Joe Biden’s campaign doubled down on the strength of the president’s reelection campaign Friday morning as calls for him to step aside escalate — including from around some of the most powerful people in the Democratic Party.
Asked directly on “Morning Joe” Friday morning if there’s any possibility Joe Biden steps aside, Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said: “You have heard from the president directly time and again. He is in this race to win, and he is our nominee, and he’s going to be our president for a second term.”
O’Malley Dillon was insistent that there are still “multiple pathways to victory” for Biden, despite the growing concern within Democratic leadership and among White House aides that Biden should step aside.
In a statement Friday afternoon, Biden said he will be “back on the campaign trail next week” following his isolation after testing positive for COVID and that he will be “making the case for my own record and the vision that I have for America.”
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Biden and O’Malley Dillon’s comments also came on the heels of another public defection from within the party. Illinois Rep. Sean Casten announced Friday morning that he believes Biden should step aside. Montana Sen. John Tester on Thursday also said Biden should drop out of the race, the second in the Senate to publicly do so.
“I’m not here to say that this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign. There’s no doubt that it has been, and we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support,” O’Malley Dillon said. “But it has been a small movement.”
That small movement reportedly includes Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama, all privately indicating that Biden’s path to victory has diminished.
Still, Biden has his defenders in Congress. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a late-night livestream following former President Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention, again defended Biden and said an alternative candidate in Vice President Kamala Harris or another high-profile Democrat is not a guaranteed victory.
“I do think that people underestimate Biden’s performance. I think that’s how he became president, is through a lot of people underestimating his performance with demographics that are not traditionally valued,” she said. “People see where he’s weak; they don’t often see where he’s strong.”
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Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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