Biden damage control hasn’t reached top Democrats on the Hill

While White House chief of staff Jeff Zients has been working on damage control after President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, Biden has yet to speak personally with top Democratic leaders.

Five sources familiar with the situation told NBC News that Biden has not spoken with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) nor House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) since the presidential debate last week. Schumer and Jeffries have only been in conversations with Zients. Counselor to the president Steve Ricchetti has also been in phone calls with members of Congress.

Jeffries said that Biden gave an “underwhelming performance” in Thursday’s debate, but he said he stood in support of the president.

Pundits on TV and columnists have filled the airwaves with calls for Biden to step aside as the party’s nominee, but elected officials have been less vocal about their opposition in public. Those calls, however, have started to become more frequent on Tuesday.

While Biden hasn’t spoken with Jeffries or Schumer, campaign spokeswoman Lauren Hill said he “has spoken personally with multiple elected officials on the Hill and across the battlegrounds since the debate.”

But that handful of conversations might not be enough to soothe Democrats who have grown frustrated with the lack of transparency between members of Biden’s inner circle and themselves. Given Biden’s debate performance, one Democratic lawmaker said Biden’s family should have known better than to let him step foot on the debate stage.

“I hold his family and his advisers directly responsible for this mess,” the lawmaker told the news outlet. “They are closest to him, and they should have pulled him out before this happened.”

Some Democratic lawmakers said they think Biden’s inner circle has been regulating access to the president, keeping people from seeing what kind of mental and physical shape he is in.

Publicly, Democratic lawmakers remain steadfast in their support for the president, but privately, four lawmakers have said that they think the president needs to drop out of the race.

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For Democrats in vulnerable districts and contentious Senate races, Biden being the head of the party puts a great burden on them in trying to win over independent and swing voters.

“The ones that are in the worst position are front-liners in the swing states who already were feeling as though they had to carry the president … and then the catch-22 of trying to go out there and campaign. … It’s hard not to be panicky,” a lawmaker told the media outlet. “It’s a lot of pressure. It’s a lot of anxiety.”