WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s tribulations were previewed in Hollywood days before he got on the debate stage.
At a fundraiser organized by George Clooney and packed with luminaries including former President Barack Obama, Biden was a listless figure, perhaps merely jet-lagged after flying straight from Italy but clearly not the man they knew.
Oh brother, where art thou? Clooney wondered.
It was a flashing-light moment for the actor, producer and prodigious Democratic donor and for others in the crowd. Then came the debate debacle, which set off 50 shades of panic among Democrats and pitted Biden loyalists against those now convinced a successor should take the party into November.
Two weeks after debate night, more than 15 Democratic lawmakers have called for Biden to step aside. Many more kept their newfound alarm about Biden semi-private. Mega-donors froze in the moment.
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Democratic voices from Congress to the intelligentsia to the streets pitched in to tell the president he should go. He said hell no.
It’s been an excruciating reckoning, and it’s not over.
“I think we could lose the whole thing and it’s staggering to me,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado told CNN. He meant the presidency and both houses of Congress, in what he worries may be a Trump landslide.
How did Democrats get here? Some boiling points and turning points along the way:
With the August Democratic convention drawing close, the June 27 debate upended Democratic officials, lawmakers and voters. Biden was befogged from the start. Voters had long felt Biden, now 81, was too old to be effective but they had never seen him like this.
Biden hadn’t been on his game for some time,
After a long flight from Italy to Los Angeles, Biden was unable to turn it on for his 30-minute onstage conversation with late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and Obama at the June 15 fundraiser. One attendee who found him vibrant at an event in March was unsettled by the difference.
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So was Clooney. “It is devastating to say so,” he wrote in The New York Times this week, but the event convinced him that Biden, a man he loves, should go: “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
The debate left even some of Biden’s aides questioning privately whether his campaign could be salvaged. Some longtime Biden supporters called immediately for him to step aside. But the prevailing view in the party was that he should stay for now and prove himself fit for the campaign, and fast.
He was, essentially, placed on probation in the court of Democratic opinion.
At his NATO news conference Thursday, when he displayed a command of policy that was lacking in the debate, he acknowledged he has fears to try to put to rest. “I’ve got to finish this job,” he said. “I’ve got to finish this job.”
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The morning after the debate, Biden was spirited in scripted remarks at a North Carolina rally. But many Democrats weren’t shaking off what they had seen the night before.
In an email to supporters that weekend, Biden’s campaign branded the naysayers the “bedwetting brigade.”
On the Sunday news shows, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman stepped up to offer a full-throated defense of the president. He, too, had epically flopped in a debate, and gone on to win.
Biden saw the cracks in his support widen in the days that followed. But, crucially, Democrats as a whole did not rush to judgment. And with each day, it becomes harder for Democrats who want him out to replace him.
But on July 2, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi lent credence to the doubts about Biden, saying she was hearing mixed opinions on whether he should stay. “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” she said on MSNBC.
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Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first lawmaker to say Biden should go.
For days, Democrats had been imploring Biden to get out more, call more lawmakers and put himself in unscripted situations to show what he can do. “Come on, pick up the phone,” said Rep. Nanette Barragan of California, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a Biden supporter.
Biden agreed to let ABC’s George Stephanopoulos interview him later that week. But first, he spoke with Democratic governors.
They came away sounding largely supportive of Biden. Yet the session played into public perceptions of Biden as stretched thin, as he acknowledged he needs to get more sleep and limit evening events.
In 22 minutes with Stephanopoulos on July 5, Biden avoided another train wreck like his debate. But his ill-timed pauses and meandering moments made some even more alarmed than before, because now the debate could not be written off as just one bad night.
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An architect of Obama’s two presidential election victories, David Axelrod, said Biden had become “dangerously out-of-touch with the concerns people have about his capacities moving forward and his standing in this race.”
In Congress, senior Democrats held several inconclusive meetings to discuss what to do. The Congressional Black Caucus offered unqualified support and other groups circled the wagons.
On Monday, Biden sent a forceful open letter to congressional Democrats declaring: “Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It’s time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.”
One lawmaker who had urged Biden to quit, Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, walked that back. There was a lull in defections. But only for a blink of time.
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On Wednesday, Pelosi again weighed in. Her words were exquisitely measured but instantly taken as a setback for Biden. She dodged when asked if he should run for president again, instead saying it’s his decision to make.
In short order, Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont became the first senator to call openly for Biden to quit the campaign. This, after several others had held back from such an announcement while leaving no doubt that the president had become a liability in their minds.
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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani, Colleen Long and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed to this report.
