View attachment 101461
View attachment 101462
President Biden has told key allies that he knows the coming days are crucial and understands that he may not be able to salvage his candidacy if he cannot convince voters that he is up to the job after a disastrous debate performance last week.
According to two allies who have spoken with him, Mr. Biden has emphasized that he is still deeply committed to the fight for re-election but understands that his viability as a candidate is on the line.
The president sought to project confidence on Wednesday in a call with his campaign staff, even as White House officials were trying to calm nerves among the ranks inside the Biden administration.
“No one’s pushing me out,” Mr. Biden said in the call. “I’m not leaving.”
Vice President Kamala Harris was also on the line.
“We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead,” she said. “We will fight, and we will win.”
Still, Mr. Biden’s allies said that the president had privately acknowledged that his next few appearances heading into the July 4 holiday weekend must go well, particularly an interview with George Stephanopoulos scheduled to air Friday on ABC and campaign stops in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place” by the end of the weekend, said one of the allies, referring to Mr. Biden’s halting and unfocused performance in the debate. That person, who talked to the president in the past 24 hours, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.
The accounts of his conversations with allies are the first indication to become public that the president is seriously considering whether he can recover after a devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta last Thursday.
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new poll from The New York Times and Siena College showed that former President Donald J. Trump now leads Mr. Biden 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters nationally, a three-point swing toward the Republican from just a week earlier, before the debate. The six-point deficit underscored the growing challenges to the campaign and could make it harder to hang on, although some insiders had worried that it could have been worse.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/biden-withdraw-election-debate.html