By Carl Hulse
President Biden has become more receptive in the last several days to hearing arguments about why he should drop his re-election bid, Democrats briefed on his conversations said on Wednesday, after his party’s two top leaders in Congress privately told him they were deeply concerned about his prospects.
Mr. Biden has not given any indication that he is changing his mind about staying in the race, the Democrats said, but has been willing to listen to rundowns of new and worrying polling data and has asked questions about how Vice President Kamala Harris could win.
The accounts suggest that Mr. Biden, privately at least, is striking a more open-minded posture than he did last week when he lashed out at a number of House Democrats who pressed him to step aside.
One person close to the president said that it would be wrong to call him receptive to the idea of dropping out but that he “is willing to listen.” But this person emphasized there was no sign that Mr. Biden was changing course at this point.
The descriptions emerged after Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the two top Democrats in Congress, each told Mr. Biden privately over the past week that their members were deeply concerned about his chances in November and the fates of House and Senate candidates should he remain at the top of the ticket, according to two people briefed on the conversations.
The White House suggested that Mr. Biden was unmoved by their discussions.
“The president told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.
The separate exchanges between Mr. Biden and the congressional leaders, described on the condition of anonymity because they were confidential discussions on an exceedingly sensitive topic, came to light as Democrats’ rebellion against Mr. Biden intensified on Wednesday.
Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries, both of New York, privately prevailed upon party officials to delay the start of Mr. Biden’s nomination by a week, prolonging the debate over the viability of his candidacy.
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California became the highest-profile Democratic lawmaker to call on Mr. Biden to end his run. And Jeffrey Katzenberg, a co-chairman of the Biden campaign, told the president that donors had stopped giving to his campaign, according to a person with knowledge of the exchange.
With his campaign mired in crisis, Mr. Biden tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday evening. That sidelined the president just as his campaign was hoping to step up his public appearances in a bid to show he is up to remaining in the race.
After a brief pause in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on former President Donald J. Trump, conversations among Democrats on Capitol Hill and elsewhere about replacing Mr. Biden at the top of the ticket have resumed with vigor. The details of Mr. Schumer’s private talk with Mr. Biden last week at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., reported earlier by ABC News, were the latest indication that top Democrats are seeking to make a compelling case to the president, who has so far refused to heed calls that he must step aside not only for his own good, but for that of his party as well.
In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Schumer, the majority leader, did not deny ABC’s report but called it “idle speculation,” adding: “Leader Schumer conveyed the views of his caucus directly to President Biden on Saturday.”
Mr. Jeffries, the minority leader, told House Democrats last week that in a visit to the White House on Thursday night, he had “directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward” among them to Mr. Biden.
Both Mr. Schumer and Mr. Jeffries made clear during their conversations with Mr. Biden that they wanted to convey their assessments to him privately but that they would not necessarily stay that way for long, according to a Democrat close to congressional leadership.
Both leaders were frustrated that Mr. Biden did not appear to be listening to their dire warnings, the Democrat added. The subsequent sense among some Democrats that Mr. Biden had become more willing to listen was first reported on Wednesday by CNN.
Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate performance last month, his uneven public appearances and his struggles in the polls have fueled deep worries among Democrats. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats want him to quit the race, according to a survey released on Wednesday by The Associated Press and NORC, an independent research institution at the University of Chicago.
Even more concerning to Democrats is data they have received in recent days that reveals the extent of the political damage that could come to the party’s incumbents from remaining supportive of Mr. Biden, with one poll suggesting that voters are deeply distrustful of elected officials who vouch for the president’s mental capacity and endorse him.
One Biden adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal discussions, said that the decision came down to hard facts and that there were three that mattered: polling, cash and which states are in play. And, as this adviser put it, none of those are trending in the right direction for Mr. Biden.
It was against that backdrop that Mr. Schumer weighed in this week to appeal to party leaders to hold off on beginning a swift virtual roll call they had considered starting as soon as next week to cement Mr. Biden as the nominee, according to a person familiar with his thinking who insisted on anonymity to describe it. The Senate leader spoke with Mr. Jeffries, and both agreed to push the party to put off the start of that process, according to a second person familiar with their involvement, who also declined to be named discussing it.
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the co-chairman of the party’s rules committee, which determines when and how the nomination will proceed, called Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign chief, on Tuesday afternoon to inform her that the roll call should be delayed, according to a person made aware of the call who described it on the condition of anonymity.
Bowing to the pressure, top Democratic National Committee officials announced on Wednesday that the virtual roll call would take place during the first week of August instead.
Mr. Schiff, a candidate for Senate in the state and a top ally of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called on Mr. Biden to drop out of the race.
“Our nation is at a crossroads,” he told The Los Angeles Times. “A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Mr. Biden insisted again, in an interview with BET News that aired on Wednesday, that he had no intention of leaving the race and that he would consider doing so only if a doctor informed him he had a medical condition that made it necessary.
Representative Jared Huffman of California, who in recent days had organized fellow Democrats to pressure the D.N.C. to delay nominating Mr. Biden, called the party’s new, slower timeline “a positive step,” but said it was not likely to alleviate concerns about Mr. Biden’s viability.
“It’s a heck of a lot better than a jammed process that will tear us apart next week,” said Mr. Huffman, who had spearheaded a letter that he said dozens of congressional Democrats were ready to sign calling for a delay.
Mr. Huffman scrapped his plans to send the letter after the party announced the delay, but he suggested that Mr. Biden was delusional about his political standing.
“Many of us are perplexed that he continues to say he’s either tied or winning in the polls,” Mr. Huffman said. “We don’t understand what factual universe that is coming from.”
Democratic leaders have come to their conversations with Mr. Biden armed with grim new data. According to a poll from Blue Rose Research, a firm that formed from but is no longer affiliated with Future Forward, the super PAC supporting Mr. Biden, just 18 percent of voters and only 36 percent of people who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 believe he is mentally fit and up to the job of being president.
Mr. Schumer, according to the Democrat close to him, was also given data from a leading Democratic super PAC showing Mr. Biden’s deficit growing to 5 percentage points or more in the must-win states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and his deficit in three other key states — Nevada, Georgia and Arizona — outside the margin of sampling error.
So far, just 20 members of the House and one senator have publicly called on the president to withdraw from the race. But privately, many more have expressed deep concerns and said they believe he is on track to lose the White House and drag down their chances of controlling Congress.
Those concerns bubbled up during a tense exchange between Mr. Biden and members of the centrist New Democrat Coalition on a video call on Saturday, one of several the president conducted with various Democratic groups on Capitol Hill. The president grew noticeably agitated with House Democrats who questioned his fitness to run and chances of winning.
During the meeting, Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado, told the president that voters in his district were concerned about national security should Mr. Biden serve again, and “want a commander in chief who can project strength, vigor and inspire confidence at home and abroad,” according to a partial transcript obtained by The New York Times. Fair or not, despite his successes and the dangers posed by Mr. Trump, Mr. Crow told the president, “many voters are losing confidence you can do this in a second term.”
That prompted Mr. Biden to lash out at Mr. Crow, a former Army Ranger, calling him “dead wrong,” before rattling off his foreign policy accomplishments.