Joe Biden's White House hopes have suffered a new blow amid reports that donors are preparing to abandon the former frontrunner after his disastrous results in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Some of his campaign’s wealthy Wall Street donors are said to be considering backing another candidate in the Democratic Party nomination race.
The setback for the former vice president, 77, was revealed as alarm grew among congressional Democrats that the rise of Left-winger Bernie Sanders could lead to a disastrous defeat in a head-to-head with Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.
Mr Sanders’s campaign coffers are flush with money, much of it from small grassroots donations.
However, some of Mr Biden’s heavyweight backers are concerned the money could dry up by “Super Tuesday”, on March 3, when more than a dozen states including California and Texas go to the polls.
Mr Biden is trying to remain bullish after his fourth and fifth place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, insisting he will be back in the race once African-Americans and Latinos vote, as the campaigns move on to Nevada and South Carolina.
In a series of tweets today, he urged supporters to give him their money. “We’ve only heard from two of the first 50 states, where I come from that’s the opening bell, not the closing bell.
"We’re going to fight for every vote and we need your help to do it,” he wrote.
But many of his backers appear to be losing patience. “It wasn’t expected that he would perform great in Iowa or New Hampshire. But we did not anticipate that he would fare this poorly,” one donor told the New York Post.
“No one wants someone to end their political career on a down note,” added veteran Democratic consultant George Arzt. However, some of his top backers remain confident he can still turn it around.
“Biden is well positioned to move on to the more diverse states of Nevada and South Carolina,” insisted a wealthy backer, who told CNBC that financiers did not expect a win in the first two states.
