Biden
under renewed pressure to step aside as top Democrats make agonized appeals
Senator
Michael Bennet said Trump may win ‘by a landslide’ while two more senators
echoed his concerns
Robert Tait
in Washington
Wed 10 Jul
2024 19.12 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/10/michael-bennet-democrat-biden-trump-defeat
Joe Biden
came under renewed moral pressure on Wednesday to abandon his presidential
candidacy amid agonised appeals by a succession of senior Democrats for him to
consider the broader picture.
Those calls
came as the US president dug in his heels to make it hard to supplant him as
the nominee.
With the
backlash over his 27 June TV debate fiasco refusing to abate, Nancy Pelosi, the
former speaker of the House of Representatives, became the most senior party
member yet to subtly float the possibility of Biden stepping down while
stopping short of explicitly telling him to do so.
Republicans
in Congress, meanwhile, gleefully sought to further tighten the screw by
summoning three White House aides to testify about Biden’s mental fitness.
The summons
came in the form of a subpoena from James Comer, the GOP chair of the House
oversight committee, who demanded testimony from Anthony Bernal, the top aide
to the first lady Jill Biden; the deputy White House chief of staff Annie
Tomasini, and the president’s senior adviser Ashley Williams, Axios reported.
Pelosi, 84,
who was speaker until Republicans regained control of the House in the 2022
midterm elections, told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that “it’s up to the president to
decide if he is going to run”, adding: “We’re all encouraging him to make that
decision. Because time is running short.”
That remark
came as the president seemed intent on running down the clock until next
month’s Democratic national convention in Chicago, to make it practically
impossible to replace him. Pelosi later qualified her comments, claiming they
had been subject to “misrepresentations”, while adding: “The president is
great.”
But they
prefaced further critical interventions from Senate Democrats, who followed the
lead of Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado in voicing doubts over whether Biden
could beat Donald Trump in November.
Bennet told
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday evening that Trump was likely to win
November’s poll in a landslide because of the widespread concerns over Biden’s
age and mental acuity.
“This race
is on a trajectory that is very worrisome if you care about the future of this
country,” he said in an impassioned interview. “Donald Trump is on track, I
think, to win this election and maybe win it by a landslide, and take with him
the Senate and the House. It’s not a question about politics, it’s a moral
question about the future of our country.”
He added: “I
have not seen anything remotely approaching the kind of plan we need to see out
of the White House that can demonstrate that he can actually beat Donald Trump,
which is not going to be about the accomplishments that we all had, you know,
three and four years ago. This is something for the president to consider.”
Bennet’s
comments stopped short of a full-blown appeal for Biden’s withdrawal, in
contrast to Democrats in the House – where seven members have explicitly made
such calls in the wake of the debate, where the president repeatedly appeared
confused, mangled his words and allowed Trump to lie without effective
contradiction.
‘He wasn’t
even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the
debate,’ George Clooney wrote.
Soon after,
Pete Welch of Vermont became the first senator to call on Biden to withdraw
from the election. Welch said he was worried about the race because “the stakes
could not be higher”.
“I
understand why President Biden wants to run,” Welch wrote in a Washington Post
op-ed. “He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he
needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is
not.
“For the
good of the country, I’m calling on President Biden to withdraw from the race.”
Richard
Blumenthal, a senator from Connecticut, also voiced concerns.
“I am deeply
concerned about Joe Biden winning this November,” Blumenthal told reporters,
adding that the party “had to reach a conclusion as soon as possible” and that
Biden still retained his support.
A similarly
circumspect call to reconsider came from Katie Hobbs, the Democratic governor
of Arizona, a battleground state that was one of six moved by the Cook
Political Report – a non-partisan election forecaster – in Trump’s direction
following the president’s post-debate poll slide.
“I want the
president to look at the evidence and make a hard decision,” Hobbs told
reporters, adding that Biden had “a lot to do to assure Americans and
Arizonans”.
And on
Wednesday evening, Representative Earl Blumenauer, the longest-serving Democrat
in Oregon’s House delegation, put it bluntly: “President Biden should not be
the Democratic presidential nominee.”
“The
question before the country is whether the president should continue his
candidacy for re-election. This is not just about extending his presidency but
protecting democracy,” he said in an emailed statement.
“It is a
painful and difficult conclusion but there is no question in my mind that we
will all be better served if the president steps aside as the Democratic
nominee and manages a transition under his terms.”
There were
even signs of slippage within the staunchly loyal Congressional Black Caucus,
which had pledged its support on Monday night. On Wednesday one of its members,
Marc Veasey of Texas, became the first to break ranks by telling CNN that
Democrats running in tight races should “distance themselves” from Biden in an
effort to “do whatever it is they need to do” to win.
The public
agonising illustrated how Biden’s debate failure has plunged the Democrats into
paralysis as the campaign approaches a key phase.
Yet there
seemed little imminent sign of Biden – who has already written to the party’s
congressional group en masse telling doubters to challenge him at the
convention – yielding to pressure to bow out.
He retains
the support – at least in public – of key party figures such as the Senate
majority leader, Chuck Schumer; the Democratic minority leader in the House,
Hakeem Jeffries; and Gavin Newsom, the California governor who has been touted
as a potential replacement candidate but who has acted as a loyal surrogate.
Far from
Biden retreating, plans were announced for a second primetime television
interview – this time with NBC’s Lester Holt next Monday in the symbolic
setting of the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas – to follow last Friday’s with
ABC’s George Stephanopoulos.
The latest
interview, coming on the heels of Biden’s hosting of Nato’s 75th anniversary
summit in Washington this week – where he has been meeting a succession of
world leaders – appeared designed to reinforce the message that he intends to
stay the course.
On
Wednesday, the president visited the Washington headquarters of the main US
trade union body, the AFL-CIO, an important Democrat constituency.
The trade
union visit followed a virtual meeting from the White House on Tuesday evening
with about 200 Democratic mayors, in which he restated his determination to
remain and reportedly won their support.
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