Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have spoken privately about Joe Biden and the future of his 2024 campaign. Both the former president and ex-speaker expressed concerns about how much harder they think it’s become for the president to beat Donald Trump. Neither is quite sure what to do.
Democrats are desperate for the dispiriting infighting to end so they can get back to trying to beat the former president. And they’re begging either Obama or Pelosi to help them get there, aware that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer doesn’t have the trust of Biden and that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries doesn’t have the depth of relationship to deliver the message.
CNN spoke with more than a dozen members of Congress, operatives and multiple people in touch with both Obama and Pelosi, many of whom say that the end for Biden’s candidacy feels clear and at this point it’s just a matter of how it plays out, even after Thursday night’s news conference.
And if those two feel otherwise, several leading Democrats say, they need to say that clearly as soon as possible before even more damage is done less than four months before the election.
Many of Pelosi’s colleagues are hoping that she can bring an end to the turmoil that has engulfed Democrats for the last two weeks. And to a good chunk of them, that end can come if and when she tells Biden that he has to drop out.
Pelosi has spoken to Biden since the debate, but in the time since, the California Democrat has made clear that she does not see Biden’s decision to stay in the race as final. But she, through an aide, declined to comment further.
Obama’s decision not to make any public comment for two weeks has left a number of leading Democrats feeling like he has left them flailing by holding to the same posture that has largely defined his post-presidency. After the debate, he posted on X, “Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know,” reiterating that sentiment at a fundraiser in New York for House Democrats the night after Biden’s performance. The former president hadn’t even planned to make any public statement, but Biden and Obama aides coordinated to get that post out in a way that reflected Biden campaign talking points that Obama’s first reelection debate in 2012 went badly, too, and it didn’t end up ending his campaign.
But Obama’s deepening skepticism about his friend’s ability to win reelection is one of the worst kept secrets in Washington.
When the history of this extraordinary two-week period of American politics is written, the fingerprints of Obama and Pelosi will be far more apparent than currently known, people familiar with the matter tell CNN, as the Democratic elders have served as a guidepost for a party in panic.
“They are watching and waiting for President Biden to reach a decision on his own,” one longtime Democrat close to all of them told CNN, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid being seen as disrespectful to Biden.
The Biden campaign declined to comment.
While not contesting that the former speaker and Obama have spoken about Biden, a Pelosi spokesperson told CNN after this article first published, “There is no member of Congress who would have any knowledge of any conversation that Speaker Pelosi would have with President Obama. Anyone who says they do is not speaking the truth.”
Obama has been fielding more calls than he’s making, people who have spoken to him say. When he does talk to anxious Democratic donors and officials, he’s been listening more than talking, carefully avoiding taking positions that he assumes would quickly leak.
That was also Obama’s approach to the call he had with Biden after the debate, which the current president has suggested to others included the former president being supportive of him riding out the turmoil. According to others familiar with the call, though, Obama stuck to his posture of being a “sounding board and private counselor.” He prodded. He played devil’s advocate. But he did not take a position.
In conversations with some Democrats over the past two weeks, Obama has swatted away the notion that he could push Biden one direction or the other even if he wanted to, which underscores their long-running complicated, yet loyal, relationship. And it’s been complicated even further during their time apart: since leaving office behind – and their weekly lunches at the White House for eight years – the two have spoken far less than some of their advisers have often intimated.
If the former president did try to steer Biden to get out, people who know Obama say, he is aware the prism through which it could be seen. Biden has written that he felt Obama was not encouraging of his jumping in late to the Democratic primaries in the months after his son Beau died in 2015. Though Obama believes that he was trying to help his then-vice president focus on his grief and not wade into what would have been an incredibly hard primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, that may not be how another conversation would go.
“Biden would say, ‘Well, Mr. President, you already used that chip in 2015 and it got us Donald Trump,’” speculated a longtime 2020 campaign aide. “I think it would harden him more.”
Obama is also loath to give Trump, who is forever triggered by him, any new material by getting actively involved.
In the past — including during the 2020 Democratic primaries — Obama has seen his role as being the unifier who can help validate the direction of the party to whichever parts of the party remain skeptical. So far, he has not committed to having that role in the turmoil over whether Biden should remain the nominee, what happens if he stays, or what happens if he changes course and decides to go. “Well he’s known as no-drama Obama,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Democrat. “So if there’s drama, then he’s the one to deal with it.”
Obama’s hands-off approach — at least publicly — has been seen by some close to him as a way to keep his powder dry in case he needs to have a blunt, difficult conversation with Biden.
“He is going to be all in for the Democratic ticket. No matter who our nominee is, he will be busting his a** helping to make sure that person wins in November,” said one person who speaks with Obama regularly.
Obama has been at Biden’s side during two fundraising events this year, including at the Los Angeles event last month at which George Clooney would later acknowledge he was alarmed by how Biden carried himself.
Biden woke up in Italy the day before the fundraiser — after several days of G-7 meetings — and had to fly overnight across five time zones to get there, because campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg was eager to do the Hollywood-themed event, and Clooney told the campaign there was only one day he was available, given his shooting schedule.
Even on the way there, Obama questioned the thinking of putting any presidential candidate through the wringer of that kind of scheduling.
“He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney wrote in an essay in The New York Times this week, imploring Biden to step aside.
It was those words that infuriated some Biden loyalists, who suggested that Obama was behind Clooney’s op-ed. The former president, who is friendly with the actor, was aware that it was coming but did not try to stop it. To some Obama defenders, that was a way of preserving his neutrality, but to some Biden loyalists, it was a mark of deep betrayal.
Obama was backstage and on stage with Biden for much longer than Clooney was. Others around at the time chalked up the shape the president was in to jet lag. The infamous video of Obama leading Biden off stage, people familiar say, was more a function of the former president wanting to leave.
An Obama aide declined to comment and also declined to say whether his own assessment of Biden’s condition remained that it was about jet lag.
Pelosi re-broke the dam
As House Democrats left their private caucus meeting on Tuesday morning, many felt the worst might be over for the president. Most of the anti-Biden remarks at the meeting had come from members who had already called for him to go.
Then Pelosi went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday morning for a long-scheduled appearance and took advantage of being on a show the president is known to watch to cast major doubt on his candidacy. Privately, she was telling colleagues to hold off on embarrassing Biden while the NATO leaders were in town. But even more Democrats took her comments as an open pass to issue their statements calling on Biden to step aside.
Pelosi has known Biden for decades. She is older than him by three years. She has been one of his staunchest defenders, including through the 2020 primaries. She’s finished as speaker and has nothing to lose.
“I think at this moment, if Biden ends up stepping down as the nominee, she will prove to be the most important Democratic leader,” said one House Democrat. “She’s the one in a situation like this, especially generationally, who has the credibility to weigh in on something that is so sensitive and important.”
Pelosi plans to fly back home to San Francisco on Friday.
This story has been updated.
CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.
