WASHINGTON (AP) — California Rep. Adam Schiff on Wednesday became the highest-profile Democrat to call on President Joe Biden to withdraw his re-election bid, even as the party pushed ahead with plans for a virtual vote to officially make Biden its nominee in the first week of August.
The decision to schedule the roll calls, which would take place weeks before the opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on August 19, follows calls by nearly 20 Democratic members of Congress to withdraw Biden from the presidential race following his disappointing performance in the debate against former Republican President Donald Trump last month.
Late last night, ABC News reported new details about Biden’s private meeting over the weekend with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at his beach house in Delaware, where it was reported that Schumer told the president it would be “better for the Democratic Party and better for the country if he left.”
A spokesman for Schumer called the report “empty speculation. Chairman Schumer conveyed his group’s views directly to President Biden on Saturday.”
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden told Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries: “He is the party’s nominee, he plans to win and he looks forward to working with both of them to implement his 100-day agenda to support working families.”
Nearly two-thirds of Democrats nationwide say Biden should step aside and let his party nominate another candidate, according to a new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, clearly contradicting Biden’s post-debate claim that “average Democrats” are still behind him, even as some “big names” are turning against him.
Biden tested positive for COVID-19 during a trip to Las Vegas on Wednesday and is suffering from “mild symptoms” due to the infection, including “general malaise,” the White House said.
“While the decision to withdraw from the campaign rests solely with President Biden, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said in a statement. “And by doing so, we are securing his legacy as a leader by enabling us to defeat Donald Trump in the upcoming election.”
Schiff is himself a prominent Democrat and his testimony will also be watched because of his proximity to Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi.
It was Pelosi who again raised questions about Biden after the debate when she recently said it was “the president’s decision” what to do – even though Biden had made it clear he had no intention of resigning. The former House speaker publicly supports the president, but has received calls since debate night from Democrats asking what comes next.
In response to Schiff’s comments, the Biden team pointed to the “extensive support” for him and his re-election from members of Congress in key swing states as well as the Congressional Black and Hispanic Caucuses. Biden is traveling in Nevada this week, and the team noted that he was accompanied on the trip by “nearly a dozen” members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Still, Schiff’s announcement came after Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries encouraged the party to delay plans for a virtual vote to re-nominate Biden by a week, which could have taken place as early as Sunday, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The Democratic National Committee’s legislative panel is meeting Friday to discuss how virtual voting plans will work and finalize them next week.
“We will not rush into a virtual voting process, but will begin our important considerations of how a virtual voting process would work,” Bishop Leah D. Daughtry and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, co-chairs of the Democratic National Convention Rules Committee, wrote in a letter Wednesday.
The letter also said that the virtual roll call vote would not take place before August 1, but that the party was still committed to holding a vote before August 7, which was the deadline for registration to be eligible for the presidential ballot in Ohio.
The Democratic National Convention will be held in person from August 19-22, but the party announced in May that it would hold early voting to ensure Biden is eligible to vote in Ohio. That state originally had an August 7 deadline but has since changed its rules.
The Biden team insists that the party must act according to Ohio’s original rules to ensure that Republican lawmakers cannot use legal action to disqualify the president from the election.
Senator Peter Welch, a Democrat from Vermont who wrote last week that Biden should drop out of the race “for the good of the country,” welcomed the decision to delay setting a date.
“No shortcuts, no ending,” he said. “This process should not be rushed.”
Even if Democrats hold a virtual roll call vote before their convention, it wouldn’t necessarily nominate Biden as the nominee. The DNC’s legislative arm could vote for an in-person roll call vote in Chicago, said Elaine Kamarck, a longtime member of the party’s rules committee and an expert on the party’s nomination process. But because the law in Ohio doesn’t take effect until Sept. 1, Biden’s appearance on the state’s ballot remains a real concern, Kamarck said.
“This is a safeguard for the Democrats,” Kamarck said, adding that “the convention is the highest authority” in the nomination process.
The AP-NORC poll, conducted as Biden works to salvage his candidacy two weeks after his debate flop, also found that only about three in 10 Democrats are extremely or very confident that he has the mental capacity to serve effectively as president, slightly lower than the 40% in the AP-NORC poll in February.
The letter from Daughtry and Walz follows a group of House Democrats wary of prematurely nominating Biden as the party’s re-election candidate, who have circulated another letter expressing “serious concerns” about plans for a virtual roll call. Their letter to the DNC, which was not sent, said it would be a “terrible idea” to suppress debate over the party’s nominee by holding the early roll call.
“It could profoundly undermine Democratic morale and unity,” said the letter, which was seen by AP.
A spokesman said Huffman was pleased with the decision to delay and would wait to send the letter from House Democrats as they continued to monitor the situation.
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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Leah Askarinam contributed to this report.
Zeke Miller, Will Weissert and Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press
