CNN
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Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi have privately discussed the future of Joe Biden and the 2024 presidential election. Both the former president and the former speaker expressed concern about how difficult it has become for the president to beat Donald Trump. Neither is quite sure what to do.
Democrats, eager to end the depressing infighting so they can get back to the fight to defeat the former president, are pleading with either Mr. Obama or Ms. Pelosi to help, knowing that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer does not have Mr. Biden’s confidence and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries does not have the depth of ties to get the message across.
CNN spoke to more than a dozen lawmakers, officials and multiple people in contact with Obama and Pelosi, many of whom said the end of Biden’s nomination is clear, and even after Thursday night’s press conference, it’s just a matter of how it all plays out at this point.
And if the pair believe otherwise, several leading Democrats argue, they need to say so clearly as soon as possible, with less than four months to go until the election, before more damage is done.
Many of Pelosi’s colleagues are hoping she can bring an end to the chaos that has engulfed Democrats over the past two weeks — and for many of them, that could end if she tells Biden to back off.
Pelosi has spoken with Biden since the debate, and the California Democrat has since made it clear that she does not consider Biden’s decision to remain in the race final, but she declined to comment further, through an aide.
Obama’s decision to make no public comments for two weeks has many Democratic leaders feeling they’ve been thwarted by a stance that has come to define Obama since leaving office. After the debate, Obama posted to X, “There are bad debate nights. Trust me, I get it,” a sentiment he repeated the night after Biden’s performance at a House Democrats fundraiser in New York. The former president hadn’t even intended to make a public statement, but Biden and Obama aides worked together to publish the post, reflecting the Biden campaign’s talking point that the first debate for his 2012 reelection didn’t go well, but didn’t end his campaign.
But Obama’s growing skepticism about his friend’s ability to get reelected is one of Washington’s worst-hidden secrets.
When the history of these extraordinary two weeks in American politics is written, Obama and Pelosi’s imprint will be much clearer than is currently known, as Democratic elder statesmen have served as beacons for a panicked party, people familiar with the matter told CNN.
“They’re watching and waiting for President Biden to make a decision for himself,” one longtime Democrat close to them all told CNN on the condition of anonymity to avoid being seen as disrespectful to Biden.
The Biden campaign declined to comment.
Obama receives more phone calls than he makes, people who have spoken to him say, and when he talks to anxious Democratic donors and government officials, he focuses more on listening than talking, carefully avoiding taking positions that could be easily leaked.
That was the tone Obama followed in his post-debate phone call with Biden, in which Obama suggested to others that Biden was helping him navigate the turmoil. But others familiar with the call said Obama maintained his “consultant and personal confidant” stance. He encouraged and dared to disagree, but he didn’t take a position.
In conversations with Democrats over the past two weeks, Obama has dismissed the idea that he could push Biden in either direction even if he wanted to, underscoring their longstanding, complicated but loyal relationship — one that has only become more complicated during their time apart. Since leaving the presidency and the two separated after eight years of weekly lunches at the White House, they have been talking far less than their advisers often suggested.
People who know Obama say if the former president tried to push Biden out of office, he knows how it would be viewed. Biden has written that he feels Obama didn’t encourage him to join the Democratic primary late in 2015, months after his son Beau died. Obama believes the then-vice president was trying to keep him focused on his grief and avoid wading into a very tough primary against Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, but that might not have been the case in a different conversation.
“Biden will say, ‘Mr. President, you already used that chip to get Donald Trump in 2015,'” a longtime 2020 campaign aide speculated. “I think that will make him even more aggressive.”
President Obama has also been reluctant to give Trump, who constantly provokes him, any new material by actively engaging with him.
Obama has cast himself as a unifier in the past, including in the 2020 Democratic primary, who can help justify the party’s direction to skeptics. For now, he’s not looking to play that role amid the confusion over whether Biden should remain the nominee, what would happen if he did, or what would happen if he reversed course and decided to drop out. “Well, he’s known as the no-drama Obama,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri. “So if there’s drama, he’s the one who deals with it.”
Some of President Obama’s aides see his hands-off approach, at least publicly, as a way to conserve ammunition in case frank and difficult conversations with President Biden become necessary.
“He’s going to be committed to the Democratic candidate, whoever our nominee is, he’s going to be committed to making sure that candidate wins the presidential election in November,” said one person who speaks regularly with Obama.
Obama has been at Biden’s side at two fundraisers this year, including one in Los Angeles last month, with George Clooney later admitting he was surprised by Biden’s behavior.
Biden had to wake up the day before the fundraiser after days of G7 meetings and fly overnight across five time zones to get there because Clooney told the campaign that his filming schedule only allowed him one day, while campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg was keen for a Hollywood-themed event.
Even on the way there, President Obama had questioned the idea of suffocating a presidential candidate with such a schedule.
“He is the same person we all witnessed at the debates,” Clooney wrote in an essay in The New York Times this week, pleading with Biden to step aside.
The words infuriated Biden supporters, who suggested President Obama was behind Clooney’s op-ed. The former president, who is close to Clooney, saw the remarks coming but did nothing to block them. To some Obama defenders, it was a way of maintaining neutrality. To some Biden supporters, it was a sign of deep betrayal.
Obama was with Biden backstage and onstage for much longer than Clooney, and at the time, people who were there attributed the president’s ailments to jet lag. The infamous video of Obama escorting Biden offstage was actually because the former president wanted out, people familiar with the situation said.
Obama’s aides declined to comment or say whether their assessment that Biden’s symptoms were due to jet lag remained unchanged.
As House Democrats headed home from a closed-door caucus meeting on Tuesday morning, many felt the worst might be over for the president. Most of the anti-Biden rhetoric at the rally came from lawmakers who had already called for Biden to resign.
Pelosi then appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday morning, using her long-scheduled appearance on a show known to be watched by the president to cast major doubt on Biden’s candidacy. Though she had privately told her colleagues to refrain from embarrassing Biden while the NATO leaders were there, more Democrats took her comments as an excuse to issue a statement calling on Biden to resign.
Pelosi has known Biden for decades. She is three years older than him. She was one of Biden’s staunchest defenders, including in the 2020 primaries. She is finishing up her term as speaker and has nothing to lose.
“At this point, I think she’s going to be the most important Democratic leader if Biden ultimately drops his nomination,” one House Democrat said. “She’s the only person in this situation who has the credibility to speak out on an issue that’s so sensitive and so important, especially generationally.”
Pelosi is due to return to her San Francisco home on Friday.
CNN’s Annie Grayer contributed to this report.
