The ground shifts beneath Biden: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version ofFrom the Politics Deskan evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the campaign trail, the White House and Capitol Hill.

In today’s edition, we report on how the walls are closing in on President Joe Biden amid mounting pressure for him to exit the 2024 race. Plus, senior political reporter Jonathan Allen looks back at the staying power of Donald Trump as he prepares to again accept the Republican presidential nomination.

Programming note: Stay tuned for a special edition of From the Politics Desk after the Republican National Convention concludes tonight, bringing you all the latest news and analysis from our team in Milwaukee.

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Biden world braces for the possibility that the president steps aside

By Natasha Korecki, Carol E. Lee and Monica Alba

President Joe Biden’s political world is collapsing. Top allies have either publicly or privately called on him to step aside. Major donations have fallen off a cliff. Grassroots fundraising is not keeping up with the demands of a campaign that needs to aggressively scale up three months before the presidential election. Members of his own re-election effort have already declared he has no path to victory.

Since a disastrous debate in Atlanta upended the trajectory of his campaign three weeks ago, Biden has again and again attempted to dig in, bucking efforts to dislodge him from power.

But there is now a palpable sense that the ground has shifted underneath him, according to five people with knowledge of the situation, even among some of the president’s most defiant internal backers who now believe the writing is on the wall.

“We’re close to the end,” a person close to Biden said.

That person, who previously doubted Biden would ever step aside, acknowledged that it’s still the president’s decision but joined in the array of Biden allies who say he is nearing a point of no return.

On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running for the Senate in California, made a remarkable public call for the president to abandon the nomination, a move that ended up exposing that other Democratic leaders — including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosiand Sen. Chuck Schumer — had brought dire concernssupported by polling, to the president indicating that he risked taking down control of Congress with him if he stayed on the same path.

In the hours after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last weekend, some Democrats said — even feared — that the calls for Biden to step aside would be “frozen” as the president dealt with a national crisis. But that faded quickly. Some allies now say that the shooting, which has caused an even more intense rallying around Trump within his party, only makes it more glaringly obvious that the nagging narrative of whether Biden is on a cognitive decline cannot win the White House.

A person with knowledge of the projections said the Biden campaign now expects it will raise only 25% of the big donor money it had originally projected to raise in July — that’s a further downgrade from the expectation last week that large-dollar fundraising would be down by as much as 50%. The money has “dried up,” this person said.

One Democratic lawmaker on Wednesday said if Biden didn’t agree to step aside, the cacophony of calls will grow only louder, with more lawmakers expected to urge him to do so. The lawmaker called it a “sad moment” for the party.

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Where Obama stands: NBC News’ Monica Alba, Yamiche Alcindor and Sahil Kapur report that former President Barack Obama has “concerns” about Biden’s ability to stay at the top of the ticket, but continues to see his main role as a sounding board and counselor to his former vice president.

Biden team counter: A source close to Biden pushed back against the concerns raised by senior Democrats.

“Can we all just remember for a minute that these same people who are trying to push Joe Biden out are the same people who literally gave us all Donald Trump? In 2015, Obama, Pelosi, Schumer pushed Biden aside in favor of Hillary [Clinton]; they were wrong then and they are wrong now,” the source told NBC News’ Mike Memoli.

Potential next steps: What would happen if Biden does ultimately step aside? NBC News’ Ben Kamisar and Jiachuan Wu outline the next steps the Democratic Party could take.

From defeat to dominance: How Trump climbed back to the top of the Republican Party

By Jonathan Allen

MILWAUKEE — Save for the very tip of his ear, Donald Trump literally dodged a bullet Saturday. Then, he rose to his feet. With blood streaked across his right cheek and drawn lips, the once and possibly future president pumped his fist in the air.

In just a handful of frames, the most terrifying moment of the 2024 presidential election — a barely failed assassination attempt — became a visual metaphor for the much longer arc of Trump’s resurrection from the depths of political ignominy to the edge of the most powerful perch in politics.

The anti-establishment outsider who thumbed his nose at political norms has built his comeback by executing a more traditional and practical brand of politics.

His emphasis on “unity” at this week’s Republican National Convention is not the sign of a pivot. Instead, it is the shopworn watchword of candidates who believe they are winning — one that puts a trailing rival between the rock of agreeing not to fight and the hard place of risking blame for any discord.

Trump vowed that he wouldn’t play “prevent defense” in this election — that he wouldn’t sit on a lead and try to run out the clock. But that’s exactly what he did by skipping Republican primary debates, stepping into the shadows to keep a spotlight on Biden’s struggles in recent weeks and conducting a vice presidential search that — in traditional fashion — landed on the candidate he’d started with: Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will reach the summit of the Oval Office again, but his resurgence already ranks among the most unlikely displays of political staying power in American history.

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That’s all from the Politics Desk for now. If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at [email protected]

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