Biden tries to quell donor panic at New York fundraisers
Some top Democratic donors doubt the president, 81, can win the election if he stays on the ticket.
President Biden sought to extinguish anxieties among top Democratic donors Saturday (Sunday AEST) following a disastrous debate performance that raised alarm about his age and ability to remain the party’s nominee, as the White House worked to keep the party fully behind the president.
The task before them was significant. Some donors who attended events doubted that Biden, 81, could win the election if he stayed on the ticket. One donor who went to a weekend event wanted to tell the president in person that he should step aside as the nominee and lamented that they didn’t get the opportunity to do so. They described the gathering as a “joyless” event that only fuelled more concerns about the president.
Some donors described one of the events as overly controlled, with Biden reading from a teleprompter and providing little one-on-one time for meaningful exchanges with the donors who propel the campaign.
Major Democratic donors said that they are waiting for a new round of post-debate polling to see how much the president’s performance in Thursday’s debate with former President Donald Trump will impact the race. If Biden plummets in the polls, they reasoned, the pressure will make it easier to push the president aside.
The signs of discontent were hard to miss. As the president’s motorcade rolled Saturday into a fundraiser in East Hampton, N.Y., it passed a group of people holding signs that underscored Biden’s perilous standing. “Please drop out for U.S.,” “Thank you next,” “Step down for democracy,” and “We love you but it’s time,” read the signs.
Aides expected Biden would have a much stronger debate performance, and the weekend events were planned as part of an anticipated victory lap that would give his campaign some momentum at the end of the fundraising quarter. Instead the gatherings became the latest place to measure the damage done on stage in Atlanta.
After appearing in the Hamptons, Biden was set to speak later Saturday at an event at the New Jersey home of Gov. Phil Murphy.
“I didn’t have a great night but neither did Trump,” Biden said at the East Hampton fundraiser hosted by hedge fund manager Barry Rosenstein. Biden called Trump a “genuine threat” and vowed to press forward. “I promise you we’re gonna win this election,” he said.
Biden spoke as the White House and Democratic leaders sought to close ranks around the president and maintain the support of lawmakers and party activists, who have expressed distress over his debate performance.
In an email from Biden’s campaign to top donors Friday, the campaign said it would take “all of us coming together” to re-elect Biden and noted that the president “was fighting a sore throat and got off to a slow start, but then drew a sharp contrast with Trump on the issues that matter most to voters.” Inside the White House, officials viewed the first 24 hours as the most crucial period to calm rattled elected officials and top donors, who in private text chains and conversations questioned if the president could remain at the top of the ticket.
The president’s team conducted a flurry of phone calls and outreach to respond to lawmakers and Biden allies, in which they reiterated that Biden was not dropping out of the race, according to people familiar with the calls. The White House also benefited from public statements of support from party leaders such as former President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. James Clyburn (D., S.C.), along with Democratic governors such as Gavin Newsom of California and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.
Anita Dunn, a White House senior adviser, said in an interview Saturday with MSNBC that there were no internal conversations about whether Biden should drop out of the race. “No, the conversation that we had is, ‘OK, what do we do next?’ ” Dunn said. “Barack Obama said bad debates happen. We had a bad debate. What do we do next?” Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, held a quarterly call Saturday with DNC members, in which he gave an update on fundraising and the past week, including Thursday’s debate. There was no direct reference to the debate, one attendee said, but rather what Biden said about his performance on Friday in North Carolina.
Biden’s forceful speech Friday at a Raleigh, N.C., rally also helped reassure some of these Democrats. Biden said he intended to win the battleground state in November and acknowledged that while he may not debate as well as he used to, he knew “how to get things done,” and had learned that “when you get knocked down, you get back up.” Biden’s campaign said it had raised $US27m between the day of Thursday’s debate and Friday night. Campaign officials said a Friday night LGBTQ-themed event with Biden in New York and the Saturday events in New York and New Jersey would raise more than $US12m.
“The feeling in the room was that of love, joy and positivity. Everyone was there to rally the president for sure,” said Sandra Mandell, a Biden delegate from the Forest Hills section of Queens who attended Friday’s fundraiser at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Before the debate, Biden had been locked in a tight race against Trump and was trailing the former president in several battleground state polls.
“This is a good man who’s been a terrific president and that’s why this is so painful for everyone,” said Brian Goldsmith, a Democratic consultant in Los Angeles who has raised money for Biden. “But if Trump comes back, that will be his whole legacy, full stop.” The tickets for the weekend’s fundraisers were sold well in advance of the debate and will inject the massive campaign organisation with cash as the impact from Thursday night becomes more clear. But the real test of major donor support will be in coming weeks as new events go on the calendar.
“I think it’s going to take another couple of weeks of what we saw in North Carolina (Friday) and then here in New York,” said Charles Myers, the chairman and founder of Signum Global Advisors and a major party donor who attended Friday night’s fundraiser. “The president and his surrogates still have, obviously, a lot of work to do.” Myers, however, said the worries following Biden’s lacklustre debate had “calmed down faster than I expected” and enthusiasm among donors still remained high. He said during Friday night’s fundraiser, a donor at a table next to his agreed to pledge an additional $US500,000 to support the Biden Victory Fund.
Obama appeared Friday night at a fundraiser with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), that raised $US3m for the House Democrats’ campaign arm and reminded Jeffries in a fireside chat that his first general election debate in 2012 went poorly, according to participants. Obama reiterated the stakes of the November election and the importance of helping Democrats win back the House majority.
Biden’s standing with donors is important because his debate meltdown overlapped with a surge in Trump’s fundraising in recent months as he was able to tap into a joint fundraising committee as the GOP nominee.
Biden had a substantial fundraising advantage over Trump earlier this year but Trump outraised the president for the second month in a row in May. Trump’s monthly fundraising more than doubled his campaign committee’s cash on hand, to $US116.6m at the end of May. Biden’s cash on hand increased, but not as rapidly, to $US91.6m.
Vice President Kamala Harris was appearing at a Pride Month fundraiser in Los Angeles Saturday with a performance by Idina Menzel and headlined a Friday night event in Park City, Utah. First lady Jill Biden attended a Friday night fundraiser in New York City, in which she recounted telling her husband after the debate, “we are not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.” Michael Kempner, a New York donor for Biden who attended Saturday’s fundraiser in the Hamptons, said the party needed to “take a breath, let the dust settle.” He pointed to Trump’s own debate performance and the former president’s July 11 sentencing in New York on 34 felonies for falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star.
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