Biden Campaign's High Stakes Hill Meeting Doesn’t Allay Democratic Fears

‘I need to hear and see more of the analytics and the data that show a path to victory,’ one supporter said after Thursday’s huddle.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut addresses opponents of a Trump-related health care bill at a rally outside the U.S. Capitol on July 25, 2017. Photo credit: Kelly Bell Photography/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

A make-or-break meeting between senior aides to President Joe Biden and increasingly skittish Democratic senators didn’t seem to change any minds Thursday, leaving the embattled president’s political future still twisting in the wind. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer invited Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillion and White House advisers Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon to hold an off-campus meeting with lawmakers who’ve soured on Biden’s reelection chances within the past 72 hours.

Nearly a dozen House Democrats have called on Biden to bow out of the race against Donald Trump since their disastrous debate two weeks ago, with freshman Sen. Peter Welch becoming the first public defector on the other side of the U.S. Capitol. 

The Vermont Democrat advised Biden to step aside “for the good of the country” in a July 10 op-ed piece for The Washington Post. 

Biden tried to tamp down talk of suddenly replacing him as the presumptive nominee earlier in the week by circulating letters to lawmakers saying he wasn’t going anywhere and calling in to cable news shows reiterating his desire to beat Trump again. While the defiance seemed to work, at first, others began questioning his ability to keep the White House – and not hand over total control of the government to MAGA this fall – as the days wore on.