On private call, Democrats weigh ‘comatose or dead’ Biden and alternatives

Top Democratic consultants debated Wednesday, before an audience of large Democratic donors, whether they could push Joe Biden from the race for president — and whether Vice President Kamala Harris would be worse than a “comatose” or “dead” Biden.

“Seventy-two percent of people want something different. Why not give it to them?” asked the former Bill Clinton aide James Carville on a conference call for dozens of donors to the Democratic SuperPAC American Bridge, a major source of opposition research and paid campaigns against Donald Trump. “They’re just asking for a different choice.”

Carville advised donors who want Biden out of the race to cut off money to politicians who won’t take their side.

“What I would say is, if we don’t do something about this, I’m going to put you on call block on my cell phone,” he said on the call, a recording of which was shared with Semafor by a donor.

The hour-long call Tuesday offered a glimpse at the panic inside the ranks of Democratic donors, as a parade of wealthy Democrats — some dialing in from vacation, and one taking jokes about skiing in the southern hemispheres — took turns asking Carville, Paul Begala, and Reid Hoffman adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn how they could push Biden out.

“What can we as donors do to encourage the change in the ticket?” one donor asked, capturing the sentiment on the call. “Continuing to have President Biden at the top of this ticket is giving people an excuse to vote for Donald Trump,” said another. “If you wake Joe Biden at three-o-clock in the morning and ask him who’s president, does he get it right?” fretted a third.

While Carville offered them advice on pushing Biden out and Begala stayed neutral on the question, Biden had one advocate. Mehlhorn, whose key patron LinkedIn founder Hoffman has been a staunch advocate for sticking with the president, argued that Biden should stay in the race — if in the darkest possible terms.

Swing voters, he said, already believed Biden is feeble — but they like Vice President Kamala Harris even less.

“Kamala Harris is more threatening to those swing voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden,” he said. “So if Joe has to go, it’s gonna be Kamala and if it’s Kamala, it’s gonna be harder.”

Mehlhorn tried to clean up the comments in an email to allies on Wednesday, arguing they had been taken out of context. Mehlhorn said he was trying to “reach the doubters by assuming for argument’s sake the extreme case of Biden being actually comatose” and that he was not trying to suggest Biden was actually comatose or that Harris would not be a viable alternative.

“Vice President Harris is a badass. A ticket with her at the top, combined with someone who balances her brand weaknesses (examples range from Mark Kelly to Andy Beshear to Roy Cooper to Josh Shapiro and many others), would absolutely be competitive with the criminally insane convicted felon the other side is committed to nominating,” Mehlhorn wrote in the note viewed by Semafor. “We would lose Joe’s superpower brand, but we would gain other benefits and would still be competitive.”

This story has been updated to reflect Mehlhorn’s latest comments.

The Democratic donor panic is just the next phase of Biden’s debate fallout. Donors may well start pressuring lawmakers to publicly denounce Biden and call on him to withdraw from the election.

But the decision remains up to Biden and his family, and it’s not clear how they’ll respond to that pressure.

And ultimately, the crisis also affects the main thing Democrats and groups like American Bridge rely on donors for: money.

American Bridge fundraiser Mary Pat Bonner said she is “legitimately nervous that all of this chaos is gonna make raising” the $30 million the group says it needs to finance ongoing attacks on Trump “very difficult.”

Carville also mused at one point on the call that the early debate might have saved Democrats.

“Maybe we look back on this thing and say, ‘This is the best thing that ever happened to us,’” he said. “If this would have happened to us on October fifth, we’d be more than bruised, screwed and tattooed. Maybe this will set it into motion something different.

And maybe the people on the zoom call or maybe we’ll reconvene and I told November 10th and say, ‘God damn man, this thing came together a lot better than we ever thought we would back on July the second.”

• The New York Times reported Tuesday that Biden’s mental lapses are growing more frequent, and worrying his aides.
• Biden’s campaign has been trying to sooth “panicked” donors in a series of phone calls.