President Biden’s top campaign leaders on Monday tried to ease the panic that gripped the financial base in the campaign’s most formal campaign for its wealthiest supporters after last week’s damaging debate.
In a Zoom audio call on Monday with about 500 members of the campaign’s National Finance Committee and several other contributors, some of the most senior officials of the Biden campaign, including chairman Jen O’Malley Dillon, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks and pollster Molly. Murphy, led for an hour.
“Everybody just needs to breathe through their noses for a few minutes,” Chris Korge, finance chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said at the end of the call. The New York Times is connected to the phone by an authorized participant.
Senior Biden officials downplayed the political fallout of the debate, which took place Thursday in Atlanta, but offered valuable new information to members of the National Finance Committee. The funders have been locked in an ongoing conversation with their own network on conference calls and Signal threads since Thursday night about whether investing in the Biden campaign has been the right decision.
Monday’s remarks did little to ease the anxiety of campaign visitors, according to people on the phone who explained the ongoing process. Rufus Gifford, chief financial officer for Mr. Biden, said the fundraising numbers in June would be “very strong.”
The Biden campaign did not take questions directly from donors; However, contributors sent questions through the Zoom messaging app, but other participants could not read them, according to the caller. The campaign then chooses among the questions that have been submitted. The campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, did not return calls.
Some of the attendees explained that it was almost easy and unfinished.
One donor asked the campaign how it would respond to the significant erosion of the polls; the campaign largely dismissed the concern. “The media has spent a ton of time blowing this out of proportion,” said Mr. Fulks, deputy campaign manager. “We will not be defensive in this campaign.”
“I want to reiterate, without sounding Pollyannish or sounding defensive, that at the end of the day, the only thing we’re not going to do is win this race by continuing to talk about Joe Biden’s age,” Mr Fulks said. he said at another point. “We’re here talking to you all because we know we have to deal with it.”
Mrs. O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chairman, acknowledged that the debate “wasn’t what we expected and exactly what the president wanted.” Mrs. Murphy, the campaign’s most senior pollster, said an internal survey suggested that voters had not moved. “Voters see the debate, they take it and they don’t change their minds,” he said.
Despite the tightly controlled format of the call, the first question the Biden team chose to answer was about Mr. Biden’s fitness to serve.
“He knew he had to come out and show that he was what he really was,” said Ms. O’Malley Dillon. He then compared Barack Obama’s struggle in the first debate in 2012, although he admitted that the campaign “had more to do because of the 81-year-old president.”
The most telling aspect of the call was the decision to host — an acknowledgment that Biden’s team knew it was being scrutinized by its own supporters. In the days after the debate, communication from Biden’s brass was inconsistent, but improved, Biden fundraisers said. Some individual donors have received direct communications from campaign officials, and Biden’s fundraiser said communications took place over the weekend, according to people close to the conversation.
O’Malley Dillon was one of Biden’s senior operatives who, the morning after the debate in Atlanta, offered several members of the National Finance Committee an “official NFC Debate” in the basement of the Ritz-Carlton, according to materials distributed. for previous donors. But many committee members skipped NFC meetings that summer, meaning as of Monday, few had received formal instructions on how to speak at the presidential debate performance.
Still, Biden’s campaign fundraiser is jumping on opportunities for engagement. The call, which was open to a number of people who did not technically sit in the NFC, was attended by hundreds of donors, some of whom had called from holiday destinations around the globe.
Biden’s team is working to keep the spirits of his biggest supporters alive. Some major donors have privately explored whether it would make sense to replace Mr. Biden, although it is unclear whether major contributors can convince Mr. Biden to make the change.
Mr Biden was not seen at Camp David on Monday morning as his team continued to protest, vowing to stay in the race despite last week’s debate. He plans to return to the White House on Monday afternoon, and is expected to comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling that former President Donald J. Trump has immunity from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Family members and friends spent the weekend urging Mr. Biden to keep fighting, even as some Democrats and others urged him to step aside. In the White House and on the campaign trail, aides tried to get ahead, issuing news releases about student debt and the president’s overtime policy.
But the week promises to be anything but business as usual.
Mr. Biden and his campaign aides are preparing for poll results this week that could show whether his shaky and inconsistent performance in the debates has eroded support with less than five months to go before Election Day.
Mr. Biden and his advisers discussed over the weekend whether the president should find a forum to respond to the debate in person, by holding a press conference or sitting down for an interview. But both options carry political risks, and no decision was made Monday morning.
The campaign on Monday released its first television ad since the debate, featuring Mr Biden focusing on his rival and saying Mr Trump lied repeatedly during the debate.
“Did you see Trump yesterday?” The president was shown speaking during his speech in North Carolina on Friday. “I mean this sincerely – the biggest liar in a single debate. He lied about the great economy he created. He lied about the pandemic he blamed.
The ad ends with the president saying, “I know, as millions of Americans know, that when you lose, you get back up.”
Mr. Biden delivered a more forceful and disciplined speech at the North Carolina rally. Some of his political allies said they hoped to see more of these demonstrations to show that Mr Biden still has the will to run for president for the next five years.
“He needs to be very aggressive — more aggressive than he is out in public,” Matt Bennett, executive vice president of Third Way, a Democratic think tank, told CNN. “Conduct village hall meetings with voters. Sit-down with journalists. Conduct television interviews. Hold a press conference. He had to prove that he had a bad night and it wasn’t a pattern.
But the president’s schedule for next week suggests he won’t follow that advice. Instead, he will have a three-day work week at the White House with few events and no campaign rallies.
O’Malley Dillon also told donors that Mr. Biden had “put in a strong medical record” citing a recent physical accompanied by a “seven-page memo.” The White House has not made Mr. Biden’s physician available to answer questions, unlike most previous administrations.
He said that Mr. Biden “may be healthier than most of us. But he’s also 81, and he knows he has to prove that he can do this job from a stamina standpoint.
On Tuesday, he is scheduled to receive a briefing on extreme weather conditions and attend a private campaign fundraiser. On Wednesday, he will host the Medal of Honor ceremony. And on Thursday, he will celebrate the Fourth of July with members of the military.
He has no scheduled events at the White House on Friday, when he is scheduled to return to his home in Wilmington, Del.
Biden’s campaign aides stressed to donors on Monday that the president will have more opportunities to change the narrative — including in a second debate scheduled for the fall that some have questioned whether it will remain on the calendar.
“We are looking forward to it,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon spoke of the second debate.
Maggie Haberman, Kenneth P. Vogel and Kate Kelly contribute reports.
