Biden shrinks from view ahead of Trump’s return to Washington

Joe Biden is president of the United States for 42 more days. But within the Democratic Party, on Capitol Hill — and even within his own administration — it feels like he left the Oval Office weeks ago.

Biden has effectively disappeared from the radar in the wake of Democrats’ bruising electoral loss. Since Nov. 5, he’s largely stuck to prepared remarks, avoided unscripted public appearances or press questions and opted to sit out the raging debate over Donald Trump’s victory, policy conversations in Congress and the Democratic Party’s future.

“He’s been so cavalier and selfish about how he approaches the final weeks of the job,” said a former White House official.

Across nearly two weeks abroad since the election, Biden spoke just seven words to the media traveling with him. He has yet to schedule a post-election press conference, as Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush did when they were on their way out of office. He went to the Rose Garden to publicly praise a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog and spoke to the press Sunday about Bashar Al-Assad fleeing Syria, but otherwise his post-election domestic schedule has been filled with events such as honoring the 2024 NBA champions, thanking longtime supporters at a South Lawn dinner and participating in a Friendsgiving event.

Biden’s low profile since the election has contributed to the sense of rudderlessness that’s taken hold across swaths of Washington, as lawmakers, aides and party officials brace for Trump’s return to power and seek a new direction and vision ahead of the midterms and 2028.

The White House and Biden, they say, has shown little interest in helping chart the party’s future beyond Jan. 20, the day of Trump’s inauguration. Biden has focused his aides’ energies largely on managing the presidential transition and tending to a few final items meant to burnish his legacy, including a speech on the economy Tuesday. And Vice President Kamala Harris, who cast herself on the campaign trail as the future of the party, has all but disappeared from the scene.

“There is no leadership coming from the White House,” one Democrat close to senior lawmakers stated bluntly. “There is a total vacuum.”

Some Biden aides acknowledge the president’s absence from the broader discussions about how to address Trump’s coming presidency and the future of the party. They say that reticence is rooted in two factors: Biden’s own recognition that few are eager to hear from him, and his own lingering personal belief that he doesn’t owe much more to a party that unceremoniously pushed him aside. Some aides have also said Biden believes he has to take a more measured approach in how he talks about Trump given his focus on facilitating a peaceful transfer of power.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates defended Biden, saying the president “is making every day of this term count” and is “leading by example for the sake of American democracy, honoring his campaign promise to respect the will of the voters and provide an orderly transition.”

Bates noted that Biden, in an exchange with reporters last month, “criticized President-elect Trump’s agenda – including across-the-board tariffs that will force American families to pay higher prices for everyday necessities.” Biden during that brief back-and-forth called such tariffs “counterproductive,” but expressed hope that Trump would reconsider.

Still, the void at the top has alarmed Democratic officials who worry and the country is heading toward next year without a concrete plan for combating Trump — or even tangible motivation to put up much of a fight. POLITICO spoke to almost two dozen party officials, lawmakers, current and former White House aides and other Democratic staffers for this story, some of whom were granted anonymity in order to offer their candid assessment.

“Elections have consequences — It’s a new sheriff in town,” Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said.

While Biden has offered little in the way of leadership, officials say there’s also not much demand from the party’s rank and file — including lawmakers and aides — to hear from a president they still blame for relegating them back into the minority. Biden, at 82, is at the end of a political career tarnished by his refusal to step aside earlier and a last-minute pardon of his son Hunter. Few are now clamoring for him to return.

“In conversations that I’m having, they don’t even mention the president. It’s kind of sad,” said the Democrat close to senior lawmakers. “It feels like Trump is president already.”

Many party officials and staffers no longer track Biden’s daily activities or are even aware that he’s spent much of the last month out of the country. In the last week, the dominant conversation among them tied to the president has been about Hunter’s pardon, who got invitations to the White House holiday party and whether current and former White House staffers would get to take the traditional departure photo with the president.

“Democrats in Washington just want to get him and the people around him out the door,” said the former White House official. “All he’s done in the last year has hurt the party every step of the way.”

There’s some question of whether Biden’s presence has been missed, even if only to tout his accomplishments.

Asked last week about the role they see Biden playing within the party, several Democratic lawmakers demurred.

“There’s sort of a tradition of former presidents not getting too involved in it, and he’s transitioning into that,” said Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.). “So I think he has to be careful.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close Biden friend and ally, said that he expected Biden to devote his post-presidency to several specific issues, including cancer research and global diplomacy — leaving his involvement in party affairs up in the air.

“I still think he has a lot for us to learn from going forward,” Coons said. “But, you know, there are lots of other standard bearers who are clamoring for attention.”

Inside the West Wing, aides have focused primarily on accelerating a final slate of policy priorities before January, including allocating billions of dollars in tech and infrastructure investments and cementing regulations designed to further safeguard consumers from bad corporate actors.

Senior White House officials have also spent much of their time managing the nation’s foreign entanglements in Ukraine and the Middle East ahead of an incoming administration that they worry will take both conflicts in a sharply different direction. Those efforts reflect a central agenda that Biden laid out shortly after the election, aides said, and that has consumed much of his own time in the weeks since.

Biden aides in the process have sought to more explicitly document the administration’s accomplishments in statements, fact sheets and video clips. That’s partly a legacy project for historians who may comb Biden’s presidential library in years to come. But there is also hope it will provide Democrats with easy reference points during the Trump era for reminding voters how life was under Biden — and comparing it with how key measures like inflation and health coverage have changed since then.

Still, Biden officials and allies acknowledged that the president has been conspicuously absent from the broader public discourse, especially as the rest of the Democratic Party debates how best to resist Trump and rebuild the party.

The silence from Biden is “a case of just reading the room,” said Caitlin Legacki, a Democratic campaign veteran and a former senior adviser to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

“If him speaking out doesn’t achieve any actual strategic objectives, there’s no real point in doing it,” she said.

Biden has avoided questions about what went wrong in the lead-up to the election and where Democrats should go from here and has given no substantive public comments on whether he still believes American democracy is under threat with Trump set to take power. Few expect him to endorse a candidate in the crowded race for DNC chair that could go a long way toward determining the party’s direction, although a Biden adviser said multiple people who are running or considering running for DNC chair have been in touch to ask for the president’s thoughts.

The adviser also said Biden was still playing an important role in discussions about the future of the party, which was a topic of conversation at a recent lunch he hosted with Minyon Moore, Donna Brazile, Leah Daughtry, Yolanda Caraway and Tina Flournoy — Democratic operatives close to the Harris campaign.

“Typically when you’re in that so-called transition phase, the president and vice president essentially thank the team, thank the staff, help pay off the debts. It’s not like an incoming president who will play a more strategic role in determining the future of the party,” said Brazile, a former DNC chair.

But Biden’s overall attitude has left a sour taste in the mouth of some members of the party who feel his supporters who knocked doors, donated money and supported his administration deserve to hear from the president before he leaves office.

“It’s just his strategy, even if folks agree or disagree with it: Kind of keeping his head down,” said Mike Ceraso, an alum of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ and Pete Buttigieg’s campaigns. “I think both him and President Obama have looked at the transition period as not trying to make noise or trying to undermine the incoming administration.”

Some Democrats also believe that however politically diminished the president may be, there’s still an important public role for Biden to play in his last few weeks in office.

“It would be great to be talking about the things that were accomplished under the Biden term and so many things that we got done for the country in terms of the infrastructure, clean air, clean water, addressing climate,” said Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.). “We haven’t gotten that message out strongly enough before the election, but he shouldn’t miss the opportunity to talk about that now.”

Biden is expected to make at least a couple higher-profile speeches in the coming weeks, following an initial post-election month devoted to long-planned trips abroad.

The president is planning to deliver a speech centered on the economy Tuesday, which will serve at least in part to commemorate an economic recovery and revival of domestic manufacturing that Biden continues to believe is deeply underappreciated.

Biden has also discussed making a second address focused on foreign policy, where he would be able to make a final case for a worldview built on global alliances and cooperation that Trump has promised to immediately dismantle. He may also join the next virtual meeting of the 50-plus nations allied behind Ukraine, as he tries to rally the rest of the world to stay united behind the war against Russia.

Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, said Biden’s views on the future of the Democratic Party were “pretty irrelevant” to the preparations he and other Democratic organizations are making for the next two years. But he argued that Biden could take a series of more aggressive actions in the next month and a half that would better position the party and Americans as a whole — including speeding processing of DACA recipients and expanding the temporary protected status granted to certain immigrants.

Indivisible has pitched those ideas to the White House, Levin said. But there’s little indication so far that Biden is seeking ways to handcuff an incoming Trump team he’s committed to helping orchestrate a smooth transition.

“If I were Biden, I would be looking at what they can do to not just protect members of his own family but to protect other Americans that are going to be under threat by the next administration,” Levin said. “[But] if there’s been that directive, I haven’t heard of it.”

Nicholas Wu contributed to this report.