Adam Frisch, a Democrat trying to flip a Republican House seat in Colorado, was frustrated enough that calls for President Joe Biden to step aside — including his own — were having little impact on the president.
Then reports came Tuesday that leaders of the Democratic National Committee were moving to confirm Biden as his party’s presidential nominee by the end of July and his anger boiled over.
“It’s so frustrating, to Democratic voters, to donors, to the double haters who don’t like Biden or Trump,” Frisch said in an interview on Tuesday. “This is why people hate politics. It looks like the books are being cooked.”
The debate over whether Biden should be the Democratic nominee has alternately simmered and boiled since his disastrous debate performance late last month. Now the party is seeking to rapidly bring that conversation to a close with a virtual roll call of state delegates in July that would make Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris the official nominees.
Jaime Harrison, the Democratic National Committee chair, said it was “false” that a long-planned virtual roll call was being accelerated, but having it this month — rather than waiting until the August convention — has drawn growing opposition.
The nomination would come just after an extraordinary series of events: a failed attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life; bipartisan calls to lower the temperature of the country’s politics and tone down the rhetoric, including on Democratic warnings of the dangers of a second Trump administration; a series of legal victories for Trump that postponed his sentencing on 34 felony convictions, tossed out indictments over classified documents taken from the White House and jeopardized the federal government’s case that he illegally pushed to overturn the 2020 election.
All this, plus the ebullient start to the Republican convention, has left vulnerable Democrats with the sinking feeling that they could face far-reaching losses in November.
“We are continuing to see polling of a chilling effect on young voters, of decreased enthusiasm,” Rep. Hillary Scholten, a Democrat who flipped a Republican seat in western Michigan two years ago, said Thursday, just after calling for Biden to drop out and before the attempt on Trump’s life rattled the presidential race further. “That’s why it’s incumbent on us to make this change now.”
House Democrats, led by Rep. Jared Huffman of California, are circulating a letter, first reported by The New York Times, then obtained by Axios, demanding that the roll call vote be put off.
“Stifling debate and prematurely shutting down any possible change in the Democratic ticket through an unnecessary and unprecedented ‘virtual roll call’ in the days ahead is a terrible idea,” the draft letter said. “It could deeply undermine the morale and unity of Democrats.”
Reps. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania and Pat Ryan of New York said Tuesday that they would sign on to that letter, while Rep. Mike Levin of California was also expected to add his name, according to a person familiar with his plans who insisted on anonymity to discuss them. The lawmakers are from highly competitive districts Republicans are looking to flip.
Harrison has so far held firm: “We look forward to nominating Joe Biden through a virtual roll call and celebrating with fanfare together in Chicago in August alongside the 99% of delegates who are supporting the Biden-Harris ticket,” he said.
The worry about Democratic fortunes — which spilled out into the open after the debate — has only intensified in recent days. Democrats need just four seats to take back control of the House, a target that leaders and candidates still insist is possible. But they must hold every endangered Senate seat they occupy to have even a wisp of a chance to maintain their grasp on the chamber. And with their presidential candidate engulfed in extraordinary turmoil, catastrophic losses are possible.
More than 30 Democratic House seats are in play right now, and with the presidential battlefield spreading to once-safe states such as New Mexico and Minnesota, Democratic House and Senate members who expected to cruise to reelection are suddenly looking over their shoulders. A collapse at the top of the ticket could bring losses in Congress that would reverberate for years.
John Avlon, the Democratic candidate trying to win a Republican-leaning swing district on eastern Long Island, declined to weigh in on Biden’s future, but he said Tuesday that the nomination of Sen. JD Vance for vice president on the Republican ticket could ultimately be more politically important than the attempt on Trump’s life.
He added that Democrats needed to ignore Republican entreaties for them to stop warning of the threat to democracy.
“Obviously we all need to condemn political violence; it has no place in American democracy,” Avlon said. “But we need to be able to say that clearly and unequivocally without downplaying the dangers that a second Trump term could pose to our democracy.”
Frisch acknowledged his calls for Biden to step aside had split the partisan Democrats in the district that he nearly took from Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican, in 2022. But the alternative is “resignation.”
With Biden at the top of the ticket, “there’s no upside and a lot of downside risk” ahead, he said.
Lauren Hitt, a spokesperson for Biden, said Friday that “led by Joe Biden, Democrats have an incredible agenda to run on.”
Republicans “are forced to answer for their support for abortion bans, shipping jobs abroad and undermining our democracy,” she said. “This election, whether it’s top-of-ticket or a state election, will be decided on the issues that matter most to voters, which is why Democrats will win.”
While pushback on Biden is picking up again from within his party, there is no question that momentum around urging him to step aside has been uneven. The assassination attempt on his opponent — a wrenching moment for the country — slowed those public discussions, leaving limited time to press for a change.
“It is a very big deal,” Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, said of the shooting. “Getting into anything else for some period of time is, I think, a mistake. I think people need to, you know, appreciate how bad this is, and what we have to do to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.”
Landsman, who has expressed concerns about Biden, said he would “pick up the Biden stuff at some point maybe later in the week or next week.”
For their part, Republicans have delighted over the division, figuring that Democrats are stuck. If they break with Biden, they will alienate Democratic base voters. If they stick with the president and embrace a quick virtual nomination, they will lose swing voters ready to move to Trump.
Regardless, Democrats are worried about depressed turnout.
“If Democrat voters believe Biden has no chance to win, then their turnout will obviously be lower,” said Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House Republicans’ official super PAC. “And that will hurt across most every race.”
There are glimmers of hope, however. House Democratic incumbents, like their Senate counterparts, are consistently running ahead of Biden in internal polls, though even they say there are limits to how far they can run ahead of him. At the same time, Democrats argue, voters who dislike both presidential candidates but grudgingly back Trump might still be persuaded to change sides or split their tickets. Or they might not vote at all.
Democrats have proved themselves to be masters at mobilizing their core voters in off-year and special elections when turnout is lower. Mike Smith, president of House Majority PAC, the Democratic leadership’s super PAC, said Democrats won virtually every tossup seat in 2022, when Biden’s approval ratings were comparable to where they are today. They then won a seat on Long Island last year, cutting the Republican majority to four.
“The president’s approval has not shifted in the last three years,” Smith said, “and I don’t think the top of the ticket is going to have that much of an impact.”