President Biden’s top campaign officials on Monday sought to quell the panic that gripped his financial base in the campaign’s most formal outreach to his wealthiest supporters since last week’s damaging debate.
The Zoom audio call included some of the most senior Biden campaign officials, including chair Jane O’Malley Dillon, deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks and pollster Molly, along with about 500 members of the campaign’s National Finance Committee and several other contributors. Murphy, presiding for one hour.
“Everybody just needs to breathe through the nose for a minute,” Democratic National Committee finance chair Chris Korg said toward the end of the call. The New York Times was linked to the call by an authorized participant.
Senior Biden officials downplayed the political outcome of Thursday’s debate in Atlanta, but provided precious little new information to members of the National Finance Committee. Those financiers have been locked in constant, rolling conversations with their own networks on conference calls and signal threads since Thursday night about whether their investment in the Biden campaign is the right decision.
Monday’s remarks did little to assuage the concerns of the campaign’s well-heeled supporters, according to people on the call who described it while it was underway. Rufus Gifford, Mr. Biden’s finance chair, said fundraising numbers in June would be “extremely strong.”
The Biden campaign took no live questions from donors; Instead, contributors submitted questions through the Zoom messaging app, but other attendees couldn’t read them, according to people on the call. The campaign was then selected from the submitted inquiries. The campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, did not join the call.
Some of the attendees described it as almost simple and elementary.
One donor asked the campaign how it would respond to a significant erosion of the vote; The campaign largely dismissed the concern. “The media has spent a lot of time blowing this out of proportion,” said Mr. Fulks, the deputy campaign manager. “We are not going to be defensive on this campaign.”
“I want to reiterate, without sounding Pollyanish or at all defensive, that at the end of the day the one thing we’re not going to do is win this race by continuing to talk about Joe Biden’s age,” Mr. Fulks said at another point. “We’re here talking to you because we know we have to solve it.”
Ms. O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chairman, acknowledged that the debate “didn’t go quite as well as we had hoped and the president had hoped.” Ms. Murphy, the campaign’s most senior pollster, said internal surveys indicated that voters had not moved. “Voters saw the debate, they accepted it and didn’t change their minds,” she 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 knows he’s got to get out there and show he’s who we’ve always known him to be,” Ms O’Malley Dillon said. She later drew comparisons to Barack Obama’s struggles in his first debate in 2012, though she acknowledged that the campaign “had more work to do because the president is 81 years old.”
The most revealing aspect of the call was the decision to host it — a recognition that the Biden team knows it is being scrutinized by its own supporters. In the days since the debate, communications from Biden brass have been inconsistent, but improving, Biden fund-raisers say. Some individual donors have received direct communications from campaign officials, and Biden fund-raisers say communications increased over the weekend, according to people close to the conversations.
Ms. O’Malley Dillon was one of the senior Biden operatives who, the morning after the debate in Atlanta, offered an “official NFC debate debrief” to some members of the National Finance Committee in the basement of the Ritz-Carlton, according to materials distributed. Advance to donors. But many committee members skipped that summer’s NFC meeting, meaning that, by Monday, only a select few had received formal instructions on how to talk about the president’s debate performance.
Still, Biden campaign fundraisers jumped at the opportunity for engagement. The call, which was open to some people who weren’t technically sitting on NFC, was attended by hundreds of donors, some of whom called from vacation spots around the world.
The Biden team is working to maintain the morale of his biggest supporters. Some big donors are privately exploring whether it makes sense to replace Mr. Biden, though it is unclear whether big contributors will be able to convince Mr. Biden to make the change.
Mr. Biden was huddled out of sight at Camp David on Monday morning as his team remained tight-lipped, vowing to remain in the race despite last week’s debate showing. He plans to return to the White House on Monday evening, where he is expected to comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling that former President Donald J. Trump has some immunity from prosecution for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
Family members and friends urged Mr. Biden over the weekend to continue fighting, even as some Democrats and others called for him to step aside. In the White House and on the campaign trail, aides tried to push forward by placing news releases on student loans and the president’s overtime policies.
But the week promises to be anything but business as usual.
Mr. Biden and his campaign aides are bracing for poll results this week that could show his support has eroded less than five months before Election Day due to a shaky and disjointed showing in the debates.
Mr. Biden and his advisers debated over the weekend whether the president should find a forum to respond to the outcome of the debate in person, by holding a news conference or sitting down for an interview. But both options carry political risks, and no decision had been made as of Monday morning.
On Monday his campaign released its first televised ad since the debate, in which Mr. Biden focused on his rival and said that Mr. Trump repeatedly lied during the debate.
“Did you see Trump last night?” The president is shown saying during remarks in North Carolina on Friday. “I mean this sincerely – most lies are told in a single debate. He lied about the great economy he created. He lied about the epidemic he had caused. “
The ad ends with the president saying, “I know, as millions of Americans know, when you get knocked down, you get back up.”
Mr. Biden a More powerful and disciplined speech At the North Carolina rally. Some of his political allies have said they hope to see more such demonstrations to show that Mr. Biden still has the energy to serve as president for the next five years.
“He’s going to have to be extraordinarily aggressive — more aggressive than he’s going out in front of people,” Matt Bennett, executive vice president of Third Way, a Democratic think tank, said on CNN. Conducting town hall meetings with voters. Sit-downs with reporters. Conducts television interviews. Holding a press conference. He needs to prove that it was a bad night and not a pattern.
But the president’s schedule for the coming weeks suggests he won’t take that advice. Instead, he will have a three-day workweek at the White House with few events and no campaign rallies.
On Tuesday, he will receive a briefing on extreme weather conditions and participate in a private campaign fund-raiser. On Wednesday, he will host a Medal of Honor ceremony. And on Thursday, he will celebrate the Fourth of July with members of the military.
He does not have an event scheduled at the White House on Friday, when he is scheduled to return to his home in Wilmington, Del.
Biden campaign aides stressed to donors Monday that the president will have more opportunities to change the narrative — including a second debate scheduled for the fall that some have questioned whether will remain on the calendar.
“We’re looking forward to it,” Ms. O’Malley Dillon said of the second debate.
Maggie Haberman, Kenneth P. Vogel And Kate Kelly Contribution report.