In a conference call Monday night, Biden campaign officials sought to ease the concerns of hundreds of Democratic donors who are skeptical of Biden’s poor performance in the debate against former President Trump.
But the call did little to ease concerns, according to several participants.
“Nobody feels good about this,” one prominent donor said on a conference call. “People have poured their hearts and souls into this campaign, and there’s a good chance it will fail.”
“There are still so many unanswered questions,” the donor said.
Campaign officials insisted that President Biden has not lost support despite the poor debate performance.
“Voters watched the debate, they absorbed it and they didn’t change their minds,” Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon told donors on an hour-long Zoom call, according to two people who attended.
O’Malley Dillon, who worked on President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, compared Biden’s poor performance to Obama’s poor showing against Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in the first debate in 2012.
Still, she acknowledged the campaign “still has work to do” to allay doubts about Biden’s age, who turns 82 in November and will be 86 at the end of his second term.
One donor on the call said the campaign needs to do more to assuage concerns.
“People are still in shock and haven’t recovered from the incident. Our questions have hardly been answered,” the source said.
The campaign has been holding conference calls with donors in recent days to try to ease tensions that have arisen since the debate.
But this was the first call where donors were invited to ask questions. Rather than asking verbally, they could do so by typing their questions into the Zoom chat.
Democratic National Committee finance chairman Chris Korge tried to ease what some have called Democratic bedwetting, telling donors on a conference call that “everyone just needs to breathe through their nose a little,” according to two sources.
Campaign officials criticized the media for “over-exaggerating this,” but also tried to calm participants on the call by pointing to fundraising figures.
Midway through the call, Biden’s finance chairman, Rufus Giffords, said June fundraising numbers would be “strong.”
One donor who spoke to The Hill by phone said it’s useful to listen to campaign officials but wants to see evidence in the polling numbers to make sure Trump doesn’t have a big lead.
“I think we’re all in wait-and-see mode,” a second donor told The Hill. “This is very real and they can’t fake it. The evidence is only there for you to see.”
A third donor on the call said the campaign has “a lot of work to do.”
“He needs to go out and do more interviews, hold more town hall meetings, address the elephant in the room and keep going. But he needs to go out and prove it himself,” the donor said of Biden.
Biden stood before the cameras on Monday night to make a statement about the Supreme Court’s historic decision that said the president is immune from criminal prosecution for acts that are generally considered official. The ruling is another victory for Trump and likely means that the case against him for alleged crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol will not be tried before the election.
Biden did not respond to questions at the White House event.
