Black Caucus largely sticks by Biden, but worries grow about whether his candidacy can survive

WASHINGTON — As more and more Democrats call on President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, a key group of allies on Capitol Hill, remain largely supportive of the president but concerned that the ongoing pressure may prove fatal for his campaign and damage the party overall.

In interviews Thursday with NBC News, five members of the caucus said that while small fissures are emerging, most lawmakers remain loyal to Biden. Still, they want to see a change in campaign strategy and staffing to better position Democrats to win in November — concerns they say they’ve been sharing with the campaign for months.

Two of those CBC members, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss their thoughts on Biden, also said they worry Biden may not be able to continue as the nominee if he can’t move past his dismal debate performance in the coming days and convince party leaders, donors and voters that he remains the best candidate to beat former President Donald Trump.

“I have loyalty to Biden, no question about it,” said longtime Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo. “As things stand, I want him to win. But if he says, ‘You know, I’ve been listening and chatting with people and I don’t want to go any further,’ or something like that, I am ready for somebody who can win. I think everybody, all of us, are obsessed with winning because it’s too serious not to be there.”

Asked if Biden can survive the crisis, Cleaver paused and simply replied, “I don’t know."

The two Black Caucus members who spoke on the condition of anonymity agreed that the majority of the group backs the president but said that as time drags on, Biden’s position both at the top of the ticket and as the best person to beat Trump weakens.

Cleaver said he wants to see a major change in the conversation over Biden’s status as the Democratic nominee by the time the Republican National Convention wraps next week, and he hopes Democratic leadership and Biden can find a way forward.

CBC members are keenly aware that things aren’t going well for the Biden campaign, he said. “Nobody in the CBC is mentally ill, which would have to be the case for somebody who said, ‘Oh, this is great. Everything is fine,’” Cleaver said. “We’d be trying to get them locked up someplace.”

During an appearance Friday on NBC’s “TODAY” show, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., one of Biden’s top allies on Capitol Hill, doubled down on his support for the president and declared that the internal debate over his candidacy needs to come to an end soon.

“I took him at his word that he’s staying in the race and that’s why I am all in,” Clyburn said. “I’m riding with Biden, no matter what direction he goes, no matter what method he takes. I’m with Joe Biden.”

But Clyburn also left the door open to Vice President Kamala Harris leading the ticket in the event that Biden bows out. “If he were to change his mind,” Clyburn said, “I will be all in for the vice president.”

The highest-ranking Black lawmaker on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., who has expressed support for Biden, has been listening to input all week from Democratic lawmakers. In a letter to colleagues, Jeffries confirmed that he met with Biden Thursday night and "directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward that the Caucus has shared in our recent time together."

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., a senior CBC member who led the special committee that investigated Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, downplayed talk of any major cracks in Biden’s support among CBC members. But he, too, acknowledged that some in the group have grown more frustrated as the calls for Biden to step aside have stretched on for days. He said that only one, maybe two, out of 60 members have been publicly critical of Biden.

“That might be a scratch, I don’t see it as a crack,” Thompson said.

Those scratches were evident in several statements by Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., who stopped short of calling on Biden to step aside but strongly suggested that the party should reassess its nominee.

“The President did not just have one ‘bad debate,’” Torres wrote on X. “The reality we saw with our own lying eyes is evidence of a deeper challenge. ... If the President formally becomes the Democratic Nominee, we will have no choice but to make the best of a complicated situation. But there is no point in denying the complications.”

One of the CBC members who spoke on the condition of anonymity said they “doubt” Biden can make it four more years as president and believe there has been a noticeable decline in his health. But that Democrat said they wanted to see Biden remain in the race, win re-election and then resign, making Harris the first Black woman to become president.

(Harris, for her part, has insisted that she remains loyal to Biden and has been one of his fiercest defenders, making phone calls to dozens of party leaders, civil rights activists and donors to reassure them that Biden can push forward despite calls for him to drop out.)

Of the congressional Democrats who have publicly called on Biden to step aside, none are members of the Black Caucus.

Earlier this week, CBC Chairman Steven Horsford, D-Nev., reaffirmed his support for Biden in a move seen as particularly significant because Horsford is facing a competitive race this fall. Still, Horsford said Thursday that the CBC is “not a monolith” and that its members, like the House Democratic caucus at large, have “the right to speak for themselves.”

Horford added that he and members of the caucus have been telling Biden and his campaign “not in just the last few weeks, but over the last few months” that “there needs to be fundamental change in order to win.”

“That change needs to be focused on change in structure, change in strategy, change in spending,” Horsford said.

Another CBC member who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations said Black lawmakers have been stressing to the Biden campaign for months that they need to spend more resources talking about kitchen-table issues like wages, housing costs and inflation and less time on topics like Trump being a threat to democracy and restrictions on abortion after the overturning of Roe v Wade. The lawmaker said that while the state of American democracy and abortion are important, they are not the topics most voters are worried about in their day-to-day lives.

Thompson echoed Horsford’s call for a shake-up in the campaign, suggesting that Biden is too insulated by his inner circle and needs to hear from a range of advisers. “He needs to put some additional chairs at his campaign table so that he can get a broader view of what people are really saying out here,” Thompson said.

Asked if he thinks there is a good representation of people of color in Biden’s inner circle, Thompson replied: “No. I understand loyalty and he has people who’ve been with him for a long time, but that’s not diversity.”

Former Rep. Cedric Richmond, D-La., who once served as the CBC chair while in Congress, is a co-chair of the Biden campaign, while Julie Chávez Rodriguez, the granddaughter of labor leader César Chávez, is the campaign manager. Thompson said he wants to see more representation of people of color in the Biden campaign.

“It’s a big country. From when he started running to where he is now, a lot of things have changed and he has to factor his team to reflect that,” Thompson said. “You keep the team but you grow it. I think there will be some additions. … Cedric Richmond is good, but he’s one person.”