Concerns about President Joe Biden’s erratic debate performance are spilling from newspaper editorial pages and the donor class to members of Congress as fears grow among Democrats that more than the White House could be at stake.
On Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas became the first Democratic member of the House to publicly call on Biden to abandon his campaign against former President Donald Trump.
“President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020. He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024,” Doggett said in a statement. He noted that polls showed Biden trailing Democratic senators and Trump in key states.
“I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not. Instead of reassuring voters, the president failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies,” he said.
In light of that, Doggett said, Biden should “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre later told reporters that Biden staying in the race did not jeopardize democracy.
“What we believe is that this is a president that … is going to continue to fight for democracy and is going to continue to focus on making sure that we get Roe v. Wade into law … make sure that IVF is not taken away from families, make sure that contraception is not taken away from families, make sure that we fight for our voting rights,” she said at Tuesday’s White House briefing.
“There are so many things that we need to continue to fight for, and at the end of the day, this is a president that has delivered working closely with Congress and doing some of these things in a bipartisan way,” she said.
Doggett’s recommendation came after Biden’s team spent a weekend tamping down concerns about Biden’s electability even as lawmakers called on him to recognize what staying in the race could mean.
“He clearly has to understand … that his decision not only impacts who’s going to serve in the White House the next four years, but who’s going to serve in the Senate, who’s going to serve in the House and it will have implications for decades to come,” Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., said Tuesday morning on CNN.
Quigley called Biden “a very proud person who has served us extraordinarily well for 50 years.” But, he added, “I just want him to appreciate … just how much [his decision] impacts not just his race, but all the other races coming in November.”
“Like a lot of people, I was pretty horrified” by Biden’s debate, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told WPRI-TV on Monday. He urged Biden and his campaign “to be candid about his condition” and explain whether “this was a real anomaly, and not just the way he is these days.”
Democrats have a 51-49 working majority in the Senate, but the seat of West Virginia’s Joe Manchin III — who was elected as a Democrat but said he would become an independent after deciding not to seek reelection — is now rated Solid Republican by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales. Even if Democrats hold every other seat, a 50-50 split would mean a Republican majority if Trump wins, since the vice president breaks ties.
In the House, Democrats need to flip four seats to take back the majority they lost in 2022.
Republicans are already using questions about the president’s cognitive abilities, however, to hammer vulnerable Democrats. In Pennsylvania, Republican challenger Dave McCormick’s campaign produced a video hitting Democratic Sen. Bob Casey for defending Biden and expressing faith in the president’s ability to do the job.
“Bob Casey, you’re really not worried about Biden’s ‘bad’ debate performance?” McCormick said Monday on X. “The Pennsylvanians I’ve heard from sure are. Our troops deserve a commander-in-chief with the strength and acuity to lead in a crisis.”
After years of having to answer — or ignore — questions about Trump’s volatile behavior and frequent lies, the GOP is trying to put Democrats, especially in battleground districts, on the defensive.
Within a day of the debate, GOP operatives put that strategy into action, asserting that Democrats knew that Biden was not able to fulfill his constitutional obligations but sought to tamp down those concerns for political reasons.
Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday called on the members of Biden’s Cabinet to decide whether it is time to use their power under the Constitution’s 25th Amendment to remove him from power.
The National Republican Congressional Committee also released a video containing statements by Democrats defending the president.
“The entire world knows Joe Biden isn’t fit to serve,’’ said Will Reinert, spokesman for the NRCC. “Yet if extreme House Democrats cannot bring themself to say that publicly, why would Americans ever think they would do the right thing for the good of the country?”
In a memo released Monday, Jack Pandol, communications director of the NRCC, said Republicans are planning to “weaponize House Democrats’ blind allegiance to their doddering Commander in Chief.”
The stakes are especially high for House races. With Republicans strongly favored to take control of the Senate, flipping the House could be seen as a key firewall on one-party rule. Democrat Adam Frisch, who nearly flipped a seat in Colorado’s 3rd District in 2022 and is running again, also urged Biden to step aside on Tuesday.
“I thank President Biden for his years of service, but the path ahead requires a new generation of leadership to take our country forward,” he said in a video message posted on social media.
Most Democrats, however, had refrained from a public denunciation of Biden.
“House races have always been about the strength of our candidates, combined with the fact that Democrats deliver when in charge while extreme Republicans sow chaos,” said Viet Shelton, spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Shelton cited recent internal polls showing Democrats outrunning their Republican opponents across the battleground, adding “that hasn’t changed after the debate.”
For their part, Democrats were seeking to shift the conversation from Biden to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, which held that presidents are immune from federal prosecution for official acts. In brief comments Monday night, Biden denounced the decision, calling it “a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law.”
The Democratic National Committee took out ads on the homepages of three swing-state newspapers — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Arizona Republic — that highlighted the ruling and portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas urged President Joe Biden on Tuesday to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw” from the 2024 presidential race. Doggett, 77, is the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to formally call on his own party’s incumbent to drop his reelection bid against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. The call significantly escalates pressure on Biden, 81, whose disastrous debate against Trump last week set off waves of panic among his supporters about whether he is capable of winning in November and serving another four years in the White House. But Biden and his team have so far shut down any suggestion that he will leave the race. In response to Doggett’s statement, a Biden campaign official told NBC News: “He’s staying in.” That and other post-debate assurances from Biden and the campaign have done little to quell Democrats’ mounting concerns, some of which are starting to boil over into public view. “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” former House speaker and current Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday on MSNBC. Pelosi recommended that Biden sit for multiple face-to-face interviews with “serious journalists” to reassure his allies. Biden has participated in fewer press conferences or interviews than many of his modern peers.
ABC News announced Tuesday afternoon that Biden will sit with news anchor George Stephanopoulos for his first one-on-one interview since the debate. The interview will apparently not be held live. ABC said it will air its first clip Friday on “World News Tonight,” followed by an extended interview Sunday on “This Week.” Doggett, meanwhile, explicitly tied his decision to call for Biden to end his campaign to the president’s performance in Thursday’s debate. “President Biden has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump,” Doggett said in a press release. “I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that.” “It did not,” he wrote. “Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.” “Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory — too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what was not turned around in the debate, can be turned around now.”
The Texas Democrat also warned of the threat that a second Trump presidency would pose, pointing to the Supreme Court’s decision this week to grant “presumptive immunity” to former presidents for all their official acts. “Trump, newly-empowered with immunity, could usher America into a long, dark, authoritarian era unchecked by either the courts or a submissive Republican Congress,” Doggett’s statement said. He encouraged Biden to follow the lead of former President Lyndon Johnson, who voluntarily declined to seek a second term in office. “Under very different circumstances, [Johnson] made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said. “My decision to make these strong reservations public is not done lightly nor does it in any way diminish my respect for all that President Biden has achieved,” he said. “Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw.”
Multiple Democrats publicly urged President Joe Biden to end his 2024 campaign Tuesday, while some high-profile party leaders said it’s fair to ask about Biden’s mental fitness or began openly planning for a post-Biden future, suddenly breaking with the president after his jarring performance in last week’s debate set off panic that it could effectively hand former President Donald Trump another term.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, on Tuesday became the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to encourage Biden to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw,” he said in a statement that ended with the sentence: “I respectfully call on him to do so.”
Shortly after Doggett released his statement, former Obama Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro (who has been critical of Biden in the past) said on MSNBC he believes “another Democrat would have a better shot at beating Trump.”
Former Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, called on Vice President Kamala Harris to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee in a Newsweek op-ed Monday, writing that she has a better chance at beating Trump than “the Joe Biden we saw the other night and will continue to see.”
Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C.—a former Democratic leadership member whose endorsement in 2020 revitalized Biden’s campaign and helped him secure support from Black voters—said on MSNBC Tuesday he still wants Biden on the ticket, but would support nominating Harris if Biden drops out, seemingly opening the door for discussions on how to replace Biden.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Tuesday on MSNBC “I think it’s a legitimate question to say this is an episode or this is a condition,” referring to Biden’s cognitive abilities displayed during the debate—though she did not call on Biden to end his campaign: “it’s going to be up to Joe Biden to do what he thinks,” she said.
Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., told CNN Tuesday “this is a decision he’s going to have to make” when asked whether Biden should step aside, adding “I just want him to appreciate at this time just how much it impacts not just this race, but all the other races coming in November.”
Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine—a frequent critic of Biden and the only Democrat to vote against Biden’s signature Build Back Better Act—predicted in a Tuesday Bangor Daily News op-ed Trump “is going to win,” though he didn’t explicitly call on Biden to drop out of the race and instead laid out a road map he wants Democrats to follow to contest Trump’s policies if he’s elected to another term.
Meanwhile, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., told a local TV station Biden’s team needs to be “candid” about whether “this was a real anomaly and not just the way he is these days,” while Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., torched the campaign for its “dismissive attitude” toward questions about Biden’s health—rare bouts of staunch criticism even though neither senator called for Biden to stand down.
Before the debate, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination, was the only other sitting Democratic lawmaker who called for Biden’s elimination from the race.
Pelosi is still a fundraising powerhouse in the Democratic party and holds heavy sway within her party. Her comments Tuesday mark a shift for her personally and could reflect sentiment Pelosi is hearing from her donor network and party stakeholders. On Sunday, Pelosi gave a firmer defense of Biden, telling CNN the party stakeholders she was in contact with “are very much Biden-Kamala Harris,” while defending Biden as “having a bad night” but a “great presidency.” Choosing a replacement could be “chaotic,” Pelosi said, so “Joe Biden getting up and taking the ball over the finish line” was the best option. Months earlier, after a Justice Department special counsel described Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” Pelosi defended Biden, calling him “very sharp” in an interview with CNN and insisting “he’s always on the ball.”
Doggett said in a statement he “had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum” to change polls showing Biden trailing both Trump and Democratic senators in key battleground states, but that Biden instead “failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.” He added that the stakes of the election were even higher in the wake of Monday’s Supreme Court decision on presidential immunity, predicting Trump would be more emboldened to “usher America into a long, dark, authoritarian era unchecked by either the courts or a submissive Republican Congress.” Doggett invoked former President Lyndon Johnson’s decision in 1968 to drop out of the primary race as he faced public backlash over his handling of the war in Vietnam and several tough primary challengers: “While much of his work had been transformational, he pledged to be transitional,” Doggett wrote of Johnson.
Doggett, Castro and Ryan join a growing list of pundits, major news outlets and at least one former White House staffer who have called on Biden to drop out of the race in the wake of Thursday’s debate. Biden was widely criticized for appearing frail and inaudible at times during the face-off with Trump, but he has vowed to stay in the contest. Sitting elected Democratic officials have largely stood behind Biden, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who said Tuesday he is “with Joe Biden” and thinks he’s fit to serve when prompted by an NBC reporter at an event in Syracuse, adding “we’ve worked together for four years and delivered a lot for America and for central New York.”
Whether the debate affects Biden’s standing in polls. So far, most post-debate surveys show more voters lack confidence in Biden’s mental fitness than they did before the debate, but his standing in polls has only decreased slightly in a head-to-head matchup with Trump. A CNN/SSRS poll published Tuesday found Biden behind six points, consistent with the groups’ April survey, while Biden trails Trump by 2.7 points in RealClearPolitics’ polling average, a 1.2-point swing since before the debate.
Biden’s campaign and his surrogates have pointed to his legislative accomplishments as president in defending his debate performance, while accusing Trump of repeatedly lying during Thursday’s face-off. Biden’s campaign also circulated internal polling to his supporters that found Trump holds a narrow lead among battleground state voters, similar to the one he held in a May survey, The Washington Post reported.
Source: BBC News, Forbes, NBC News
