Senator Richard Blumenthal
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut fields questions from reporters after lunch on Tuesday.
  • Democrats on Capitol Hill are struggling over how to deal with Biden.
  • One lawmaker says a "plurality" of House Democrats want him out, but accept that he's staying.
  • But some are pointedly refusing to take Biden's "no" for an answer.

One by one, Democratic members of Congress began to stream out of the Democratic National Committee's headquarters on Tuesday morning. Most of them said nothing, offering stone-faced expressions to the more than 60 reporters, some of them from foreign outlets, who had braved the heat and humidity to stake out the closest thing one might get to a "smoke-filled room" in the year 2024.