Big boys don’t cry—or give up. On Thursday night, Joe Biden sent that message to the nation at large, as well as to his critics, when he pledged to stay in the presidential race at a press conference that his own staff oddly dubbed a “big boy” event. Speaking at a NATO summit, Biden tried to leverage the full pageantry of the presidency as he struggled to head off the campaign of anxiety that has assailed both his reelection bid and his presidency in the two weeks since his first debate with Donald Trump.
The frenzy has revealed the power dynamics and friction within the Democratic coalition. In 2020, Biden was elected not merely as the head of the Democratic Party but also as the leader of an anti-Trump alliance. Though Biden’s time in office had long strained that anti-populist coalition, the first debate radically escalated the tensions. The incumbent now faces a challenge from the managerial wing of the alliance—particularly in the Washington establishment and elite media outlets—as well as a campaign of underground resistance from some Democrats in Congress.
The press and social media have driven the pressure campaign. The New York Times editorial board has reiterated its call for Biden to drop out. The Times, Washington Post, Axios, Wall Street Journal, and other elite outlets have published stories highlighting concerns about the president’s health and sharpness. Major donors have pledged to pause their gifts. Filmmaker Michael Moore has called Biden’s reelection bid “elder abuse,” and even George Clooney, who recently held a fundraiser for the president, now wants him to step aside.
Biden’s response, in effect, has been, “How many battalions does the New York Times editorial page command?” Instead of caving to the campaign, the president has leaned into the cold realities of political power: he holds the overwhelming number of delegates, he is the sitting president, and he alone can determine whether or not he will run again. With more than 50 years of experience at the highest levels of politics, Biden doubtless realizes the extent of his leverage over fellow Democratic elected officials.
The NATO setting for Thursday’s press conference indirectly addressed the worries of the restive Washington establishment, much of which remains invested in maintaining America’s position as the guarantor of international cooperation. Insisting that the United States remains the “indispensable nation,” Biden seemed to suggest that he was an indispensable president in maintaining those alliances. He tried to interject other themes, such as promising indicators on inflation, the importance of industrial policy, the need to rein in “corporate greed,” and attacks on Donald Trump’s tariff proposals—anything to turn the page on the D.C. melodrama about his electoral viability. But Biden’s gaffes hampered that attempted pivot. Shortly before the press conference began, he introduced Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin,” and he called Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump” at the press conference itself.
It also remains unclear whether the press conference will defeat the guerilla resistance of Biden critics within the Democratic Party. If the past two weeks have shown divisions within the president’s coalition, they have also highlighted the differences between coalitional stakeholders and elected officials. While many of the pillars of the progressive alliance have called for Biden to withdraw, Democratic politicians have mostly been more circumspect. After the debate, leading Democrats—from Barack Obama to the Clintons to Hakeem Jeffries—rallied around the president. South Carolia congressman James Clyburn, an elder Democratic statesman and one of Biden’s key backers in the 2020 primary, insists that he is “all in” on Biden’s reelection bid.
Partisan discipline has confined much congressional Democratic opposition to a whispering campaign—a text to a Politico reporter here, an off-the-record comment to a podcast host there. Some elected Democrats, though, have openly tried to increase the pressure on the president. Representing battleground House districts, several “frontline” Democrats have either called upon Biden to step aside or proclaimed that he can’t win. Three Democratic senators—Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jon Tester of Montana, and Michael Bennet of Colorado—reportedly said at a luncheon earlier this week that they did not think Biden could beat Trump. Bennet later repeated those comments on CNN. While Bennet represents a state that has trended Democratic recently, Tester faces an uphill reelection battle in deep-red Montana, and Brown could be in the reelection fight of his career. These veteran politicos may fear that Biden at the top of the ticket imperils their electoral prospects.
The public displays of doubt about Biden may have two purposes. First, they may be a way for at-risk Democrats to separate themselves from an unpopular president. Thus, Congressman Jared Golden (the Maine Democrat whose congressional district has voted for Trump twice) penned an op-ed saying that Trump would win—and that American democracy would be just fine. Second, these professions of political pessimism could also be intended to communicate to the White House that some Democrats are willing to sustain a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy. A media feeding frenzy about whether Biden should drop out cannot, of course, force him to drop out, but it prevents Biden from changing the dynamic of the campaign. Even Nancy Pelosi—the former Speaker beloved by both Democratic insiders and the party grassroots—gave some indirect cover to the “drop Biden” effort in her appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe earlier this week. Rather than saying that she supported Biden running for reelection, Pelosi said simply that “it’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run”—though Biden has repeatedly said that he is indeed running. By treating the president’s decision to stay in the race as a hypothetical, Pelosi was resisting taking yes for an answer.
The backroom pressure campaign is working in tandem with the press’s newfound scrutiny of the president. But it faces significant obstacles. Biden critics have yet to settle on a plan for selecting a candidate if the president stands down. Public polling does not yet show a complete collapse in Biden’s numbers. Trump’s RealClearPolitics polling lead was 1.8 points on June 28, the day after the debate; it has now risen to around 3 points—not exactly overwhelming. It’s not impossible that Biden could catch up, and most Democratic alternatives haven’t polled much better than the incumbent.
Both Biden and his critics invoke the specter of a Trump victory in making their case. The president’s allies say that he is the only one who has beaten Trump and the only Democrat positioned to beat him today. His critics charge that he cannot fundamentally address the age problem, which is worsening the electorate’s broader dissatisfaction with the administration. Each side also knows that an indefinite stalemate—where the main topic each day is whether Biden will drop out—benefits Trump.
Beyond partisan politics, these controversies highlight how institutional challenges have deepened during the Biden years. The whipsaw over the president’s health concerns—from “cheap fake” to journalistic hymnal in a matter of weeks—has only deepened public anxiety about America’s narrative institutions. Claims that the president can be counted on as “dependably engaged” for only a few hours each day (as some reporting suggests) call into question the extent to which the executive branch is electorally accountable. Vigor in the executive is an essential prerequisite of American engagement abroad, so presidential debilitation also has major foreign policy implications. We’re witnessing an accelerating crisis of public credibility.
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