as a quasi deadline for the party to get its act in line.

“Politics is a very non-sentimental thing, and we’re gonna have to make some hard judgments and hard choices to ensure that those two overriding goals we talked about,” Connolly said.  “You’ve got to beat Trump, and you’ve got to be able to serve ably for the next four years.”