Democratic megadonors push Biden to quit race, as Kamala Harris events fill up

• Donors who fund the Biden campaign are using their leverage with congressional leaders to pressure the president to drop out.
• As donors get cold feet, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her husband former President Bill Clinton and Biden campaign co-chair and media mogul Jeff Katzenberg have all made pleas to donors, asking them to stick with Biden.
• Events that feature Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden's likely successor should he step aside, have started to sell out.

On a Tuesday in early July, 75 wealthy Democratic political donors gathered on a Zoom call to discuss the path forward for President Joe Biden after his calamitous debate performance against Donald Trump, according to a person on the call. 

Only one of the donors said they thought Biden should stay in the race, this person said. All the others made it very clear that they believed Biden needed to drop out of the race, if the party wanted to defeat Trump in November. People who spoke to CNBC for this story were granted anonymity to speak freely about a sensitive matter. 

Since then, big money donors who fund either the Biden campaign, his allied political action committees or the party at large have launched a lobbying campaign aimed at senior Democrats in both the House and Senate.

Their goal is to convince lawmakers to publicly call on Biden to end his reelection campaign, according to over half a dozen people familiar with the matter. 

Many of these donors laid their positions out in stark terms: If Biden refused to drop out, they would not be giving money to help his reelection until polls showed that he was a clear favorite to beat Trump. 

Donors who have made these types of calls to Democrats on Capitol Hill include Hollywood executive Ari