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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
Democratic megadonors believe Joe Biden is close to exiting the White House race after they threatened to halt funding for his campaign and party grandees indicated they now considered his candidacy untenable.
Donors from Wall Street to Hollywood have in the past three days heaped new pressure on party grandees including Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi, urging them to persuade Biden to drop out.
One megadonor close to Schumer, who has spoken with people close to the Senate majority leader in recent days, said: “I think it’s going to end very shortly.”
“The pressure is insurmountable,” said one senior Democrat in Washington, predicting that Biden would be “out by Monday”. Other people close to the party leadership said it could happen earlier.
“Biden’s gotten the message that there’s not another dollar of fundraising,” said one Wall Street bundler — a donor tasked with raising money from other backers. “Members of Congress are getting more aggressive . . . He’s just not going to be able to withstand it.”
The moves gained momentum in recent days as a damaging split-screen for the president unfolded on national television, showing Republicans rallying around Donald Trump after he was nearly assassinated, while Biden defied calls from his party to quit and on Thursday was seen struggling to climb aboard Air Force One after testing positive for Covid.
“Everybody’s looking at the numbers and polls and they’re concerned,” said a person who has held talks with business leaders, donors and senior Democrats, including Jeffries.
Trump’s national lead on Biden has widened since the shooting, according to a new poll from CBS-YouGov poll, putting the former president five points ahead. Biden has also fallen further behind in most other polls conducted since his disastrous debate performance against Trump last month.
“You simply cannot lead a major party ticket when nearly the entire congressional delegation, most of the donors, and a large majority of base voters believe you should step aside. Especially if the problem is not something that can or will get better,” said the senior Washington Democrat.
Several donors said a campaign to force the president off the Democratic ticket, which seemed to lose some steam as Biden hosted other Nato leaders in Washington last week, was gaining speed.
“I think it’s happening and it’s largely irreversible,” said Mohsin Meghji, a Democratic donor and head of the restructuring advisory firm M3 Partners.
“There is momentum again,” said one tech industry donor who recently stopped donating to Biden in favour of Democratic House and Senate candidates.
Other donors, bundlers and operatives who have spoken to close Biden advisers, also said they believed the pressure on the president to end his campaign was now irresistible.
“The walls are closing in on them. I don’t think he can sustain this,” said one veteran Democratic operative. “Even the true believers in the bunker with Biden have to understand that . . . Not one person that I have spoken to since the debate, not one, thinks he can win.”
A West Coast Democratic fundraiser who last week was adamantly opposed to efforts to force out Biden said on Thursday he was now convinced another candidate would have a better chance to beat Trump.
“If it goes the right way it could be single greatest thing that happens to keep Trump out of the White House.”
A tech industry donor said that they were among about 20 top Democratic donors who had received a message from a senior party staffer on Thursday urging the group to go public with new calls for Biden to step down.
“Today is the day” to get Biden to drop out of the race, said the message, which was seen by the Financial Times.
George Krupp, a Boston real estate investor and major Democratic donor who recently came out against Biden’s re-election, said he did not think Biden could hold on. “There is a huge amount of private pressure being exerted by key Democratic politicians, operatives, and donors.”
At a press conference in Milwaukee on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, Biden campaign spokesperson Quentin Fulks said that Biden was “staying in this race . . . the president is in this race”.
John Lawrence, a former chief of staff to Nancy Pelosi, said that threats by the donors in the party might be counterproductive in getting Biden to step down.
“I know that there’s been a lot of agitation coming from them for the president to drop out and my advice to those groups has been to keep it inside the family,” said Lawrence.
Reporting by James Fontanella-Khan and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York, Alex Rogers, Lauren Fedor and James Politi in Milwaukee and Christopher Grimes in Los Angeles
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