Democrats face a reckoning on Biden campaign as lawmakers return to Capitol Hill

A reckoning looms. Mark it on your calendar. It will begin Monday night on Capitol Hill. 

Maybe punctuated by a meeting of the House Democratic Caucus Tuesday morning. Augmented by the customary Senate Democratic Caucus luncheon Tuesday afternoon.

The reckoning will slip into Wednesday and perhaps Thursday.

We will learn where Democrats stand with President Biden during this reckoning. And we may even learn whether the president is staying in the race or standing down.

It is said that timing is everything. And Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats certainly couldn’t have had worse timing over the past week-plus.

President Biden and fellow Democrats had since 2021 or even 2022 to figure out whether the president was truly a "transitional figure" (as Biden characterized himself) or if it was time to go with someone else. Not after the party burned through the primaries. It shouldn’t have taken until the earliest presidential debate in American history to have a debate of another sort – even though the president’s team pushed for the date and the format of the recent forum on CNN.

That turned out to be poor timing. 

The worst thing to happen to Democrats is that the House met last Friday, just hours after the political brownfields site which doubled as the debate stage in Atlanta. That meant that the Capitol Hill press corps spent all Friday morning chasing every House Democrat imaginable through the halls of Congress, peppering them with questions about Biden’s performance.

Never before were Democratic senators so glad the Senate was out that day. In fact, the Senate didn’t meet at all last week.

The worst thing politically for Biden was that the House and Senate were both out over the past week. Congressional Democrats were petrified after the president’s performance at the debate. But the fact that Democrats only had to endure tough questions from reporters at the Capitol for one day bought Biden time he didn’t have. Congress doesn’t return until Monday, and while apprehension about the president intensified, the recess muted those reservations and paused demands for Biden to possibly bow out.