Inside the ‘bedwetting brigade’ fighting to oust Biden

Joe Biden spent the whole of the last election campaign trying to shrug off his nickname “Sleepy Joe”.

Now, the idea that the 81-year-old president often gets tired is not just an accusation by Republicans. It is a political fact.

At a Democrat donor event in Virginia on Tuesday, Mr Biden told his supporters he “nearly fell asleep on stage” at his disastrous head-to-head with Trump last week. “I didn’t have the best night,” he said.

That extraordinary admission came after a challenge to his leadership from the president’s new political opponents – in his own party.

Dubbed the “bedwetting brigade” by Mr Biden’s allies, a growing number of Democrats no longer believe he can beat Trump in November’s presidential election.

“The bedwetting brigade is calling for Joe Biden to drop out,” wrote Rob Flahery, Mr Biden’s deputy campaign manager, in the aftermath of the debate. “That is the best possible way for Donald Trump to win and us to lose”.

An increasingly loud portion of the party, however, feel that it is Mr Biden staying in the race, not leaving it, that makes a Trump victory most likely.

A source close to the president told the New York Times on Wednesday morning that the president believed he had just four days to save his campaign by performing well at two campaign rallies and in a television interview this weekend.

As Democrats squabble over what to do next, three main factions have emerged.

The first group believe the election is doomed if he remains the party’s nominee and should drop out immediately to be replaced by a younger candidate.

They include former aides of Barack Obama, who worked with Mr Biden in the White House but have never believed strongly in his electoral strengths.

“I think you’re going to hear discussions that I don’t know will lead to anything, but there are going to be discussions about whether he should continue,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Mr Obama, said following the debate.

Van Jones, another former Obama aide, said he is happy to be classed as a “bedwetter”.

‘I’m sitting here where I’m in Pampers,” he said on Tuesday. “Behind closed doors, what people are worrying about is what the polls are going to show in the battleground states a week from now.”

Other prominent voices are Democrat donors who have contributed to the $91 million (£71.4 million) Biden-Kamala Harris election war chest but think they stand no chance against Trump.

On a call with the Biden campaign this week, one donor simply asked: “Can the president make it through a campaign and another term?” Another asked for their money back.

“Anybody trying to prolong the inevitable here is just basically putting us on a giant f----ing death march towards the end,” a major donor told Politico.

“Our only hope is that he bows out, we have a brokered convention, or dies,” another insider said as the dust settled on the debate. “Otherwise we are f----ing dead.”

On Tuesday, Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first sitting Democrat to add his name to the pile of anonymous quotes from his colleagues about the commander-in-chief.

He said Mr Biden should make the “painful decision to withdraw”.

So far, only Mr Doggett has publicly called for Mr Biden to stand back, but plenty of Democrats make the same argument behind closed doors.

“Consider me a bedwetter,” one angry representative told Axios. “This is not getting better.”

The second camp of worried Democrats say Mr Biden has some time to recover from his TV performance, but think he should spend more time reassuring allies in the party before making a decision.

Those who are expected to go out and defend the president on a daily basis expect more contact from him at the most difficult time of the campaign so far.

The group includes JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, who convened a call with fellow Democrat governors on Monday to discuss the situation.

After hearing that most of the attendees had not spoken to the president, he arranged a meeting between Mr Biden and his allies at the White House on Wednesday night.

Nancy Pelosi, one of Mr Biden’s staunchest allies, said on Tuesday she had not spoken to him since the debate and argued that questions about his age were “legitimate”. Shortly after her interview on MSNBC, her office released a statement clarifying that she did not think he should stand down.

Others have expressed concerns about how long it took Mr Biden to call Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s leader in the House of Representatives, as concerns grew about his age.

The third group of Democrats have already accepted that the White House is lost – but think Mr Biden must now do more to take the House at the same time.

If Trump wins, they argue, it is vital that the Democrats have control of the legislature to oppose his “extreme” and “unhinged” policy plans.

The “frontline” group of House Democrats are organising a private letter to be sent to Mr Biden urging him to protect their jobs at all costs.

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a representative from Washington state in a marginal district, said on Tuesday: “We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”

A senior Democrat told Politico: “The House is the last firewall, folks. We have to flip the House”.