Biden’s health and age under even further scrutiny amid questions over his political future

CNN

By Kyle Feldscher, Jeff Zeleny and Samantha Waldenberg, CNN

Washington (CNN) — As President Joe Biden isolates at his Delaware beach home after testing positive for Covid-19, he is growing increasingly isolated from many corners of his Democratic Party as he faces deepening questions about whether he should continue his reelection campaign.

The announcement of Biden’s positive test on Wednesday came as calls from his party for him to step aside in the 2024 race are growing louder. CNN reported that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told the president that polling shows Biden cannot defeat former President Donald Trump in November and that continuing his run for the presidency could destroy Democrats’ chance to take back the House.

Following Biden’s campaign-changing performance in last month’s presidential debate, his age and health — which have long been his biggest political weakness, dating back to his third run for the presidency starting in 2019 — have been under the microscope. In the last week, multiple incidents have been held up as signs that Biden is not sharp enough to convince voters that he could defeat Trump, let alone serve another four years as commander-in-chief.

An interview with BET that taped on Tuesday and aired in full late Wednesday night is the latest moment that’s being scrutinized by nervous Democrats. In that interview, Biden said that only a “medical condition” would convince him to leave the race — a statement made just one day before he tested positive for Covid.

He stumbled while referring to Black members of his administration, describing Lloyd Austin as the secretary of defense rather than saying his name.

“For example, look at the heat I’m getting because I named a, uh … the — secretary of defense, a Black man. I named Ketanji Brown, because of the people I’ve named,” Biden said, also referring to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom he appointed to the high court.

The White House said Wednesday the president had “upper respiratory symptoms, to include rhinorhea (runny nose) and non-productive cough, with general malaise” as a result of his Covid infection. Video of the president leaving Las Vegas showed him slowly walking up the steps to enter Air Force One, including pausing on the second step to gather himself before continuing into the plane.

Biden on Thursday is experiencing “mild upper respiratory symptoms” and is continuing to receive Paxlovid, according to a note from his physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor. O’Connor notes that Biden does not have a fever and his vitals remain “normal.”

Additional video shot by pool reporters who met Biden in Delaware late Wednesday also shows the president appearing to have difficulty getting situated in his SUV for the drive to his Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home, where he is planning to isolate. The video shows Biden taking half a minute to get into the SUV and requiring the assistance of Secret Service agents to get situated in the car. The president was not wearing a face mask while he was interacting with the agents, despite having Covid. He eventually did put on a mask.

Earlier on Wednesday, while visiting a local restaurant, the president appeared to mistake Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford for the state’s governor. While speaking to a guest, Biden pointed to Ford and asked, “You know the gov?” Individuals nearby laughed at the statement, but it was unclear whether Biden was joking.

CNN has reached out to the Biden campaign and White House for comment on the moment in Nevada and the president’s arrival in Delaware. Biden’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks on Thursday said the campaign is “not working through any scenarios” where Biden is not the presidential nominee.

“The vice president is a part of the Biden-Harris ticket. Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not the top of the ticket. He is and will be the Democratic nominee,” he said during a DNC news conference in Milwaukee when asked if the campaign was working on any plans should Vice President Kamala Harris take the lead.

Asked if Biden’s receptive to conversations about leaving the race, Fulks replied, “The president has said it several times, he’s staying in this race.”

“The president is in this race. He’s going to and we look forward to him accepting the delegates in Chicago and continuing with this race to talk about what’s at stake,” he added.

Polling shows a problem

As calls for Biden to reconsider his candidacy are poised to grow even louder on Thursday, some of the reasons why are coming into sharper focus: Not only is Biden falling short to Trump, but Democratic candidates are afraid voters could see their own defenses of Biden as dishonest.

“Defending Biden’s fitness for office is an untenable position for down-ballot Democrats,” according to a memo a leading Democratic research firm released Wednesday. It details that voters are “likely to see other Democrats’ defense of him as fit as dishonest” by a wide margin.

CNN obtained a polling memo from Blue Rose Research, which is distributed daily to operatives and officials across the Democratic Party. Pelosi is among those who pore over the details and findings in documents like this that are rarely shared.

The memo dated Wednesday shines a brighter light on the reasons behind the calls for Biden to step aside.

“Concerns about President Biden’s fitness for office are pervasive,” the memo says, pointing to polling data that shows a remarkable low number of voters — even those who supported Biden in 2020 — who believe he is capable of serving a second term.

While partisan polling does not meet CNN standards, the 16-page document has value because it offers a window into the panic and alarm across the Democratic Party.

An AP-NORC poll released Wednesday found 14% of all Americans are extremely or very confident that Biden has the “mental capacity to be an effective president.” Among Democrats, that number is 27%.

The internal polling data shows an expanding battleground in the presidential race, with New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia and Maine becoming highly competitive in the race between Biden and Trump, in addition to the seven current top battleground states.

Worrying moments for Democrats

The president has had several moments over the last week that have worried Democrats even more about whether he can effectively continue to campaign.

On July 11, the president had back-to-back slip-ups on the last day of the NATO summit in Washington, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before correcting himself at one event and then referring to Harris as “Vice President Trump” in a press conference, a mistake he did not correct or acknowledge.

In that same press conference, Biden also appeared to back away from his previous assertion that only the “Lord Almighty” could convince him to leave the race, saying he would not leave the race “unless they came back and said there’s no way you can win.”

Several calls with key groups of lawmakers on Friday and Saturday also did not seem to convince skeptical lawmakers that Biden was able to win. CNN reported Wednesday night that a Democratic lawmaker told CNN that Biden’s full court press in recent days following Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump has only exacerbated the panic inside the party. “Getting worse” is how the member put it.

Another House Democrat who watched Biden’s interview with NBC News’ Lester Holt on Monday described feeling “profound sadness watching an admirable man tread water instead of leading us through it.”

While the assassination attempt on Trump eased the political pressure on Biden for a few days, that pressure has kicked up again over the last several days as CNN and others reported that some Biden allies were making a quiet push for the Democratic National Committee to speed up Biden’s virtual nomination process — with the hope of beginning the roll call vote as soon as next week.

Concerned Democrats bought themselves a little more time by convincing the DNC to not move up the timeline — voting will not begin before August 1, CNN reported. The delay stopped a draft letter circulating among House Democrats that, if made formal, would have exposed further cracks in the party. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer both pushed the DNC to delay the process, multiple sources told CNN.

Behind the scenes, the president is not as defiant as he is in public, multiple Democratic sources told CNN.

“The private conversations with the Hill are continuing,” a senior Democratic adviser told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid alienating the campaign and the White House. “He’s being receptive. Not as defiant as he is publicly.”

“He’s gone from saying, ‘Kamala can’t win,’ to ‘Do you think Kamala can win?’“ the adviser said. “It’s still unclear where he’s going to land but seems to be listening.”

The Biden campaign, which is also facing a growing outcry from Democratic donors, dismissed the suggestion the president was rethinking his candidacy.

“If the facts matter — and they should — here is one: President Biden is the Democratic nominee and he is going to win this November,” Kevin Munoz, a Biden spokesman, told CNN.

Biden on defense

Biden has been growing increasingly defensive over his political standing in recent days. CNN has reported that calls over the weekend with groups of Democratic lawmakers did not go well when the president was confronted with polling data that lawmakers said showed his standing in the race had fallen dramatically.

On Wednesday night, CNN reported Pelosi had told Biden within the last week that the polling data showed he could not win reelection. The president responded by pushing back, telling Pelosi he has seen polls that indicate he can win, one source said. Another one of the sources described Biden as getting defensive about the polls. None of the sources indicated whether Pelosi told Biden in this conversation that she believes the president should drop out of the 2024 race.

When asked for comment, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates did not respond to the details of CNN’s reporting on the recent Pelosi-Biden call. “President Biden is the nominee of the party. He plans to win and looks forward to working with congressional Democrats to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families,” Bates said.

CNN’s MJ Lee, Annie Grayer, Donald Judd and Veronica Stracqualursi contributed to this report.

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