by Joseph Ax, Andy Sullivan and Jeff Mason
MILWAUKEE, July 19 (Reuters) – Democratic President Joe Biden weighed his political future at his Delaware beach house on Friday, one day after Donald Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination in a rambling speech that featured his familiar mix of grievance and bombast.
The 81-year-old incumbent’s schedule was in flux as he isolated at home following a COVID-19 diagnosis, with no public events scheduled for Friday, but a top adviser said he would return to the campaign trail next week.
“He is absolutely in it,” Biden campaign chairwoman Jen O’Malley Dillon told MSNBC in an interview.
Biden faces increased pressure to drop his floundering re-election bid from Democratic Party leaders. Twenty-two of the 264 Democrats in Congress have now publicly said he should abandon the race, while more have expressed concerns in private. Representative Sean Casten of Illinois joined their number on Friday.
U.S. Senator Jon Tester of Montana became the second in that chamber to call on Biden to step aside and let a younger candidate become the party’s standard bearer.
Tester faces a difficult re-election battle of his own, and Democrats are increasingly worried about a Republican sweep in the Nov. 5 election that could leave Trump and his allies in charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who have told Biden he cannot win in November, according to a White House source familiar with the matter.
After weeks of insisting he will remain in the race, Biden is now taking calls to step aside seriously, and multiple Democratic officials think an exit is a matter of time, sources said.
Though a Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this week found Biden and Trump effectively tied, strategists from both parties say Biden’s path to victory is narrowing as he trails in most of the battleground states that will decide the election.
A Democratic Party committee was due to meet Friday to discuss a virtual voting process to formally nominate their candidate ahead of the convention to begin Aug. 19. Critics within the party have argued it is a means to lock the embattled incumbent in early.
TRUMP TIGHTENS GRIP ON REPUBLICANS
With his grip on the Republican Party never tighter, Trump is in a much stronger position than in his 2017-2021 term to follow through on his agenda if he wins the election.
At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Trump delivered a dramatic account of the attempt on his life by a gunman at a Pennsylvania rally six days ago and sought to appeal to undecided voters with a promise to be a president for “all of America, not half of America.”
“In an age when our politics too often divide us, now is the time to remember that we are all fellow citizens,” Trump said.
But he quickly abandoned the message of unity he had promised in the wake of the shooting, pivoting to well-worn attacks on the Biden administration.
He claimed without evidence that his criminal indictments were part of a Democratic conspiracy, predicted Biden would usher in “World War Three” and described what he called an “invasion” of migrants over the southern border.
Trump devoted much of his record-breaking 92-minute speech to attacking migrants, a theme that has always animated his campaigns.
The speech broke Trump’s own 2016 record for the longest delivered by a nominee, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He also gave the third longest, in 2020.
Trump and his 39-year-old running mate, U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, are due to campaign on Saturday in Michigan, one of three Rust Belt states seen as must-wins for Biden’s campaign.
