The White House is discussing holding a meeting with Democratic governors on Wednesday and having President Biden travel to the battleground states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania this week, as he and his advisers seek to shore up support and move past his calamitous debate performance, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The meeting on Wednesday would feature governors attending in person at the White House and virtually, according to one of the two people and another person briefed on the planning. It would come two days after the governors, who have been some of Mr. Biden’s staunchest supporters throughout his presidency but whose ranks also include his possible replacements, held their own virtual meeting on Monday.
A number of those governors expressed frustration with the current set of circumstances — and the lack of contact with Mr. Biden directly — on their call on Monday, according to a person briefed on what took place. That meeting ran roughly an hour and did not include staff. Some of the elected officials who have been supportive of Mr. Biden have complained privately that he is being kept in something of a bubble, one that is making the current anxieties about the situation the Democrats are facing worse.
Mr. Biden’s advisers are discussing a potential trip to Wisconsin on Friday as well as a trip to Pennsylvania on Sunday, one of the people briefed on the matter said. Pennsylvania in particular has been one of Mr. Biden’s best swing states in polling.
The president’s advisers have been urged by a number of allies to make him more visible in the aftermath of the debate. He held an event in North Carolina on Friday but other than fund-raising appearances, he did not have a public event again until Monday evening, when he commented on the Supreme Court decision giving former President Donald J. Trump partial criminal immunity. The president made the statement more than nine hours after the ruling was made public, and he took no questions from reporters.
The White House has repeatedly deployed a handful of Democratic governors as surrogates representing Mr. Biden and battling back questions about his age. Those questions have exploded since Mr. Biden delivered a halting, whispering performance on the debate stage against his predecessor and challenger, Mr. Trump.
At the same time, a number of those governors — a crop of officials that are younger and pandemic-tested — are now routinely mentioned as possible successors to Mr. Biden should he decide not to continue on as the presumptive Democratic candidate in 2024, however improbable that notion appears to his closest supporters at the moment.
