The calls for broader advice come as Democratic lawmakers are raising new doubts about what Biden has been told about his support, after a Zoom call Saturday when Biden argued without evidence that he was leading in national polls outside the typical margin of error. An eight-minute portion of a roughly 45-minute video of the call with the New Democrat Coalition was given to The Washington Post by a Democrat.
Biden assured the lawmakers that his polling numbers had not dipped after his rocky debate performance on June 27, an outing that has prompted more than 20 congressional Democrats to urge him to end his bid for reelection.
“The polling data we’re seeing nationally and on the swing states has been essentially where it was before,” Biden said. “You noticed the last three polls, nationally, they had me up four points. And I mean, I don’t have much faith in the polls at all, either way, because they’re so hard to read anymore.”
The list of head-to-head national polls maintained by the 538 website shows no polls since June with Biden up by four percentage points. A Washington Post average of public polls since the debate shows Biden trailing Donald Trump nationally by more than two points, a loss of almost two points from his pre-debate standing in the same polls. The Biden campaign, in a response to a question, pointed to other national polls that showed Biden leading by as much as two points.
“He is not getting the honest truth,” said one House Democrat.
This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen Democratic strategists, members of Congress and other Biden allies, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations or because of concerns about retaliation by the Biden senior team.
A spokesperson for the Biden campaign said chair Jen O’Malley Dillon speaks regularly with Biden, and that principal deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks staffed the president on a visit last week to meet with union leaders in Washington. Communications director Michael Tyler has also traveled with the president, and a White House official emphasized the president’s senior team — chief of staff Jeff Zients, senior adviser Anita Dunn and deputy chiefs of staff Bruce Reed and Annie Tomasini — is fully engaged with Biden’s activities.
“President Biden is incredibly proud of the well-rounded team he has built, with whom he’s fighting for middle class families, for our freedoms, and the rule of law,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said. “He has not made changes to the group of senior advisers he consults, who he trusts because they’ve demonstrated the integrity to tell the truth and keep the well-being of the American people front of mind.”
When asked Monday during an NBC interview with Lester Holt who he consults on issues such as considering dropping out of the race, Biden said, “Me. I’ve been doing this a long time.”
Asked about calls for him to withdraw, Biden reiterated that he had easily won the Democratic primaries.
“Fourteen million people voted for me to be the nominee of the Democratic Party, okay?” he said. “I listen to them.”
Biden’s supporters say the fact that he is holding calls with various groups of congressional Democrats belies the notion that he is getting limited information. A person familiar with the calls said he often closes them by inviting participants to contact him, for example telling the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, “I’d be anxious to have your advice.”
The person also said many lawmakers on the calls have expressed support, quoting Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, as saying, “Mr. President, I just want to make sure you understand that a significant number of our members really support you and want you to be president, want you to continue.”
During another Saturday call, this one with the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) recounted that he asked the president if his well-known “feistiness and tenacity,” combined with his small circle of advisers and his family, “were maybe preventing him from objectively assessing the damage from the debate.”
“He obviously didn’t think” that was an accurate description of his situation, Huffman said.
Biden has largely avoided direct meetings with pollsters since he became president, say people familiar with his internal operations, and his current polling team is not part of senior meetings with him about campaign matters. Doubts about the accuracy and value of polling are widely shared across Biden’s White House team.
Biden has always relied on a small group of advisers, roughly a half-dozen aides he has known for years and with whom he has long-standing personal relationships. Democrats in Congress and elsewhere now fear that his circle has now shrank even further, while the importance of a broad array of accurate information has become critical amid the political turbulence and calls to step aside.
Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime advertising and message strategist, previously worked as a pollster and has long overseen the president’s polling effort, often communicating information on the latest surveys. But other strategists have raised concerns that Donilon and White House counselor Steve Ricchetti, both of whom have met with Biden more frequently in recent weeks, may not be giving the president a full picture of the polling situation. Others in the White House have said Biden is spending more time with Donilon and Richetti because of their specialties in writing speeches, reviewing polling and interacting with Congress.
“Both Donilon and Ricchetti believe that polling is not reliable,” said a separate Democratic operative familiar with their views.
Biden has echoed that view in public comments. “How accurate does anybody think the polls are these days?” he said in a July 11 news conference.
The skepticism of polling inside the White House dates to the 2022 midterm congressional election, the operative said. For much of that campaign, polls suggested Republicans would make significant gains in Congress, prompting predictions of a “red wave.” Instead, undecided voters broke in the Democrats’ favor at the end — contrary to a long-established pattern in midterm campaigns in which undecided voters break with the incumbent party — allowing Democrats to sharply limit GOP gains.
The Biden campaign’s initial reelection strategy was based on the assumption that something similar would happen in 2024, and voters in the final weeks would break toward Biden because of their distaste for Trump and his political brand. But many Democrats have begun to doubt that assumption as the June 27 debate has surfaced new alarm about Biden’s age and abilities. He is 81 and Trump is 78.
The Biden campaign said its polling immediately after the debate showed an unchanged race, with Biden slightly trailing Trump in battleground states, a clear warning sign for his aides after a debate they’d hoped would turbocharge his campaign. Follow-up polling by the campaign last week has not been discussed publicly, and analysis of the landscape in key states have been restricted to a narrow group of senior campaign officials, people familiar with the situation say.
But public polls in the key states have continued to show Biden trailing and often running double digits behind other statewide Democratic candidates.
An AARP poll last week found Biden down six points to Trump in a five-way race in Wisconsin, one that included third-party candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West and Jill Stein. The Times-Say-YouGov polling of five-way races released Monday showed Biden down seven points in Arizona, five points in Wisconsin, four points in Georgia, four points in Nevada, four points in North Carolina and three points in Pennsylvania, though most of those margins were not statistically significant.
A New York Times-Siena poll released Monday showed Biden down a statistically insignificant two points among likely voters in Pennsylvania and up by the same margin in Virginia, a state that has voted for the Democratic candidate in the last four elections, giving Biden a 10-point margin in 2020. The Biden campaign leadership has argued that wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are the clearest path to victory in the electoral college.
In an effort to shore up his position and stem Democratic defections, Biden met Friday with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Saturday with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). The contents and tenor of those meetings have not been described publicly. Some major donors pushing for Biden’s exit have noted, however, that neither Jeffries or Schumer issued statements calling for Biden to stay in the race after the meetings.
Democrats on Capitol Hill have been using recent calls with the president to relay their concerns, and their messages have often been pointed.
Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), chair of the New Democrat Coalition, a group of about 100 self-described “pragmatic” House members, opened their call with the president Saturday intent on delivering a blunt message, according to a person familiar with her remarks.
Kuster said “the vast majority” of the group’s members were hearing “serious concerns” from voters who increasingly believe that Trump will win the election and want reassurance about the president’s health and the direction of his campaign.
On the same call, Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), who was awarded a Bronze Star for leading Army Rangers in Iraq, told the president he was concerned about Biden’s ability “to project strength, vigor and inspire confidence at home and abroad,” according to the recording.
“We know that without a major change, we are facing a loss in November,” Crow told the president. “The status quo won’t work. Focusing just on Trump won’t work. Focusing on policy accomplishments the last four years won’t work. We need a major shift. We need a major change. What change to your campaign do you propose?”
Biden reacted with frustration to the suggestion that his age had affected his international leadership. “First of all, I think you’re dead wrong about national security,” Biden said. “Name me a foreign leader who thinks I’m not the most effective leader in the world on foreign policy. Tell me. Tell me who … that is.”
During the other call with Biden, Huffman said that he asked the president if he would consider meeting with other leaders of the party, including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and if he would step aside if they asked him to “pass the torch.”
Biden was resistant to the idea, Huffman said.
“That’s the best I can do,” Huffman said later. “I am one member of Congress.”
Marianna Sotomayor, Paul Kane, Scott Clement and Emily Guskin contributed to this report.
