Biden Resistance Appears to Be Waning in Congress

The House Democrats caucus meeting wrapped up early Tuesday morning and initial reactions are trickling in:

Democrats in both chambers are set to meet with their respective caucuses Tuesday with Biden’s candidacy expected to be the top subject of discussion. Though early speculation suggested that this week would be a moment of reckoning for the president, that energy has seemed to waned in recent days.

Ahead of the House’s meeting, Representative Jerry Nadler acknowledged his own reservations about Biden, but seemed resigned to the fact that he is the party nominee.

By contrast, Representative Lloyd Doggett, who was the first member of Congress to call for Biden to step aside, showed no signs of moving from his position.

Democrats may not believe Joe Biden is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump in November, but there seemed to be a grim resignation on Capitol Hill on Monday night that none were willing to take the steps that might actually push Biden to drop out. If Democrats could simply wave a magic wand to remove the president from the ticket, they would. But all they have are knives, and few are inclined to use them.

The fretting was based on the calculus that while Biden was likely to lose if he remained on the ticket, an unsuccessful effort to oust him would just widen the margin of defeat (and the resulting down-ballot casualties). Many took an abstract view of the process as if it was some intellectual question that needed to be worked out on a blackboard. Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland told reporters “I think we are having an important national conversation and I am confident that the president will make a decision in the best interest of the country.” There was no sense that Biden has already announced that decision a number of times, including hours before in a letter to Congressional Democrats and again during a phone interview with Morning Joe.

Fatalism gripped the Democratic Party on Monday, fueling a desire among many just to resolve all of this quickly. As one donor said “the longer it lingers, the worse it is going to be in November.” Only Joe Biden could really decide to remove himself from the ticket, and barring a shocking turn of events, he wasn’t going to relinquish that grip. In the meantime, the more the media feeding frenzy continued, the tougher it would be for Democrats in competitive races. After all, the last thing Democrats want to do is spend day after day answering questions about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities, and until there was a definitive resolution, they wouldn’t have a choice. There would be no open convention, no Sorkin-esque sacrifice — just another grim four months of plodding along with a flawed nominee.

One senior Democratic aide invoked the T.S. Eliot line that became a cliché long before even Biden was born: “This won’t end with a bang but a whimper.”

Per a Monday night conference call:

The CBC will reportedly release a statement of support on Tuesday or Wednesday:

Also worth noting:

Including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

Democrats have offered a lot of squishy responses on Monday when asked if they still want Biden to be the nominee, including many who have instead expressed their support for “having conversations” on the subject. Calling for Biden to demonstrate his viability to the American people has been a popular response, as well. On the other hand, such comments are hardly full-throated endorsements of Biden, either. Some examples of the non-answers, which are really piling up:

Democrats are trying to strike a careful balance between what they say on the record and how they feel in private with an array of competing cross pressures. The result makes most elected Democrats hesitant to weigh in. However, some still are.

An aide to one Democrat who put out an equivocal statement told me, “No one likes it so it is perfect.”

The Washington State congressman, who is the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, was one of the four House Democrats who told colleagues in an off-the-record call on Sunday they thought Biden needed to step aside. Now he’s saying so on the record:

Though the political world is watching all of the congressional Democrats closely, the Delaware members are receiving a particular amount of scrutiny. Senator Chris Coons, a longtime ally of Biden, has remained steadfast, writing in response to the president’s recent ABC interview, “I can’t wait to help him continue to take the fight to Trump and win in November.”

On Monday, reporters attempted to question Tom Carper, Coons’s Senate colleague, on whether Biden should step down to no avail.

A couple takes on Biden’s approach to Hill Democrats:

A number of brain specialists have suggested, after watching Biden’s debate performance and video of his recent public appearances, that he should undergo testing for movement disorders. (None have personally examined him.) Biden has dismissed those calls, and did so again during his Morning Joe call-in on Monday:

Per the New York Times, the White House continues to insist that there’s no need have the tests done:

[White House spokesperson Andrew] Bates said that the president “has been seen by a neurologist once a year” as part of his overall annual physical checkup and “that examination has found no sign of Parkinson’s and he is not being treated for it.” He declined to provide dates of any meetings between Mr. Biden and any of his specialists but said “there have been no neurologist visits besides the one for his physical per year, three in total.” …

In a six-page letter released after [Biden’s last physical on February 28, his physician Kevin O’Connor] said the president’s medical team had conducted “an extremely detailed neurologic exam” that had yielded “no findings which would be consistent with” Parkinson’s, stroke or other central neurological disorders. Dr. O’Connor did not say whether the examination contained common tests for assessing cognitive decline or detecting signs of dementia that are often recommended for older adults.

The Montana Democrat said Monday that “President Biden has got to prove to the American people — including me — that he’s up to the job for another four years.”

There have been several high-profile statements put out on Monday:

The number of congressional Democrats who have said Biden should drop his reelection bid rose to nine, all of whom serve in the House. Five have said so publicly, and another four said the same privately during an off-the-record call between House Democratic leaders on Sunday. The new additions reportedly included New York representatives Jerry Nadler and Joseph Morelle. At least 20 Democratic lawmakers have publicly raised concerns about Biden’s health and/or ability to defeat Trump, or said that he needs to prove to voters he’s still fit to serve. That includes Representative Adam Schiff and a handful of senators and two governors. Numerous Democratic lawmakers who still back the president have been releasing their own statements, as well.

Biden spent the long holiday weekend trying to demonstrate that the debate was just a bad-night outlier by making a number of public appearances in battleground states and doing a high-profile ABC News interview on Friday. He repeatedly dismissed concerns about his fitness to serve, and defiantly rejected calls for him to leave the race. According to multiple reports, his performances and rhetoric didn’t mollify all those concerns. On Monday morning, following rumors of a larger revolt against his candidacy on Capitol Hill, Biden sent a defiant letter to congressional Democrats insisting he wasn’t going anywhere. He also called into Morning Joe and angrily dared his critics to try to replace him at the Democratic National Convention: