President Joe Biden has long been a liability for Democrats (just ask former President Barack Obama), but the current crisis scandal surrounding the commander-in-chief's dubious fitness to fulfill his duties as supposed leader of the free world is becoming more dire for the party.
According to The New York Times, a crew of Democrat megadonors told Future Forward — the largest super PAC backing Biden and his allies — "that roughly $90 million in pledged donations is now on hold if President Biden remains atop the ticket."
The pledged, now frozen, donations "include multiple eight-figure commitments," the Times added of "one of the most concrete examples of the fallout from Mr. Biden's poor debate performance at the end of June." The $90 million hit comes after Future Forward "announced $250 million in television and digital advertising reservations set to begin at the end of the Democratic National Convention next month."
More from the Times:
Future Forward declined to comment on any conversations with donors or the amounts of any pledged money being withheld. A Future Forward adviser would say only that the group expected contributors who had paused donations to return once the current uncertainty about the ticket was resolved.
Separately, one donor to the group described being approached multiple times by Future Forward since the debate for a contribution, but said he and his friends had been “holding off.”
The two people briefed on the frozen pledges declined to say which individual donors were pulling back promised checks, which were estimated to total around or above $90 million. It was not clear how much of the pledged money was earmarked for Future Forward’s super PAC versus its nonprofit arm, which has also been running advertising in key battleground states. The super PAC has been shying away from making major strategic decisions until it gets clarity on who will be atop the ticket, according to a separate person close to the group.
The cash freeze comes as some advisers around Mr. Biden are discussing how to persuade the president to exit the race, and as his campaign has begun to test Vice President Kamala Harris in head-to-head surveys of voters against former President Donald J. Trump. The number of congressional Democrats calling for Mr. Biden to step aside is growing by the day.
The latest hit to Democrats broke the morning after Biden's "big boy" press conference triggered another three Democrat lawmakers to call for the president to step aside. One Democrat source told Fox News Channel's Jacqui Heinrich that Biden's performance at the much-delayed solo press conference at this week's NATO summit in D.C. was the "worst possible outcome."
Biden, his family, and his team desperately wanted needed to move past the chaos created by the president's botched debate performance that triggered a dam-breaking moment after which noting Biden's diminished capacity finally became broadly acceptable among Democrats and the mainstream media.
Team Biden has, again, not managed to move on. Still, the president and his inner circle only seem to become more entrenched with each poor performance, unwilling to sincerely entertain the possibility of the president bowing out of the race. With so much uncertainty and expanding consequences for down-ballot Democrats running this November, there may be a critical mass that, if reached, would cause Biden to withdraw.
If more donors get spooked and/or polls continue to shift in Trump and congressional Republicans' direction, Biden might feel the heat after so far refusing to see the light. If that moment comes, we'll hope it's not for a few more weeks so we can continue to bask in the warm light of the "Democrats in disarray" dumpster fire before the decision to drop out is made.