Joe Biden is president of america for 42 extra days. However inside the Democratic Get together, on Capitol Hill — and even inside his personal administration — it appears like he left the Oval Workplace weeks in the past.
Biden has successfully disappeared from the radar within the wake of Democrats’ bruising electoral loss. Since Nov. 5, he’s largely caught to ready remarks, prevented unscripted public appearances or press questions and opted to sit down out the raging debate over Donald Trump’s victory, coverage conversations in Congress and the Democratic Get together’s future.
“He’s been so cavalier and egocentric about how he approaches the ultimate weeks of the job,” mentioned a former White Home official.
Throughout practically two weeks overseas because the election, Biden spoke simply seven phrases to the media touring with him. He has but to schedule a post-election press convention, as Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush did once they had been on their means out of workplace. He went to the Rose Backyard to publicly reward a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and spoke to the press Sunday about Bashar Al-Assad fleeing Syria, however in any other case his post-election home schedule has been full of occasions reminiscent of honoring the 2024 NBA champions, thanking longtime supporters at a South Garden dinner and collaborating in a Friendsgiving occasion.
Biden’s low profile because the election has contributed to the sense of rudderlessness that’s taken maintain throughout swaths of Washington, as lawmakers, aides and social gathering officers brace for Trump’s return to energy and search a brand new route and imaginative and prescient forward of the midterms and 2028.
The White Home and Biden, they are saying, has proven little curiosity in serving to chart the social gathering’s future past Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. Biden has targeted his aides’ energies largely on managing the presidential transition and tending to some remaining gadgets meant to burnish his private legacy, together with a speech on the economic system Tuesday. And Vice President Kamala Harris, who forged herself on the marketing campaign path as the way forward for the social gathering, has all however disappeared from the scene.
“There isn’t a management coming from the White Home,” one Democrat near senior lawmakers said bluntly. “There’s a complete vacuum.”
Some Biden aides acknowledge the president’s absence from the broader discussions about find out how to tackle Trump’s coming presidency and the way forward for the social gathering. They are saying that reticence is rooted in two components: Biden’s personal recognition that few are keen to listen to from him, and his personal lingering private perception that he doesn’t owe rather more to a celebration that unceremoniously pushed him apart. Some aides have additionally mentioned Biden believes he has to take a extra measured strategy in how he talks about Trump given his concentrate on facilitating a peaceable switch of energy.
White Home spokesperson Andrew Bates defended Biden, saying the president “is making daily of this time period depend” and is “main by instance for the sake of American democracy, honoring his marketing campaign promise to respect the desire of the voters and supply an orderly transition.”
Nonetheless, the void on the prime has alarmed Democratic officers who fear and the nation is heading towards subsequent 12 months with out a concrete plan for combating Trump — and even tangible motivation to place up a lot of a battle. POLITICO spoke to virtually two dozen social gathering officers, lawmakers, present and former White Home aides and different Democratic staffers for this story, a few of whom had been granted anonymity to be able to provide their candid evaluation.
“Elections have penalties — It’s a brand new sheriff on the town,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) mentioned.
Whereas Biden has supplied little in the best way of management, officers say there’s additionally not a lot demand from the social gathering’s rank and file — together with lawmakers and aides — to listen to from a president they nonetheless blame for relegating them again into the minority. Biden, at 82, is on the finish of a political profession tarnished by his refusal to step apart earlier and a last-minute pardon of his son Hunter. Few are actually clamoring for him to return.
“In conversations that I’m having, they don’t even point out the president. It’s sort of unhappy,” mentioned the Democrat near senior lawmakers. “It appears like Trump is president already.”
Many social gathering officers and staffers now not observe Biden’s each day actions or are even conscious that he’s spent a lot of the final month in a foreign country. Within the final week, the dominant dialog amongst them tied to the president has been about Hunter’s pardon, who received invites to the White Home vacation social gathering and whether or not present and former White Home staffers would get to take the normal departure picture with the president.
“Democrats in Washington simply need to get him and the individuals round him out the door,” mentioned the previous White Home official. “All he’s completed within the final 12 months has harm the social gathering each step of the best way.”
There’s some query of whether or not Biden’s presence has been missed, even when solely to tout his accomplishments.
Requested final week concerning the function they see Biden enjoying inside the social gathering, a number of Democratic lawmakers demurred.
“There’s form of a convention of former presidents not getting too concerned in it, and he is transitioning into that,” mentioned Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.). “So I feel he must be cautious.”
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), an in depth Biden good friend and ally, mentioned that he anticipated Biden to dedicate his post-presidency to a number of pet points, together with most cancers analysis and world diplomacy — leaving his involvement in social gathering affairs up within the air.
“I nonetheless assume he has rather a lot for us to study from going ahead,” Coons mentioned. “However, you already know, there are many different normal bearers who’re clamoring for consideration.”
Contained in the West Wing, aides have targeted totally on accelerating a remaining slate of coverage priorities earlier than January, together with allocating billions of {dollars} in tech and infrastructure investments and cementing laws designed to additional safeguard shoppers from dangerous company actors.
Senior White Home officers have additionally spent a lot of their time managing the nation’s overseas entanglements in Ukraine and the Center East forward of an incoming administration that they fear will take each conflicts in a sharply totally different route. These efforts replicate a central agenda that Biden laid out shortly after the election, aides mentioned, and that has consumed a lot of his personal time within the weeks since.
Biden aides within the course of have sought to extra explicitly doc the administration’s accomplishments in statements, truth sheets and video clips. That’s partly a legacy mission for historians who could comb Biden’s presidential library in years to come back. However there may be additionally hope it would present Democrats with straightforward reference factors throughout the Trump period for reminding voters how life was underneath Biden — and evaluating it with how key measures like inflation and well being protection have modified since then.
Nonetheless, Biden officers and allies acknowledged that the president has been conspicuously absent from the broader public discourse, particularly as the remainder of the Democratic Get together debates how greatest to withstand Trump and rebuild the social gathering.
The silence from Biden is “a case of simply studying the room,” mentioned Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic marketing campaign veteran and a former senior adviser to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
“If him talking out doesn’t obtain any precise strategic aims, there’s no actual level in doing it,” she mentioned.
Biden has prevented questions on what went improper within the lead-up to the election and the place Democrats ought to go from right here and has given no substantive public feedback on whether or not he nonetheless believes American democracy is underneath risk with Trump set to take energy. Few anticipate him to endorse a candidate within the crowded race for DNC chair that would go a good distance towards figuring out the social gathering’s route, though a Biden adviser mentioned a number of people who find themselves working or contemplating working for DNC chair have been in contact to ask for the president’s ideas.
The adviser additionally mentioned Biden was nonetheless enjoying an vital function in discussions about the way forward for the social gathering, which was a subject of dialog at a current lunch he hosted with Minyon Moore, Donna Brazile, Leah Daughtry, Yolanda Caraway and Tina Flournoy — Democratic operatives near the Harris marketing campaign.
“Sometimes if you’re in that so-called transition part, the president and vice chairman basically thank the crew, thank the employees, assist repay the money owed. It’s not like an incoming president who will play a extra strategic function in figuring out the way forward for the social gathering,” mentioned Brazile, a former DNC chair.
However Biden’s general perspective has left a bitter style within the mouth of some members of the social gathering who really feel his supporters who knocked doorways, donated cash and supported his administration deserve to listen to from the president earlier than he leaves workplace.
“It’s simply his technique, even when people agree or disagree with it: Sort of preserving his head down,” mentioned Mike Ceraso, an alum of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Pete Buttigieg’s campaigns. “I feel each him and President Obama have seemed on the transition interval as not attempting to make noise or attempting to undermine the incoming administration.”
Some Democrats additionally imagine that nonetheless politically diminished the president could also be, there’s nonetheless an vital public function for Biden to play in his previous couple of weeks in workplace.
“It might be nice to be speaking concerning the issues that had been achieved underneath the Biden time period and so many issues that we received completed for the nation by way of the infrastructure, clear air, clear water, addressing local weather,” mentioned Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.). “We haven’t gotten that message out strongly sufficient earlier than the election, however he shouldn’t miss the chance to speak about that now.”
Biden is anticipated to make at the least a pair higher-profile speeches within the coming weeks, following an preliminary post-election month dedicated to long-planned journeys overseas.
The president is planning to ship a speech centered on the economic system Tuesday, which can serve at the least partly to commemorate an financial restoration and revival of home manufacturing that Biden continues to imagine is deeply underappreciated.
Biden has additionally mentioned making a second tackle targeted on overseas coverage, the place he would be capable of make a remaining case for a worldview constructed on world alliances and cooperation that Trump has promised to right away dismantle. He can also be part of the following digital assembly of the 50-plus nations allied behind Ukraine, as he tries to rally the remainder of the world to remain united behind the struggle towards Russia.
Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, mentioned Biden’s views on the way forward for the Democratic Get together had been “fairly irrelevant” to the preparations he and different Democratic organizations are making for the following two years. However he argued that Biden might take a sequence of extra aggressive actions within the subsequent month and a half that might higher place the social gathering and People as an entire — together with rushing processing of DACA recipients and increasing the short-term protected standing granted to sure immigrants.
Indivisible has pitched these concepts to the White Home, Levin mentioned. However there’s little indication to this point that Biden is in search of methods to handcuff an incoming Trump crew he’s dedicated to serving to orchestrate a clean transition.
“If I had been Biden, I’d be taking a look at what they will do to not simply shield members of his circle of relatives however to guard different People which might be going to be underneath risk by the following administration,” Levin mentioned. “[But] if there’s been that directive, I haven’t heard of it.”
Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.
