Jeffries, Schumer Privately Warned Biden He Could Imperil Democrats

The Democratic leaders, in separate meetings last week, suggested Biden’s candidacy could damage the party’s hopes of controlling the House and the Senate.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) speak to reporters in February. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

By Tyler Pager and Michael Scherer

July 17, 2024 at 7:47 p.m. EDT

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, in separate private meetings with President Biden last week, told him that his continued candidacy imperils the Democratic Party’s ability to control either chamber of Congress next year.

Jeffries (D-N.Y.) met with Biden on Thursday night at the White House, and Schumer (D-N.Y.) met with him on Saturday in Rehoboth Beach, Del. In the meetings, the congressional leaders discussed their members’ concerns that Biden could deprive them of majorities, giving Republicans a much easier path to push through legislation, according to four people briefed on the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private talks.

In a separate one-on-one conversation, a person close to Biden told the president directly that he should end his candidacy, saying that was the only way to preserve his legacy and save the country from another Trump term, the person said. Biden responded that he adamantly disagreed with that opinion and that he is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump. The person spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Follow live updates from Day 3 of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Catch up on highlights from the second night, when Nikki Haley called for unity and endorsed Donald Trump.

Trump is officially the Republican’s presidential nominee and chose Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate. Democrats are still warring over whether President Biden is the right person to remain atop their ticket.

The Democratic leaders released short statements after the meetings, acknowledging only that they occurred but saying little or nothing about the substance. The Biden campaign and the White House also have not provided public summaries of the meetings.

White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden told Schumer and Jeffries in their private meetings that he would remain at the top of the ticket. “The President told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families,” Bates said in a statement.

Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in California and a close ally of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), on Wednesday became the latest and most prominent House member to call on Biden to leave the race. Adding to the president’s challenges, he was diagnosed with covid-19 on Wednesday, forcing him to curtail his campaign schedule.

Even before last month’s presidential debate, in which Biden repeatedly stumbled, Democrats’ internal polls showed his support trailing his 2020 levels by significant margins in key districts, according to people familiar with the data. Biden’s team had long hoped that the debate would boost those numbers, but it has not worked out that way.

“Democratic House polls have not shown any change in congressional candidate standing since the debate,” said one person familiar with the data, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.

In the Senate, Democrats have a 51-49 majority, but Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), a longtime Democrat who recently switched to independent, is not seeking reelection, meaning the GOP will almost certainly recapture his seat. Even if Democrats win all the other contested seats, the result would be a 50-50 split — meaning the Senate would be controlled by whichever party wins the White House, because the vice president casts the tiebreaking vote in the chamber.

That has deeply worried many Senate Democrats, given that Biden is trailing Trump in numerous battleground state polls in which Democratic Senate candidates continue to lead — a sentiment Schumer expressed to Biden in their meeting. “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus,” said Alex Nguyen, a spokesman for the senator.

In private meetings with larger groups of lawmakers, Biden has disputed the notion that he is losing to Trump or that he would hurt other Democrats and has cited polls as a defense, although he has not specified which ones prove his point, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.

The private warnings from Jeffries and Schumer are a striking message from the party’s leaders and reflect the dire outlook among many Democrats after Biden’s debate performance. Nearly two dozen members of Congress have publicly called on Biden to exit the race, and many more elected officials privately share that sentiment.

Pelosi and former president Barack Obama, who have spoken out about the state of the race in recent days, have expressed concern privately about the president’s path forward, according to people familiar with their conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private. Obama spoke with Biden after the debate, offering his support as a sounding board and private counselor for the man who was his vice president.

Biden has in recent days launched an energetic, sometimes combative, effort to hear out the concerns of fellow Democrats, meeting virtually with five groups of House lawmakers. He has also spoken privately with party leaders, including Pelosi and Rep. James E. Clyburn (S.C.).

Biden had a phone conversation on Friday with Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which coordinates the party’s House races, according to a person familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the conversation was private. A DCCC spokesman declined to comment.

Although their path to retaining their Senate majority has seemed shaky for some time, Democrats had seen a clear path to win back the House, which Republicans now control 220-213. With Trump leading Biden in the polls, Democrats fear that a failure to retake the House would give Trump and the far-right faction of the Republican Party a free hand to remake Washington.

The day after his meeting with Biden, Jeffries sent a letter to his Democratic House colleagues to inform them of his conversation, noting that he had requested the meeting.

“In my conversation with President Biden, I directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward that the Caucus has shared in our recent time together,” Jeffries wrote, referring to the full caucus of House Democrats.

After his meeting Saturday, Schumer said in a statement, “I sat with President Biden this afternoon in Delaware; we had a good meeting.”

In recent days, Democratic lawmakers and even top strategists working on Biden’s reelection effort have grown increasingly concerned that the president is not getting a full picture of the state of the race. In particular, they worry that he has not met with his campaign’s pollsters and, instead, has relied largely on the advice of a dwindling circle of longtime aides.

The back-and-forth is playing out alongside a related dispute over whether to proceed with a virtual roll call that would formally nominate Biden several weeks before the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19-22. Some Democrats say that is a necessary move to ensure that Republicans cannot challenge Biden’s nomination as coming too late; others complain that it is a ploy to cement his nomination before the delegates gather.

On Wednesday, the co-chairs of the convention’s rules committee issued a letter saying that the virtual roll call would take place, but they promised it would not be rushed and would not occur before Aug. 1. The announcement came after some Democratic lawmakers had started protesting the process and urging the party to abandon it.

Paul Kane, Marianna Sotomayor and Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.