Joe Biden's tsunami of campaign challenges: Could they sink his bid for a second term?

WASHINGTON − Aaron Regunberg took Joe Biden at his word.

When Biden pitched himself as a “bridge” candidate to a younger generation of leaders in 2020, Regunberg believed him.

“There’s an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me,” Biden said, standing next to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, then-Sen. Kamala Harris of California and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker at a campaign rally in Detroit in March of that year. “They are the future of this country.”

Though Biden never publicly pledged he would seek only one term, many in the party believed he would not run again. Yet four years later, Biden, already the nation’s oldest president on the day he assumed office, is asking voters to send him back to the White House. If he’s reelected, Biden would be 82 at the start of a second term and, if he served the full four years, 86 when he finished.

Biden’s decision has left Regunberg with “an immense amount of sadness, disappointment and anger.”

“It is very clear where we're headed right now,” said Regunberg, who is among a growing number of Democrats calling on Biden to end his campaign. “All of the smart people in our party have been ringing the alarm bells.”

Biden, already facing a brutal rematch against former President Donald Trump, is getting slammed by a tsunami of challenges, including another bout of COVID, as he tries to persuade voters to give him a second term. Wave after wave after wave has come hurtling at him in just a few weeks, threatening to sink his campaign.

It started with his disastrous debate with Trump on June 27 in which Biden frequently lost his train of thought in midsentence and failed to effectively counter Trump’s flurry of falsehoods. Biden’s poll numbers dropped, triggering calls for him to step aside so the party could nominate Harris or someone else who might have a better chance of beating Trump.

More complications set in last Saturday when Trump survived a shocking attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania, forcing Biden to tone down his tough rhetoric against his Republican rival.

Then on Wednesday, Biden tested positive for COVID-19. The diagnosis – his third positive test in two years – could take him off the campaign trail for several days at a time when the president is trying to convince voters he is physically and mentally fit.

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Meanwhile, the number of Democrats asking him to drop out of the race keeps growing.

Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running for Senate in California, on Wednesday became the most prominent Democrat to call for Biden to step aside.

Other top Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, have reportedly raised concerns to Biden privately and have warned that his struggling campaign could weaken candidates running for the House and Senate.

On Thursday, a group of aides who worked with Biden when he was a senator and vice president released a letter asking him to exit the race.

“While we maintain tremendous loyalty to you personally, our loyalty to the principles of our democracy and the needs of our nation must take precedence at this critical moment when the norms and institutions of our democracy are at risk,” reads the letter, a copy of which was obtained by USA TODAY.

Jamie Metzl, who was deputy staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when Biden was chairman, circulated the letter to other former staffers in conjunction with a group called Pass the Torch, which was co-founded by Regunberg.

“Hope springs eternal with regard to health and biology and aging. But at the debates we saw just a very different story,” Metzl said. “It's unfortunate, but every single person saw the ravages of time. It's just inconceivable to call that just a bad night.”

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Two-thirds of Democrats don’t want Biden to run for reelection, according to a new survey by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Seven in 10 adults polled, including 65% of Democrats, say Biden should withdraw and allow his party to select another nominee. The survey was conducted July 11-15 and mostly completed before the attempted assassination of Trump.

He continues to resist calls to exit. Biden said in an interview with BET on Tuesday that he would consider dropping out only "if I had some medical condition that emerged, if the doctors came to me and said you got this problem or that problem."

Biden's deputy campaign manager, Quinten Fulks, insisted Thursday that his team was not preparing for the possibility of him dropping out. “Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not the top of the ticket," Fulks said. "He is and will be the Democratic nominee."

Regunberg, a progressive activist and former state senator from Rhode Island, said it was “unconscionable” and “unfathomable” to him that “one person would put their own career and ambitions and ego above the good of an entire country and world.”

Pass the Torch has already organized 5,000 phone calls and 15,000 emails from voters to lawmakers on Capitol Hill, as well as state legislatures, to try to persuade Biden to step aside.

“But Biden still hasn’t gotten the message,” Regunberg said.

Rhode Island state Sen. Tiara Mack, who is running for reelection, said Biden’s “underwhelming and terrifying” debate performance convinced her that he was not the right person to face Trump.

Mack, 30, who is Black and identifies as queer, said she worries about what a second Trump administration would mean to marginalized communities.

“We need the strongest candidate possible to defeat the existential threat to our democracy,” she said.

To drive home that point, Pass the Torch is planning a rally Saturday outside the White House. But Biden won’t be there to hear their message. He was expected to be isolating at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, while he recovers from COVID-19.

Whether his campaign can recover remains an unanswered question.

Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy and Michael Collins cover the White House. Follow Ramaswamy on X @SwapnaVenugopal and Collins @mcollinsNEWS.