US President Joe Biden is huddling this weekend with top political aides, as he plots a return to the campaign trail - and a last-ditch effort to salvage his re-election bid - despite an onslaught of anxious pleas from fellow Democrats to step aside. 

The appeals from vulnerable House and Senate Democrats for Biden to exit the race have only intensified as the president has been quarantined at his Delaware beach home after he tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday. On Friday, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, a long-time ally, joined a chorus of nearly three dozen Democratic lawmakers urging Biden to suspend his campaign.

Those closest to the president say his resolve has only hardened in recent days, despite the imploring by some of his party’s most senior figures. Yet that did little to quiet rumours in Washington of a weekend announcement - and suggestions, even from long-time Biden allies, that his re-election bid had entered a death spiral. 

Amid predictions that the end is near, Biden himself issued a statement vowing to return to the campaign trail next week. Vice President Kamala Harris told top-dollar Democratic donors that the president retained a pathway to victory. And campaign chairwoman Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, in a rare television interview, said Biden is “more committed than ever”.

At the White House, aides prepared for a high-stakes summit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who planned to meet the president early in the week before delivering an address to a joint session of Congress. In Rehoboth Beach, Biden met virtually with his chief of staff and national security aides to discuss the security situation in Israel, as well as the CrowdStrike failure that snarled travel and critical computer systems nationwide.

Yet hanging over Biden’s efforts to project a sense of normalcy remained the question of whether the president truly believes he can sustain the unprecedented and unrelenting effort by fellow Democrats to push him from atop the 2024 ticket.

Remaining dutiful to his presidential tasks has done little to quell concerns among Democrats about the 81-year-old president’s fitness to serve another four-year term - and the fear that he might be defeated by Donald Trump before that term could even begin.

In addition to Brown, prominent lawmakers including Representative Adam Schiff of California - the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee - and Montana’s Senator Jon Tester, whose re-election is crucial to Democratic hopes of retaining the upper chamber, joined the calls for Biden to step aside. 

Multiple news reports suggest Democratic congressional leaders, including former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have warned Biden about the ramifications of his candidacy for down-ballot races, and pressed him to consider dropping out.

In total, the dissenters represent more than one in 10 Democrats in Congress, where Biden’s party controls 213 seats in the House of Representatives and 51 in the Senate.

The concern by lawmakers is rooted in part by a bigger worry - that Republicans could sweep the Nov 5 election by taking the reins of the White House and the gavel in both chambers of Congress. Such a defeat could handcuff Democrats’ ability to stymie the sweeping conservative proposals Trump has offered.

But Biden insisted in a statement on Friday that he still believes he is the best bulwark towards such an outcome.

“I look forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda while making the case for my own record, and the vision that I have for America,” Biden said in the Friday statement, referring to a sweeping array of policy proposals developed by conservative corners of Washington.

His campaign also continued announcing big-ticket fundraisers for the coming weeks, including an event later this month on Martha’s Vineyard headlined by comedian David Letterman.

Biden knows “the stakes of this election are high”, spokesman Kevin Munoz said in a statement, adding that there “are a lot of days between now and Election Day”.

The divide among Democrats is a stark contrast to the scenes which unfolded during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, where former party rivals united around Trump, who accepted the formal Republican nomination for presidency.

The former president is expected to hold his first rally since an attempted assassination last weekend on Saturday night in the battleground state of Michigan, alongside newly minted running mate JD Vance. Trump is also planning events in North Carolina and at a bitcoin conference in Tennessee over the next week, while the Ohio senator is planning rallies in his home state as well as Virginia.

  - Bloomberg