President Joe Biden has suspended his reelection campaign, sparking a political firestorm regarding who should replace him mere months before voters head to the ballot box.
Biden’s decision comes after his opening debate against Republican opponent former President Donald Trump in which he appeared to lose his train of thought and, at times, stood with his mouth agape. The Biden campaign had pushed for the debate in the hope of changing the dynamics of a race in which the president is polling behind his predecessor in key battleground states.
Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) precipitated the bursting of the political dam when, on Tuesday, he became the first elected congressional Democrat to ask Biden to step down as the party’s 2024 presumptive nominee.
“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,” Doggett wrote in a statement. “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. I respectfully call on him to do so.”
Reps. Jared Golden (D-ME) and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA), two House Democrats with competitive reelection campaigns this November, then took a different approach, advising Biden he would lose to Trump.
“We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump,” Gluesenkamp Perez told KATU. “I know that’s difficult, but I think the damage has been done by that debate.”
But in the weeks that followed, Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), sat down with Biden to discuss his candidacy and how it could effect the down-ballot races, in addition to the party more broadly. That is despite some Democrats calling on Biden to prove himself in more extemporaneous opportunities, such as an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and a press conference on the sidelines of the 75th NATO summit. At the same time, tensions with Democrats remained, evidenced by a terse conversation with Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) related to his and the late Beau Biden‘s Bronze Star.
Since the debate, Trump’s assassination attempt, and Biden’s COVID-19 diagnosis, 19 Democrats have called on the president to stand down as their party’s nominee.
Rank-and-file Democrats, rankled by the Biden campaign and Democratic National Committee‘s response to the president’s debate, have also criticized leaders in both camps for downplaying, even mocking, their concerns.
“One of the things that, notoriously, Democrats are known for: some of us like to wring our hands,” DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison told the Washington Examiner in Atlanta after the debate. “It’s not time to wring hands, it’s about rolling up your sleeves to do the work.”
After aides attributed Biden’s bad debate to a cold, the president apportioned responsibility to his travel to Europe for the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Group of 7 leaders summit during a fundraiser in Virginia last month. The president spent the week prior to the debate preparing at Camp David.
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“I decided to travel around the world a couple of times … shortly before the debate,” he told donors. “I didn’t listen to my staff and then I almost fell asleep on stage.” “It’s not an excuse, but an explanation,” he said.
The Democratic National Convention, traditionally held to officially nominate the party’s nominee, is scheduled to start in Chicago in August, but this year there will be a virtual roll call in August so the standard-bearer can be included on the ticket in Ohio after a since resolved deadline issue with the Buckeye State’s ballot access laws.