Senate Democrats are President Biden’s bulwark within the Democratic Party and have steadfastly supported him despite his dismal performance in the Atlanta debate.
Senate Democrats believe that Biden, even with his shaky performance, is a stronger general-election candidate than VP Harris, who would have a good chance of winning the nomination if Biden were to drop out of the race.
And Democratic senators have privately acknowledged for months that they have no way of fielding a replacement for Biden unless the president himself agrees to step down. Biden has a big lead in delegates obliged to support him at the Chicago convention.
Democrats worry that even if Biden abandons his reelection campaign, the fight to replace him as the party’s nominee would only be messy, dividing the party and hurting them in the general election.
“Joe Biden may have had a bad night, but we don’t want to have four bad years under Donald Trump. I think he’s handled the issues well,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) told reporters at the Capitol on Friday.
“Obviously, I think we were all hoping for a more energetic approach,” Cardin acknowledged.
“But at its core, I think the American people recognize they have to choose between someone who understands the importance of our democratic institution, who understands the importance of the issues that we’ve pursued over the last four years and who has a track record, and someone on the other side who continues to make things up and won’t answer simple questions,” he said of comparing Biden to former President Trump.
“To me, the clear choice is that we need to ensure that President Biden is re-elected as president of the United States,” he said.
Biden served as a senator for 36 years before becoming vice president under former President Barack Obama. He also served as president of the Senate for eight years as vice president, building a strong base of support within the Senate Democratic Conference.
Senate Democrats will serve as superdelegates to the Chicago convention and have signaled early on that they have no intention of changing their candidate midway through the election.
The party’s candidate must win a majority of Chicago’s roughly 4,000 delegates, and if no candidate meets that threshold, the 700-plus superdelegates who make up the officeholders and party officials will vote.
One of the most powerful words of encouragement for Biden after a night of disappointment came from Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania).
Fetterman noted that critics had written off Trump’s 2022 Senate bid after he mixed up his words and couldn’t finish his thoughts at key moments in his only debate, with prominent physician Mehmet Oz.
“I refuse to join the Democratic vultures who jumped on Biden’s shoulders after the debate. No one knows better than me that a tough debate is not the sum of a person or their record,” he said.Post to social platform X.
He then mocked the “polling geniuses” who predicted he would lose by two points, only to believe their prediction when he ended up winning by more than five points.
Fetterman offered blunt advice to Democrats and media pundits stoking debate about a last-minute search for an alternative to Biden.
“Calm down,” he said.
A New York Times editorial published Friday urged Biden to drop out of the race but had little impact on his Senate allies.
Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), who represents a battleground state that Biden narrowly won in the 2020 presidential election, said the campaign should “absolutely not” be abandoned.
“I can tell you there were many Sundays where I wish I could have preached a better sermon,” Warnock, the pastor, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“But after the sermon was over, my job was to embody the message and show up for the people that I serve,” he said, “and that’s what Joe Biden has done his whole life.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) also ignored Biden’s poor debate performance and changed the subject to Trump’s support for federal reform and its impact on abortion and LGBTQ rights.
“I’m into content, not style. After last night’s debate I’m more panicked than ever about Trump’s policies. So I made a short video explaining Project 2025, Trump’s detailed plan to destroy democracy, criminalize abortion, and target and harass gay and transgender people,” he posted on X.
The vocal support from key Democratic senators contrasted with the alarm expressed anonymously to the media by some House Democrats.
One House Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Fox News that there was a widespread sense of “panic” by the end of the debate.
“So where does this leave the foundation? Obviously, I believe we need to have a conversation at every level with the understanding that this is not just an issue for the presidential race, it’s an issue for lower-ranking candidates. [effects]” the source said.
But Senate Democrats have privately maintained for months that Biden would be the nominee and that there was no chance they would change the nominee after Biden won about 3,894 delegates in this year’s Democratic caucuses and primaries.
“The general perception among the public is that we’re on Biden’s side and he’s worked together and accomplished a lot. Maybe not Biden himself, but his team, right? And we’re already in the primaries,” one Democratic senator told The Hill earlier this year on the condition of anonymity.
A Democratic aide dismissed talk of seeking a Plan B candidate for the general election as “fanciful” and criticized anonymous Democrats for venting their private fears to the media.
“In general, you shouldn’t follow or listen to people who are just panicking,” the source said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) has repeatedly dodged questions about Biden’s age and fitness for the job, arguing that the president will be re-elected based on the strength of his record and how his positions on issues like abortion compare to those of President Trump.
Immediately after the debate, Schumer ignored the president’s incoherent answers and defended Biden in the broader context of the upcoming election.
“Tonight’s debate made the choice clear: 4 more years of progress, or 4 more years of attacks on our fundamental rights and democracy. We need Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and a Democratic Senate and House to vote for us!” Schumer posted on X.
White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients called Democratic Leader Schumer on Friday to see if the president still had the support of the Senate.
Sen. Jack Reed (D-Iowa), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested Friday that Senate Democrats would support Biden as long as he decided to continue the campaign, saying it was up to Biden himself whether to run for a second term.
“I think President Biden didn’t start off with the enthusiasm or anything that he needed to, but that’s the difference between a bad first debate and what Donald Trump has made out to be a very bad presidency, and an even worse presidency going forward,” Reid told local Rhode Island reporters in an interview on Friday.
Asked about Biden stepping down, Reid said, “That’s the president’s decision.”
“Look at the track record over the last four years, two of which were with Republicans in control of the House,” he said, praising Biden for passing a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill, historic investments in renewable energy and $280 billion in domestic semiconductor manufacturing and scientific research.
“Whatever he does next is his decision,” Reade said of Biden.
Al Weaver contributed.
