By Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has told President Joe Biden he cannot win the Nov. 5 election and backed Representative Adam Schiff’s call for him to step aside, a top White House source with direct knowledge of the matter said.
Pelosi is one of the most influential members of Biden’s Democratic Party and has been a fixture in Washington for decades.
A source close to Pelosi said that Schiff’s public comments came as news to her and that Schiff did not consult with her before making his concerns public.
A spokesman for the former speaker did not comment on what Pelosi told Biden.
“Speaker Pelosi respects the confidentiality of her meetings and conversations with the President…sadly the feeding frenzy from the press based on anonymous sources misrepresents any conversations the Speaker had with the President,” a spokesman said in a statement.
Schiff said in a statement on Wednesday that he has “serious concerns” about whether Biden can defeat Republican challenger Donald Trump, the first Democrat to come out after the Saturday assassination attempt against the former president.
Biden’s campaign had believed that the shooting, in which Trump sustained a wound to the right ear, had tamped down calls for him to step aside in the 2024 race before Schiff’s statement.
“Nancy is all over this. She doesn’t miss. Schiff wouldn’t move without her approval,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Pelosi is “convinced public sentiment is against POTUS (president of the United States) and he can’t change it,” the source added.
Pelosi and Schiff, a former chair of the House intelligence committee, both represent California districts in the House. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Some Democratic lawmakers in the House and Senate have called on Biden to step aside in the race amid concerns about his fitness for the job at age 81 and his standing in opinion polls as the election draws nearer.
A Democratic aide said that Pelosi’s main “unofficial” non-governmental job for some 25 years has been to work to ensure that Democrats have a majority in the House, a chamber now narrowly controlled by Republicans.
“If your personal mission on the unofficial side is to win the House majority, obviously your calculus would be that this is not a tenable situation,” the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said of Biden’s candidacy and the drag it could have on Democratic candidates in House races this year.
“If the (opinion poll) numbers are accurate that Biden has cratered so much in the swing districts (with competitive House races) that he can’t conceivably win and he’s falling behind Hillary’s 2016 numbers, you would need a historic level of ticket splitting for … our candidates to have any chance of winning,” the aide added, referring to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate who lost to Trump in the 2016 U.S. election.
“And frankly that just seems unlikely,” the aide said.
Pelosi likes to quote from a speech by former President Abraham Lincoln in leadership meetings, the White House source noted. In the speech, Lincoln said, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed.”
“I don’t think I would have said he’s getting out of the race” before the public push from top Democratic leaders, the source said of Biden. “I hadn’t seen a single crack from him but now who knows?”
“There is a path” to victory “but it’s going to be hard. It will not be easy for Kamala,” the source added, referring to Vice President Kamala Harris, who potentially would replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Democrats are “doing this to ourselves. It is disappointing but we have to get through it, with or without a change” to the ticket, the source said, adding that there is “no other choice.”
(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Jeff Mason; editing by Will Dunham, Heather Timmons and Deepa Babington)
