Hey, good morning. I'm playbook co-author Rachel Bade. It's Wednesday, July 10th. The firewall surrounding Joe Biden's presidential campaign seems to be holding, at least for now. After almost two weeks of hand-wringing, many Washington Democrats spent yesterday reluctantly falling in line with Biden, or just saying nothing at all.

Only one new Democrat, Mikey Cheryl, of New Jersey, joined the ranks calling for him to go,

and that's only seven lawmakers total. But to focus on that small number is to miss the storm

roiling behind the scenes. Most senior Democrats remain 100% convinced that Biden will lose to

Donald Trump and they privately want him to gracefully bow out even as they publicly support the nominee.

And under the surface, there's a bubbling anger over Biden's insistence on digging in,

with some Democrats even hoping that he stumbles again and soon so they can try

to rally the ranks to force him out. And joining me now to discuss all of this drama on Capitol

Hill is Congress reporter Nicholas Wu. Good morning, Nick. Morning, Rachel. So Nick, let's start

with a little bit of a recap of yesterday. You covered this very high-stakes Democratic

caucus meeting where obviously the future of Biden as the nominee was the prime topic.

What are we hearing? And what do we know after that? Well, yesterday's meeting, which was held

at an off-site party headquarters, was described to me and my colleagues

by our sources as what was really a sad venting session for Democrats on all different ends of

the caucus. House lawmakers got up to speak in defense of President Biden, whereas others who

have already publicly come out

against the president, like Lloyd Doggett, like Mike Quigley, you know, reiterated their

positions inside their caucus meeting for why Biden should step aside and why they needed

a new nominee. What was notable, though, was that in this meeting, no new voices spoke up against Biden.

But what played out throughout the day was that Democrats came out of the meeting,

clearly not having any kind of consensus, perhaps stemming the tide of defections on Biden for now.

But later in the afternoon, Congressman Mikey Sherrill came out and became the

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