No one in the Democratic Party sees Biden as having a path to victory: NBC

WASHINGTON: Several close allies of President Joe Biden, including three people directly involved in his re-election effort, told NBC News they now see his chances of winning as nil — and that the likelihood of him toppling fellow Democratic candidates is growing.

“He should withdraw,” one Biden campaign official said. "He'll never recover from that."

For two weeks, Biden struggled to stabilize his campaign after the debate disaster in late June. His continuing efforts to clean up his campaign, which is scheduled to include his top aides meeting privately with Democratic senators and a presidential news conference on Thursday, have failed to reassure lawmakers and party officials.

Instead, the opposite happens.

The group of Democrats who believe he should reconsider his decision to remain in the race has expanded to include aides, activists and officials charged with steering his campaign to victory. Those who spoke to NBC News said the feeling that he should exit and leave the Democratic nomination to someone else — likely Vice President Kamala Harris — is widespread even within the ranks of the campaign and the outside Democratic entities that support it.

“No one involved in the effort believes they have a path,” said a second person working to get him elected.

A third person close to the reelection campaign said the current situation — lingering questions about Biden's cognitive abilities, a dearth of fundraising and more polls showing declining support for Biden and improving performances by other candidates — is unsustainable. This person also said they didn't see how the campaign could win.

They all spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not want to be seen as doing further damage to a candidate they estimate would beat President Donald Trump in 2020 and win the White House. But two others close to Biden told NBC News that while they have not given up hope of a turnaround, they see that outcome as increasingly unlikely. They believe that the goal of defeating Trump in November should take priority over supporting Biden.

“The question for me, and a lot of us, is: ‘Who is the best person to defeat Donald Trump?'” said another person working to elect Biden. “There are a lot of us true-blues who are questioning our initial thoughts on that.”

Ultimately, it's ultimately up to Biden to decide whether he stays in the presidential race, and the president insisted this week that he's not going anywhere. But these sources say Biden is finished — whether he withdraws before November or loses to Trump on Election Day.

Hours after NBC News asked Biden aides about that conclusion, campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez sent a memo to staff on Thursday explaining why they believe the president can still win.

“Our internal data and public polling show the same thing: this race remains on the margin of error in key battleground states,” they wrote in the memo. “The movement we have seen, while real, is not a radical change in the state of the race — while some of this movement has been from undecided voters to Trump, much of the movement has been driven by historically undecided Democratic constituencies.”

O'Malley Dillon and Chavez Rodriguez said they still view Georgia and Arizona — states Biden won in 2020 but where he is trailing in the polls now — as winnable, along with the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

“No one denies that the debate was a setback,” they wrote. "But Joe Biden and this campaign have overcome setbacks before. We are clear about what we need to do to win. And we will win by moving forward, united as a party, so that every day between now and Election Day we focus on defeating Donald Trump."

Biden's defenders have pointed to 538's fall election projections that show the president's chances of winning barely moved after the debate, remaining at a 48 in 100 chance of winning. On average of 538, Biden trailed Trump by 2.1%.

But Democrats this week saw shifts in other polls that raised alarms, including an AARP poll that showed Biden trailing in Wisconsin, which had been his best battleground state.