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The stories that matter on money and politics in the race for the White House
President Joe Biden faced fresh pressure to abandon his re-election bid on Sunday after a fifth US senator called for him to step aside and new polling showed Donald Trump’s favourability rating reaching a new high.
Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia senator whose support was critical to the passage of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure bill, among other legislative achievements, urged the president to withdraw from the 2024 election race in place of a younger candidate.
“The time has come for him to pass the torch to a new generation,” Manchin, who earlier this year changed his party registration from Democrat to independent, told ABC News on Sunday.
Biden, who has not been seen in public since Wednesday, when he was diagnosed with Covid-19, has for weeks faced calls to quit the race for the White House and allow another Democrat to take his place at the top of the ticket.
The Biden campaign has insisted that the 81-year-old president will remain in the race. But their defiance has done little to quell increasingly panicked calls from lawmakers, donors and party operatives for him to quit with less than four months to go until November’s presidential election.
Four Democratic US senators — Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Jon Tester of Montana, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Peter Welch of Vermont — and more than two dozen House of Representatives members from the president’s own party have called on Biden to end his re-election bid. While an independent, Manchin caucuses with the Democrats.
More lawmakers have piled on in recent days as Trump increased his polling lead nationwide and in key swing states that will determine November’s election outcome.
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll out on Sunday showed Trump’s favourability rating had improved by several points in the wake of an assassination attempt this month. The poll found that 40 per cent of Americans had a favourable view of Trump, compared with just 32 per cent who had a favourable view of Biden.
Trump’s lead over Biden in national and swing state polls has widened in recent weeks, following a disastrous debate performance from the president that triggered widespread Democratic panic over his age and fitness for office.
A new poll for the Detroit Free Press out on Sunday in Michigan, a critical swing state that Biden won in 2020, showed Trump ahead by seven points there.
The crushing poll numbers for Biden came at the same time as new campaign finance filings laid bare how the Democratic incumbent is losing his fundraising advantage as the campaign season enters its critical final months.
The latest filings show fundraising groups aligned with Trump raised $431.2mn between April and June — $98.9mn more than pro-Biden groups, which raised $332.4mn.
The campaign finance reports, covering the second quarter of the year, include only a few days of fundraising in the wake of last month’s debate. The Financial Times has previously reported that influential donors have warned that Biden’s donations have been “drying up” in July, as deep-pocketed supporters have grown wary of writing any more cheques for the president.
Still, several high-profile Democrats have remained outwardly loyal to Biden.
Jim Clyburn, the 84-year-old Democratic congressman from South Carolina whose endorsement was critical to Biden’s election in 2020, told CNN on Sunday that Biden was “as good as they get”.
“Is he the only one? No, he is not the only one . . . he is among the best that we can put forward, and I stand with him until he changes his mind, should he change his mind,” Clyburn added.
Ro Khanna, a progressive Democratic congressman from California, also came to Biden’s defence on Sunday, insisting the president has a “coalition” of loyal supporters — including Black women, blue-collar workers and older Americans — who are ready to support him again at the ballot box.
“If feels bullied out, those voters are going to . . . feel that they were bullied out,” Khanna said. “So, it is his decision.”
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