Biden campaign projects fundraising strength amid calls for him to step down

President Joe Biden‘s campaign is underscoring how he raised $264 million from April through June, despite a debate performance that rattled the Democratic Party and resulted in calls for him to step aside as its 2024 nominee.

Biden raising $127 million in June alone, the campaign’s best fundraising month of the election cycle and its best grassroots fundraising month to date, means he and Vice President Kamala Harris have $240 million cash on hand. Former President Donald Trump has not disclosed his second quarter fundraising numbers, but had $116.6 million in the bank at the end of May.

Biden’s fundraising and difficulties in transferring the money he and Harris have already raised to a potential replacement is one argument his campaign is making as it seeks to downplay the calls before next month’s Democratic convention and four months before the election.

In a fundraising email with the subject line “7 Things To Tell Your Friends After The Debate,” Biden deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty contended the “bedwetting brigade” calling for the president’s replacement is “the best possible way” for Trump “to win and us to lose.”

“Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee,” Flaherty wrote. “Voters voted. He won overwhelmingly. And if he were to drop out, it would lead to weeks of chaos, internal foodfighting, and a bunch of candidates who limp into a brutal floor fight at the convention, all while Donald Trump has time to speak to American voters uncontested.”

“All of that would be in service of a nominee who would go into a general election in the weakest possible position with zero dollars in their bank account,” he said. “You want a highway to losing? It’s that. And at the end of the day, we’d switch to candidates who would, according to polls, be less likely to win than Joe Biden — the only person ever to defeat Donald Trump.”

More than half of Biden’s second quarter fundraising was contributed by grassroots donors, another indication of his strength, according to the campaign. The president raised $38 million in the four days since the debate, the campaign added.

“Last Thursday was the best grassroots fundraising day of the campaign, and Friday was the second best,” the campaign wrote. “Nearly half of grassroots donations following the first presidential debate came from first-time donors to the campaign, bringing the total new grassroots donors in Q2 to more than 864,000 donors.”

“Team Biden-Harris also now has 1.3x more recurring donations than at this point in the 2020 cycle, and 95 percent of all donations are less than $200 — another proof point of strong, sustained grassroots support,” it said.

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At the same time, Democrats have started more openly discussing replacing Biden as the nominee, including Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) last weekend and Mike Quigley (D-IL) on Tuesday, the latter of whom said Biden “has to be honest with himself” about whether he should be the party’s standard-bearer, particularly considering the repercussions down the ballot in November.

“It will have implications for decades to come,” Quigley told CNN.