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President Biden entered Thursday night hoping that a steady performance at a news conference with the national press corps would quell dissension among Democrats, some of whom want him out of the race.

But within minutes of his departure from the stage, two more Democratic representatives joined the growing number of party members calling for him to end his re-election campaign against former President Donald J. Trump.

The 2024 election will define the future of American democracy, and we must put forth the strongest candidate possible to confront the threat posed by Trumps promised MAGA authoritarianism, Representative Jim Himes, a moderate Democrat from Connecticut and the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. I no longer believe that is Joe Biden.

And Representative Scott Peters of California also argued that Mr. Biden should leave the race, saying, The stakes are high, and we are on a losing course.

Later in the evening, Representative Eric Sorensen of Illinois joined their ranks, becoming the 18th Democratic member of either the House or the Senate to call for Mr. Biden to step aside.

More Democrats may defect on Friday, now that members of Congress no longer have to worry about embarrassing the president during the NATO summit that took place in Washington this week. But other Democrats said Mr. Bidens deft grasp of policy and the fact that he answered questions for nearly an hour was heartening, despite awkward moments like a flub in which he referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as Vice President Trump.

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After Bidens News Conference, Doubters and Defenders Weigh In - The New York Times

President Joe Biden did pretty well at his press conference Thursday night, and that may have disappointed a lot of Democrats. They were probably hoping for one of two outcomes: either that he would do badly, making it easier to persuade him to drop out of the race, or that he would knock it out of the park, allaying their concerns, making them believe that maybe he can stay in and win the election after all.

Instead, he did fine. Had the catastrophic debate two weeks ago not happened, this press conference would not have made a dent. It might not even have been broadcast in prime time; certainly, the cable news panels wouldnt have spent hours afterward scrutinizing every line.

A little before the press conference, as the three-day NATO summit came to an end, Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as President Putin (though he recovered and corrected himself in seconds). During the press conference, he referred to Vice President Harris as Vice President Trump. A reporter asked him afterward if this didnt prove that he isnt in great cognitive condition.

Cmon. These are the sorts of mental hiccups that everyone lets out now and then. It doesnt necessarily mean squat. But because of the debate, every Biden speech, press conference, debate, or random conversation will be placed under a microscope, every stumble or stutter underlined, blown up to a large-font headline.

The NATO summit, which Biden hosted and which his press conference was meant to highlight, seemed to go quite wellfor the alliance and for Biden. Dozens, even hundreds, of reporters must have canvassed every foreign official, high and low, in attendance to see how they thought Biden came off: Did he have a Parkinsons moment? Did he ever mumble incoherently?

At least so far, Ive seen no reports of any sources shaking their heads or clucking in regret about the American presidents declining state. Which isnt to say no such moments occurred, or that Biden is not in decline. Its just that this summit and this press conferencewhich were touted as pivotal to Bidens political career and to the fate of democracymoved the story along not one bit.

And so the media will wait in suspense for the next pivotal moment. Is it possible Biden will suffer no bad nights between now and the election? When he has one, what conclusions will be reached? (In the background, Im right now hearing one cable-news commentator moaning, We cant live like this forever.)

Certainly the news shows are covering nothing elsenot even Trump, whose media advisers have shrewdly persuaded him to stay relatively (and uncharacteristically) quiet. As every consultant knows, when your opponent is digging himself into a big hole, make yourself scarce.

Stories about the NATO summit itself were seen as secondary to the Biden psychodrama, even though the event was quite successful. The allies reaffirmed their commitment to spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, upped their support for Ukraine, laid out a path for Ukraines eventual membership in NATO (though not right now).

At a press gathering earlier in the day, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that at a roundtable of NATO members, each head of state expressed thanks to the United States and to the president personally for making all this progress possible. Biden repeated the point at the press conference. Those leaders were probably sincere. Biden has been largely responsible, and almost every head of state is terrified at the prospect of another term of Trump, who has disdain for alliances in general and has talked about leaving NATO in particular.

There were substantive questions at the press conferenceabout the summit, about Ukraine, about the Middle East warand Biden answered them at length and with deep knowledge. This is his specializationit has been since he became a senator more than 50 years agoand it showed. Aside from the two already noted, he committed no gaffes, no stumbles over leaders names, no errors of fact; it was all clear.

And it was in these moments that Biden made his case for staying in the race. A reporter asked at one point about his remark, early on in his term, that he considered himself a bridgea one-term transition to younger leadership. What had changed, the reporter asked, meaning: Why are you running again? He replied, What changed was the gravity of the situation I inherited, in economics, foreign policy, and the country.

He added, Im not in this for my legacy. Im in this to complete the job. The only legitimate question, he insisted, is Am I getting the job done? Can you name me someone whos gotten more major legislation passed in three years?

Biden seems still to be hoping that this becomes the only serious question among the voters as well. For the moment, for good or ill, he genuinely seems to be staying in the race.

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Democrats Were Hoping for One of Two Things Thursday Night. Joe Biden Didnt Give Them Either. - Slate

What I am hearing from congressional Democrats about President Biden is this: He has done little to nothing to allay their fears. But his defiance and his fury has been enough to stay their hand. The caucus meetings House and Senate Democrats held this week were an airing of grievances and despair, but they didnt chart a path forward. Democrats are drifting toward a grim march to defeat led by a candidate theyve lost faith in. What they need is a process through which they can gather the information they need to make a final decision. I think one is in reach.

Let me try to offer the most generous version I can of the positions the key players hold, beginning with Biden. I wouldnt be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024, he told congressional Democrats in a forceful letter that was released on Monday. Take him at his word. He disagrees with the pessimism about both his chances and his capabilities. He feels he has been underestimated before and is being underestimated now. He thinks the polls are wrong. He thinks the media is biased against him. He believes that his performance at the debate was a reflection of a bad cold and an off night rather than a general diminishment. And in the conversations he is having, and the cheering crowds he is seeing for himself, there is no groundswell begging for him to step aside.

There are two main camps among congressional Democrats. One believes that Biden should not be running again but fears there is nothing it can do about it. If Biden wont withdraw, then criticizing him only weakens him and down-ballot Democrats. Representative Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is among those who told his colleagues that Biden should step aside. But faced with the presidents resistance, he backed off. Whether I have concerns or not is beside the point, Nadler said on Tuesday. Hes going to be our nominee, and we all have to support him.

The other camp remains genuinely uncertain about whether Biden is capable of another campaign and another term. The debate shocked these Democrats. They hadnt seen him like that before. But to call for the incumbent president to withdraw from the race is a severe and unusual act. Maybe it really was just a bad night. Maybe the reports of Bidens worsening lapses are untrue or overblown. These senators and representatives are asking the question Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, asked: Is this an episode or is this a condition?

What Democrats need to admit to themselves is that Biden is denying them the information they need to answer that question. Since the debate, he has done a small handful of short interviews. He called into two radio shows where the hosts would ask preapproved questions. His interview with George Stephanopoulos lasted 22 minutes. He called into Morning Joe, which has been the friendliest place for him in cable news, for less than 20 minutes. He has not gone to the Hill and talked, in a lengthy and unscripted way, with either the House or Senate Democratic caucuses. Its not nearly enough.

In my conversations with Biden aides, Ive come to believe that they see interviews and town halls and news conferences as bizarre media obsessions. They dont trust Biden to perform in those settings, but they also dont think it matters. Theyve persuaded themselves that the job of the president is the job of making good decisions, and they think Biden is still capable of making those decisions. Whether he can survive 60 minutes with Chris Wallace, to them, is akin to whether he can do 20 push-ups: interesting, but irrelevant.

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Opinion | Democrats Are Drifting Toward the Worst of All Possible Worlds - The New York Times

Democrats response to the growing tempest over whether President Biden should stay in the 2024 race has been to focus like a laser on something else: Project 2025. The project is a detailed and aggressive plan from top allies of Donald Trump to push American government far to the right and vest more power in Trumps hands.

Trump is now straining to distance himself from the project, despite its overlap with his own priorities and his many links to it. (A CNN review found that six former Trump Cabinet secretaries have been involved, as have at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration.)

A new poll gets at why both sides are doing what theyre doing and how important the intensifying clash could be to the stretch run of the 2024 campaign.

It suggests that if Democrats can drive home the idea that a second Trump term would be a more authoritarian one, that could alienate the most crucial 2024 voters, the double haters.

Those double haters the approximately 1 in 5 voters who dislike both Biden and Trump tend to be the least authoritarian-leaning voters of all.

The Monmouth University poll is one of the most extensive looks to date at Americans attitudes toward authoritarianism. And like others before it, the poll shows that Republicans are significantly more inclined toward the idea.

After asking a battery of questions to gauge voters authoritarian proclivities, it found that 7 in 10 voters who liked Trump rated above average on its authoritarian-belief scale. Thats compared with about 3 in 10 voters who liked Biden.

(The questions included whether we should get rid of the rotten apples who are ruining everything, whether we need a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and whether it is the duty of every patriotic citizen to help stomp out the rot that is poisoning the country from within.)

But the double haters were even less likely than Democrats to embrace such ideas. Overall, just 2 in 10 rated above average on authoritarian beliefs.

While just 4 percent of voters who like Trump rated low on their authoritarian beliefs, a 56 percent majority of double haters did.

Any such scale is only as good as the questions that are used. But to get a sense for the specific differences between double haters and Trump supporters:

Theres a real question of just how much these attitudes pertain specifically to ideas like Project 2025. Maybe double haters notionally oppose authoritarian ideals, for instance, but support strongman policies like mass deportation when its an issue they care about. And the fact that double haters dont embrace these strong statements could simply reflect how they are less engaged and feel less strongly about the state of affairs something thats generally true of swing voters.

But Project 2025 is clearly a useful shorthand for Democrats. In one phrase, it embodies the politically potent idea of powerful people working behind the scenes to drive things in a more extreme direction and to put much more power in the hands of a former president that these double haters, it should be emphasized, dont like.

While the official Republican Party is shying away from a detailed platform that could alienate voters, Project 2025s detailed proposals are out there for everyone to consume potentially via Democratic attack ads and render judgment on.

The fact that Trump is now straining to distance himself from Project 2025 is telling. The trick for Democrats is in making it stick to him.

Of course, among the many other problems with Bidens debate performance two weeks ago was that he didnt mention Project 2025 even once.

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Analysis | Trumps authoritarian lean appeals to the right. Swing voters, not so much. - The Washington Post

As President Joe Bidens embattled reelection campaign tries to regain its footing after a disastrous first debate with presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, panic among Democrats in Congress is slowly spreadingmostly in private or off the record, but increasingly in front of a camera. On Monday night, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet told CNN that the White House has done nothing to really demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election and that Republicans could win the election in a landslide. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Tuesday that Biden should reexamine his decision to run. A group of center-left House Democrats met Wednesday with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to convey their fears about Bidens ability to campaign and win.

They arent just worried about Trump winning a second term. They fear that a sinking Biden candidacy might doom the party to minority status in both chambers of Congress, and in many cases, sink their individual campaigns. These are not idle fears. Current polling suggests that the Democrats position in the battle for Congress has deteriorated since Bidens debate fiasco, and recent history does not provide much comfort down-ballot. Anything can happen, but if Biden goes down, a lot of House and Senate Democrats are highly likely to go down with him.

That winning presidential candidates have a positive effect on other races is hardly controversial. It is known as the coattail effect, and while it isnt the most studied question in political science, the research thats out there is fairly clear: Congressional candidates tend to rise or fall in conjunction with the top of the ticket. Political scientist Robert Erikson found in 2016 that for every percentage point that a presidential candidate gains in the two-party vote, their partys down-ballot candidates gain almost half a point themselves. A 1990 study by James E. Campbell and Joe A. Sumners found that for every 10 points that a presidential candidate gains in a state, it boosts that partys Senate contender by 2 points, and its House hopefuls by 4. This basic logic is a large part of why the past five presidents brought congressional majorities into office with them when they were elected to their first term.

Democrats can also ill afford a visibly aging void at the top of the ticket because the partys quest for congressional majorities started off this cycle at a major disadvantage to begin with. Democrats are defending 23 Senate seats (counting independents who caucus with them) to the GOPs 10. Many of these endangered seats are in states Trump has won twice, including Montana and Ohio, or once, as in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Arizona. Because Sen. Joe Manchins retirement means that West Virginia is all but lost, Democrats would either have to run the table in the races they are defending or offset losses with flips elsewhere on the map. The problem is that no one seriously believes that any Republican-held Senate seats are in play this cycle. The House also likely maintains a modest Republican biasespecially after North Carolina Republicans aggressively gerrymandered their states mapmeaning that Democrats would likely need to win 51 percent or more of the total House vote to emerge with a majority. At the moment, both the FiveThirtyEight and RealClearPolitics polling averages show an extremely tight race in the generic ballot question: whether voters want Republicans or Democrats in Congress.

Heres another extremely uncomfortable historical fact for Bidens defenders: Since 1988, the only losing candidates for president whose party secured a branch of Congress were Mitt Romney with the House in 2012 and Bob Dole with both chambers in 1996. It is worth noting that in both cases Republicans lost seats while holding on to the House, and in 2012 they were able to keep their majority mostly because of post-2010 gerrymandering. This doesnt mean that Democrats cant and wont run ahead of Biden in many races, but rather that in the aggregate, it is highly unlikely to be enough. Neither party has kicked away a chamber of Congress that they already held when their nominee won the general election since 1832, when Andrew Jacksons Democrats lost the Senate. Democrats came close to flipping the Senate in both 2000 and 2016, when their nominees won the popular vote while losing the Electoral College, but close isnt going to cut it.

It gets worse. Lets say that Biden ultimately emerges with less than 40 percent of the vote on Election Day, as the RealClearPolitics average currently suggests. (FiveThirtyEight has him a hair over that number as of Thursday afternoon.) What happened to the political parties of the last major-party candidates to do that badly? No major-party nominee has dipped below that bleak threshold since George H.W. Bushs 1992 campaign, when he won 37.4 percent. Republicans that year won 176 seats in the House and 43 seats in the Senate. Yes, they gained a few seats in the House over their 1990 numbersbut they didnt get anywhere near a majority.

And while Democrats won the House every time they lost the presidency between 1956 and 1988, American politics were so different during this time period as to be unrecognizable. Beginning in 1992, ticket splittingvoting for one partys candidate for president and the other partys candidates for Congresswent into terminal decline, and the correlation between presidential and congressional outcomes went way up. In 1992, voters in 13 states split their tickets between presidential and Senate races. In 2020 that number was at onean uptick from 2016, when it had fallen to zero. My guess is that number will go up this year, but it would have to go up by a lot to preserve the Democrats Senate majority in any scenario that includes a Biden loss.

Would a new nominee at the top of the ticket change this grim reality? Those of us convinced that Biden needs to exit this race pronto have to acknowledge that there is not a ton of hard evidence that swapping out the nominee at this stage would help. A FiveThirtyEight analysis suggested that putting Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket would only improve the odds of winning the Electoral College by 3 percent. Polls testing lesser-known candidates like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer look even worse on the surface but are likely the result of many respondents not knowing who she is. A CNN poll that showed Harris doing marginally better than Biden also had so-called double hatersthose who dislike both Trump and Bidenbreaking heavily for any conceivable Democratic replacement for Biden. And on Thursday, an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll found Harris beating Trump 49 percent to 47 percenta net 3 points better than Bidens standing in the poll. For the first time, Harris now does better in the RealClearPolitics head-to-head average against Trump than the president does.

It is also possible that Democrats struggles in congressional races are simply baked in at this point, because a new presidential nominee might also be blamed for inflation and housing woes, bear the brunt of the publics dissatisfaction with immigration policy, inherit outrage over the Gaza war, and become a vessel for the publics generally dyspeptic disposition. But there are two pieces of evidence suggesting that Biden is a unique drag on the partys fortunes: A number of battleground state Democratic Senate candidates are running way ahead of Biden, including Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey. And thats not just the value of strong incumbents. Democratic candidates Ruben Gallego in Arizona and Elissa Slotkin in Michigan are also polling well in front of the president. And a November New York Times/Siena College swing-state poll also found Biden losing to Trump by 4 but a generic Democrat beating him by 8. That all suggests someone else would likely do better. At the least, having a national nominee capable of making a forceful case for the Democratic vision would be an improvement over what the party has now.

There is no public polling testing congressional races with different presidential nominees atop the ticket. So exactly what a new nominee would accomplish down-ballot is, ultimately, anyones guess. But the fact that many Democrats are hoping that Biden steps asideespecially the most vulnerable candidates like Montana Sen. Jon Testerindicates that they feel like theyd have a better shot with someone else up there. They believe, with reason, that they are almost certainly holding a losing hand. Why wouldnt they want to trade in some cards for new ones even if it carries some risk of making their hand worse?

None of this is fun to read or think about for Democrats; it would be preferable to keep the focus on Trumps increasingly authoritarian bent and designs. The far rights reactionary Project 2025 policy blueprintwhich includes plans to gut the civil service and use the executive branch to drastically cut down on abortion access even in states where it remains legalhas become so toxic that even Trump has tried unsuccessfully to distance himself from it. But make no mistake: Donald Trump is the most dangerous person ever to serve as president, and his menace to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law has only grown over time as his handpicked Supreme Court has closed off all avenues of possible accountability. But drawing attention to Trumps dystopian project will be all but impossible with Joe Biden at the helm. Every day between now and Election Day, there will be questions about his age, his latest flub, his faltering poll numbers, his frail gait, and more. His decision to stay in the race will inevitably be the story between now and November, as Democrats brace for defeat and sharpen knives for the party elites who put them in this position.

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If Biden Loses the Election, a Lot of Democrats Will Go Down With Him - Slate