The Biden campaign is insisting that President Joe Biden will remain at the top of the ticket in November.
In a new memo it says that voters are still backing him despite concerns over his age and that the party has “no plan for an alternative nominee”.
This is despite reports that members of Mr Biden’s family have discussed what an exit from his campaign might look like.
The Biden campaign has been the subject of weeks of speculation over whether the president will ultimately step aside, particularly since the disastrous debate.
Campaign insists in memo that Biden is running
The note obtained by NBC News, the campaign’s battleground states director says despite intense media coverage on Democratic divisions, organisers talking to voters consistently found that issues like women’s rights and the potential GOP agenda of Project 2025 are paramount.
“While voters consistently mention President Biden’s age when contacted, our target voters – both re-engagement and true swing voters – are still planning to vote for him, making it clear the debate has not hurt support among the voters who will decide this election,” Dan Kanninen writes in the memo.
Mr Kanninen says that he won’t “sugarcoat the state of the race: we have our work cut out for us to win this November”.
But he underscored what Biden has said repeatedly since his poor debate performance – that he is “in it to win it.”
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“He’s the presumptive nominee, there is no plan for an alternative nominee. In a few short weeks, Joe Biden will be the official nominee,” Mr Kanninen writes. “It is high past time we stop fighting one another. The only person who wins when we fight is Donald Trump.”
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Mr Biden was forced to pull out of a speech after contracting COVID-19 this week, as pressure on him to step aside from the race to become president ramped up.
The White House said the president was experiencing mild symptoms, including “general malaise” from the infection and returned to his home in Delaware from Las Vegas to self-isolate.
“He is absolutely in it,” Biden campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon told MSNBC in an interview.
Biden’s family discussing his possible exit?
News of the memo came the same day as a report from Sky News’ sister outlet NBC News that the president’s family have discussed what an exit from his campaign might look like.
According to the US broadcaster, the overall tone of the conversations has been that any exit plan should put the party in the best position while also being worthy of the more than five decades Mr Biden has served the country.
Considerations about the impact of the campaign on his health, his family and the stability of the country are among those at the forefront of the discussions, the people familiar with the discussions said.
