For two weeks, tumult enveloped the Democratic Party. Suddenly, it’s all at a standstill.
Numerous Democrats said Saturday the assassination attempt at former President Donald Trump's rally in Pennsylvania would put a halt to any efforts to replace President Joe Biden. At least for now.
“I think it’s over,” a Biden ally said. “You just lose all momentum.”
Before gunfire rang out at the event — injuring Trump, killing an attendee and injuring another — Biden had been on a damage control tour in the wake of a disastrous presidential debate on June 27. As Biden tried to tamp down calls for him to step aside as the presumptive Democratic nominee, he held caucus calls with groups of House Democrats on Saturday that was meant to allay concerns. Instead, it left many elected officials unimpressed.
“They were having a very bad political day, and then we had this supernova event. Now, it’s frozen,” said a longtime Democratic strategist involved in multiple presidential campaigns. “If you’re an advocate for: ‘How do we tell the old man it’s time to go?’ — it’s really hard to have that conversation publicly. This event blocks out the sun right now.”
Instead of awaiting the possibility of more calls from Congress that he step aside, Biden instead took the stage as president, addressing the nation in a live televised address, in which he condemned violence.
“There’s no place in America for this kind of violence; it’s sick, it’s sick,” Biden said. And then, returning to one of the foundational themes dating to when he first ran for office in 2019, he said, “It’s one of the reasons why we have to unite this country.”
In the aftermath of the Trump rally violence, Biden’s operation pumped the brakes on politics. In the immediate hours after the incident, the Biden campaign paused “outbound communications” and tried to quickly take down television ads, a campaign official said. The Democratic National Committee similarly paused television ads and billboard ads attacking Trump.
The Biden campaign also told staffers to “refrain from issuing any comments on social media or in public” and “pause any proactive campaign communication across all platforms and in all circ*mstances until we know more,” according to an email obtained by NBC News.
The email said that police in Wilmington, Delaware, had ramped up their security presence outside the campaign’s headquarters “for the immediate future” and that starting at 6 a.m. Sunday, private security guards will be stationed “on each floor.”
Another Biden ally said it would reflect poorly on anyone in the Democratic Party who tried to call for a sitting president to step aside while he was in the midst of handling a crisis.
“It’s likely the effort to dislodge Biden has ended. He’s not going to voluntarily step aside in this moment,” the second ally said. “Biden demonstrated he’s going to fight.”
It all came against the backdrop of a growing chorus of lawmakers who called on Biden to step aside from seeking the nomination. That was on top of scores of donors who turned off the spigot after a debate at which Biden repeatedly faltered, at times struggling to even finish sentences. Last week, even those who were part of Biden's re-election efforts expressed doubts that Biden had a path.
All along, critics were pressed for time if they were to try to oust Biden from his perch. The Democratic National Convention is scheduled in mid-August, and a virtual vote for the nomination is expected to take place weeks earlier.
In the near term, Democrats were, as of late Saturday, trying to beat back another issue, as Republicans attempted to steer blame for the violence against Trump to rhetoric they promoted. In social media posts, some Republicans hit Biden for using the term “put Trump in the bull's-eye” at a campaign event.
“Look, we’ve had roughly 40 days to the convention, 120 days to the election, and we can’t waste any more time being distracted. I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. ... I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that," Biden said Monday on a private call with donors. "So we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in the bull's-eye. He’s gotten away with doing nothing for the last 10 days except ride around in his golf cart, bragging about scores he didn’t score.”
Republicans are lodging the accusation after Democrats for years have railed against Republicans, and Trump, in particular, for stoking anger, division and even violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.On Jan. 6, supporters had chanted threats to hang Trump's vice president, Mike Pence. Trump later called them "patriots."
Biden had first launched his campaign in the wake of the riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists and neo-Nazis took to the streets carrying torches and reciting hateful chats. Trump was widely criticized for comments that appeared to downplay the far-right figures. At the time, Biden said he wanted to bring back the “soul of America” and unite a hyper-divided country.
“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” Trump said after Charlottesville. “You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name. You had people — and I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists; they should be condemned totally — you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists.”
CORRECTION (July 14, 9:12 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the year of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It took place in 2021, not 2001.
