(WASHINGTON) — Anxious Democrats are looking for signs of Joe Biden’s thinking from his Thursday press conference as the debate over the president’s future roils the party.
Biden sounded bullish Thursday, insisting he’s best situated to defeat former President Donald Trump this November and that he’s staying in the race despite his shaky performance in last month’s debate.
“No, unless they came back and said, ‘There’s no way you can win,'” Biden said Thursday when asked if he would consider dropping out if his team showed data suggesting he could lose.
“No one is saying that,” Biden said, doubling down. “No poll says that.”
However, that hypothetical earthly impetus marked a slight departure from the more divine push Biden said he would need to drop out when asked a similar question last week by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos.
“If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“It depends on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that,” Biden said.
Normally, such a distinction wouldn’t make waves, but for a party that is still trembling in the fallout of last month’s debate, operatives were looking intensely for signs of Biden’s thinking and if he’s softening his stance on staying in the race.
“The burden is on him to show he has a path to bring these people back into line. He’s attempting to show that but also now in a place where he realizes he has a choice to make if he can’t,” said one former Democratic House aide who’s still in tune with the party’s thinking on Capitol Hill.
About 20 Democrats in Congress have now called on Biden to drop out, worried over his chances of beating Trump after the debate laid bare concerns about his age and mental fitness.
However, even more Democrats have privately expressed concerns over Biden’s chances this November and were perturbed by Biden’s interview with Stephanopoulos, both over his answer about dropping out and his explanation that he could live with a loss if he campaigned his hardest.
“My guess is that he realized the almighty thing was a ridiculous bar that generated resentment, so he decided on a more reasonable bar that also directly addressed voters’ concerns about whether he could beat Trump,” said one source familiar with the Biden campaign’s strategy. “He knows that is the bar voters are using so wanted to show that he is using the same one.”
Still, it’s unclear if the remarks indicated a change in thinking or were a distinction without a difference.
Biden himself has been adamant that he’s staying in the race, including in a strongly worded letter to House Democrats on Monday that temporarily stemmed the tide of lawmakers calling for the end of his campaign.
His team laid out the path forward in an internal memo Thursday that was obtained by ABC News. In it, campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez insisted that a path to victory still exists, particularly through the Rust Belt “blue wall” states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“We know, both from election results and from research, that when the choice is between Donald Trump’s extremism and Joe Biden’s record of delivering for the American people — and when Democrats have an operation capable of persuading and mobilizing voters on the ground — we win,” O’Malley Dillon and Chavez Rodriguez wrote.
And other Democrats believed that Biden is in it for the long haul, as long as pressure for his ouster fails to reach a breaking point.
When asked about Biden’s remarks about his staff giving him dour news about his chances, one informal campaign advisor told ABC News Friday, “He doesn’t think it’s going to happen.”
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