Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other key Democrats in Washington reiterated their support for President Joe Biden, but the party was far from unified on a path forward as congressional Democrats met on Tuesday to discuss his continued campaign. 

“As I’ve said before, I’m with Joe,” Schumer said repeatedly at a Tuesday afternoon press conference after Senate Democrats met for lunch.

House Democratic leaders were less emphatic in their support after meeting on Tuesday morning. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he continues to support Biden on Monday, but on Tuesday he was more diplomatic, saying that “conversations will continue throughout the balance of the week.”

“We are unified that Donald Trump cannot win and we are unified that Hakeem Jeffries needs to be speaker,” House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar said at a press conference later in the day. He said House Democratic leadership gave “no instruction to get on the same page” to their members.

“Right now, President Biden is the nominee and we support the Democratic nominee who will beat Donald Trump. That is a fact. That is where we are,” Aguilar continued.

Biden and his campaign have firmly and defiantly resisted calls for him to step aside after his disastrous debate performance and increasingly poor poll numbers. 

“He had a bad night. We've talked about it. He understands people's concerns,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday. “We want to get to the other side of this. We want to continue doing the work, and that's what the president's going to do.”

While many Democrats endorsed Biden on Tuesday as their party’s leader heading into November, some key Democrats remained on the fence and others defected entirely.

“We have a ways to go but we’re not going to negotiate in public,” Vermont Sen. Peter Welch said as he left lunch, according to Fox News. Welch is one of the few Senate Democrats to openly criticize Biden after the presidential debate late last month, but he has yet to publicly call for him to relinquish his candidacy.

“We understand it’s imperative Donald Trump loses,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the chair of Senate Democrats’ campaign committee, when asked by a reporter from Semafor if his colleagues were rallying around the president.

“That remains to be seen,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, when asked by a PBS reporter whether Biden should remain on the Democratic ticket. 

Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a top member of Senate leadership, left Schumer’s Tuesday press conference before she could be asked about her perspective of the meeting, but said in a statement on Monday that Biden “must do more to demonstrate he can campaign strong enough to beat Donald Trump.”

“We need to see a much more forceful and energetic candidate on the campaign trail in the very near future in order for him to convince voters he is up to the job,” Murray said. “At this critical time for our country, President Biden must seriously consider the best way to preserve his incredible legacy and secure it for the future.”

The results of the House meeting were mixed. When asked if they were on the same page after the meeting, Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen said Democrats “are not even in the same book." 

“I’m undecided in that I want more information, but even the people who say they’ve decided, they want more information too and they could undecide and go in another direction,” California Rep. Brad Sherman told Spectrum News. “The whole country wants more information.”

In a statement on Tuesday afternoon, New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherill became the latest House Democrat to call for Biden to step down.

“I know that President Biden and his team have been true public servants and have put the country and the best interests of democracy first and foremost in their considerations,” Sherrill said. “And because I know President Biden cares deeply about the future of our country, I am asking that he declare that he won’t run for reelection and will help lead us through a process towards a new nominee.”

But at least one prominent member — New York Rep. Jerry Nadler — reversed his previously reported stance that Biden should drop out.

In a private call with his fellow House Democrats on Sunday, Nadler was the first person to say the president should let a new candidate take his place, according to The Associated Press and other outlets.

“At this point, he’s the best candidate. He’s the only candidate,” Nadler told reporters before the Tuesday meeting began, declining to acknowledge his remarks on the private call. “He has said he's going to remain in. He's our candidate and we're all going to support him.”

After the meeting, Nadler said he did not speak and declined to comment when asked if he still had concerns about Biden.

In a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday, Biden wrote that the discussion about his future as the party’s candidate needed to come to an end and that "any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us.”

Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the first House Democrat to publicly call for Biden to step aside last week, stood by his position at Tuesday’s meeting. Others, like New York Rep. Yvette Clarke and Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern said there were more discussions that needed to be had. 

“There are too many people in the battleground states who have not been convinced,” Doggett said as he left the meeting.

More hesitation came from New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim, the Democratic nominee for a Senate seat in his state, and Massachusetts Rep. Lori Trahan, a member of House Democratic leadership. Kim told the New Jersey Globe after the meeting he still has “concerns” and that he was “still thinking this through.”

“There’s enough time that if there needs to be a switch, I think that could be done,” Kim said.

Trahan said she has met with Biden voters in her state “who have real concerns” about Biden’s ability to beat Trump and that she shares those concerns.

“While President Biden has made clear he feels he is the best candidate to win this election, nothing that has happened over the past twelve days suggests that voters see things the same way,” Trahan said in a statement. 

Later on Tuesday, as he left the Capitol, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips addressed the press for the first time since the debate. Phillips mounted an unsuccessful, longshot bid against Biden in the Democratic primary after attempting to convince more major players in the party to launch challenges of their own based on his concerns over Biden's age and poll numbers. He declined to call for Biden to step aside now, instead arguing his colleagues need to make their voices heard and that he would have "a lot more to share" shortly.

"If this is vindication, vindication has never been so unfulfilling," Phillips said. "The likelihood of my candidacy succeeding was secondary to the likelihood of inspiring the conversation I was trying to inspire. Am I disappointed in those in power in my party for not heeding that call at a time when they all knew the same thing I did? Absolutely."

The supportive statements for Biden on Tuesday, as well as earlier on Monday, came from a wide swath of the Democratic conference, from close ally South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn to 27-year-old Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost and New York Rep. Adriano Espaillat to the progressive members of the so-called "Squad" — including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal of Washington.

“I have spoken to the president over the weekend. I have spoken with him extensively, he made clear then and he’s made clear since that he is in this race. The matter is closed,” Ocasio-Cortez told reporters at the Capitol on Monday night. “Joe Biden is our nominee. He is not leaving this race. He is in this race and I support him.”

After the meeting on Tuesday, Clyburn emerged and said repeatedly “we are riding with Biden,” declining to answer most other questions. Espaillat said “I’m staying with papa.” And Frost said he was “very reassured by the president’s plan” after Biden spoke with the Congressional Black Caucus on Monday night.

“I believe Democrats are going to win up and down the ballot, Joe Biden will be reelected, and we're going to take back the House,” Frost told reporters.

The polling suggests that may be a difficult task. An Emerson College poll released Tuesday had Biden trailing former President Donald Trump nationally 43% to 46%. And polling averages of dozens of state-level polls calculated by Decision Desk HQ and The Hill have Biden trailing Trump in seven key swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin

A Wisconsin poll commissioned by AARP and also released on Tuesday found Biden trailing Trump 38% to 44% in the key swing state with 59% of respondents viewing the sitting president unfavorably. That same poll had Democrat Sen. Tammy Baldwin leading her Republican opponent Eric Hovde 50% to 45%. Baldwin did not campaign with Biden when he came to the state to rally on Friday.

"I'm focused on my own campaign right now," Baldwin told local reporters on Sunday. "It's his decision, and I'm going to be fighting for the entire Democratic ticket.”

Another swing state Democratic Senate candidate, Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio, told Fox News on Tuesday that “I’m hearing discussions and legitimate questions about the president and I continue to listen,” but declined to explicitly call for Biden to stay on or step aside. 

The calls for Biden to at least consider ceding way to another candidate continued to come from outside the halls of Congress on Tuesday, particularly from former members of the Obama administration as well as the New York Times editorial board for the second time in a week. For his part, former President Barack Obama issued a statement of support for Biden the day after the debate late last month.

“Joe Biden’s age is a unique political liability that isn’t going away. It’s not going to get any better—and has a high risk of scrambling the race again, sealing Dems fate,” former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro wrote on social media. “Yes, Joe Biden has been a good president. But he’s losing, badly. He was losing badly before the debate. He’s losing worse now.”

Spectrum News’ Cassie Semyon contributed to this report.