Sick with COVID-19 and abandoned by allies, U.S. President Joe Biden has been fuming at his Delaware beach house, increasingly resentful about what he sees as an orchestrated campaign to drive him out of the race and bitter toward some of those he once considered close, including his onetime running mate Barack Obama.
Biden has been around politics long enough to assume that the leaks appearing in the media in recent days are being coordinated to raise the pressure on him to step aside, according to people close to him. He considers Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, the main instigator but is irritated at Obama as well, seeing him as a puppet master behind the scenes.
The friction between the sitting president and leaders of his own party so close to an election is unlike anything seen in Washington in generations — especially because the Democrats now working to ease him out were some of the allies most critical to his success over the last dozen years. It was Obama who elevated Biden from a presidential also-ran to the vice presidency, setting him up to win the White House in 2020, and it was Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, who pushed through Biden’s landmark legislative achievements.