Democratic Party divided over Biden's 2024 candidacy

WASHINGTON — A growing number of prominent Democratic donors and activists are concerned that President Biden will seek reelection after his disastrous debate performance, especially as new post-debate polls begin to indicate voter dissatisfaction with his candidacy.

Several major donors who have poured thousands of dollars into the Biden campaign told USA TODAY they have not received satisfactory answers about the causes of the poor results.

“We were told he had a cold. Did he have an adverse reaction to medication?” one donor asked of Biden’s faltering performance.

White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said the president had a cold but was not taking cold medication during a briefing with reporters Tuesday.

In response to that answer, when USA TODAY asked Jean-Pierre if the president was taking any other medications, she replied: “I was asked about cold medicine. He was not taking any cold medicine and I have nothing else to share.”

Those responses were called “unsatisfactory” by donors who say the atmosphere following the debate is deepening divisions within the party, already wracked by divisions over the president’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. They say Biden’s approach is self-centered and out of touch with the growing majority of young Democrats.

Amed Khan, a political activist and philanthropist who left the Biden Victory Fund’s National Finance Committee last fall over the president’s handling of the Gaza war, said he was certain the chaos meant Democrats would lose the election to Trump.

“They’re all idiots,” Khan said. “They ignored all the noise that’s been building up for months and now they’re going to hand the presidency over to Trump.”

Marty Dolan, a former Wall Street banker who paid $3,000 to attend a Biden fundraiser in April at the Irvington, New York, home of actors Michael Douglas and Catherine-Zeta Jones, said Democrats need to have a serious conversation about Biden’s ability to get the job done over the next four years.

“Our job is to nominate someone who can be president for four years and handle all aspects of the job,” he said. “It’s not a wink and a thumbs-up and a thumbs-up, ‘Well, we have a good vice president, so that’s good.'”

Dolan said there were more than 100 people at the fundraiser, where Biden spoke for about 20 minutes. While he knew only the biggest donors would get a chance to have their photo taken with the president, he said he was surprised by how “staged” the entire event was.

“He didn’t mingle with the party. He was presented remotely,” he said. “It raised more questions than it answered.”

Dolan, who lost a primary to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) last month, said the question isn’t who Biden is running against, but what voters think about Biden in the White House over the next four years.

“The issue that everybody is concerned about, which is his age, is only going to get worse. There are midterm elections in 2026,” he said. “I think this is a good opportunity for the party to really confront this decision.”

Asked whether that would mean a chaotic process and the potential disorder it could create for the Democratic Party in the eyes of voters, he said former President Trump’s Republican candidacy had accustomed voters to such changes.

“If Republicans can nominate a convicted felon, I think voters would be OK with Democrats nominating someone else,” he said.

Despite building support for the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination, Biden’s support for a second term appears to be waning among rank-and-file lawmakers.

On Tuesday, Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett became the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to publicly call on Biden to step down and make way for a “new generation of leaders” to unite the country.

“President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Tuesday that it was legitimate for people to wonder whether Biden’s resignation was just an “episode” or part of a “condition.”

“I think it’s a legitimate question to ask, is this an episode or a condition? And so when people ask that question, it’s a legitimate question — for both candidates,” Pelosi said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”

According to a Reuters report citing a House Democratic aide, 25 House Democratic members are preparing to ask Biden to step down if he appears unstable in the coming days.

A portion of registered voters don’t believe President Joe Biden has the mental and cognitive health to serve a second term after his shaky performance in last week’s debate, a new poll suggests.

The CBS/YouGov national poll conducted in the days after the debate found that 72% of voters do not believe Biden has the mental or cognitive health to serve as president, as do nearly half of his own party. That’s up seven points from early June.

The Biden campaign continued to claim that the debate performance had no negative impact on fundraising efforts, saying it had raised more than $38 million since the debate.

The debate performance wasn’t a surprise, Dolan said. It’s just that “eventually, everyone understood what was being suggested.”

The decision must also be made regardless of who might run in the other party, he said.

“This is a very rigorous job,” Dolan said. “You’re trying to appoint someone who can do an incredibly difficult job with an extremely physically demanding schedule for four full years, and it’s legitimate to question that right now.”

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. You can follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @SwapnaVenugopal