Donors stress over path forward after Biden’s debate performance

Less than 48 hours after President Joe Biden’s alarming debate performance, the Democratic donor class is in crisis, racked by anxiety over what — if anything — the party’s wealthiest backers can do to reinvigorate or replace Biden, whose campaign has commissioned new polling to assess the damage.

Less than 48 hours after President Joe Biden’s alarming debate performance, the Democratic donor class is in crisis, racked by anxiety over what — if anything — the party’s wealthiest backers can do to reinvigorate or replace Biden, whose campaign has commissioned new polling to assess the damage. The vast universe of wealthy Biden backers and their political whisperers has split along three lines. One faction is arguing that a pressure campaign urging the president — who has been adamant he will not step aside — to drop out would be a self-defeating nonstarter. Another is calling for a middle-of-the road approach, saying party leaders should consider drastic steps only after the fallout from Thursday night is more closely examined. Democratic fundraiser and strategist Dmitri Mehlhorn, who often works closely with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, another prominent donor, told CNN that while the first 10 or 15 minutes of the debate “was very upsetting to see,” Biden’s performance later in Atlanta and then at a high-energy rally on Friday in North Carolina had begun to settle his nerves. In any event, he reasoned, Biden alone controlled his fate as the Democratic nominee. “The smartest thing is to think through how you (as influential outsiders) operate, assuming no change,” Mehlhorn said. “And if there’s no change, if Biden wants to remain president, then any kind of a pressure campaign is just a waste of time and energy and effort and money.” A third group of donors and advisers with fewer direct ties to Biden world and less influence within it, is proactively calling on Democrats to quit wasting time and immediately begin the process of seeking out a new nominee with a little more than four months before a general election clash with former President Donald Trump.