Will Joe go? US President Biden digs in his heels as detractors step up pressure
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Mr Joe Biden has claimed that he has spoken to at least 20 members of Congress who are telling him to ”stay in the race”.
PHOTO: AFP
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WASHINGTON – “Pass the torch, Joe”, read a placard at a July 5 rally addressed by US President Joe Biden in the swing state of Wisconsin, where he is lagging behind his Republican rival Donald Trump by a few points.
But Mr Biden is in no mood to read signs at campaign rallies – or follow unsolicited advice, whether it is coming from Democratic senators or sympathetic TV news anchors.
He repeatedly made that clear in the course of a prime-time TV interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, the high priest of Democratic political thought and former Bill Clinton political adviser.
Asked by reporters at his Wisconsin rally
Asked by Mr Stephanopoulos how he might be persuaded to leave the race,
“If the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that,” he quipped.
The 30-minute interview – and the Wisconsin rally – was meant to reverse the damage done to President Biden’s candidacy by his shockingly feeble performance in the first presidential debate of the 2024 election on June 27.
Mr Biden appeared physically frail and was often incoherent in his replies at the debate, stirring up a storm about his mental acuity.
More than a week later, the 81-year-old is meeting a rising tide of voices in opposition to his second term.
On July 7, one of his most senior party members is convening a meeting to discuss the viability of the Biden bid.
This is to take place on the same day he heads to Pennsylvania – another swing state where he is coming up short in polls that put Trump ahead by 3 points.
Mr Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Party leader in the House of Representatives, has acted after at least four sitting Congressmen openly asked Mr Biden to step down, and a string of polls showed that the unpopular President may drag down any chances the Democrats have of winning back the House.
Mr Biden has, however, claimed that he has spoken to at least 20 members of Congress, and “they’re telling me to stay in the race”.
July 8 may be Mr Biden’s most stressful day yet.
Senator Mark Warner, his powerful party colleague who heads the Intelligence Committee, is reportedly leading a group of like-minded senators to the White House to “air candid concerns”, reported the Washington Post.
Perhaps money talks the loudest, and here, too, the message is not pleasant.
At least two prominent Democratic donors, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and Ms Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Walt Disney Company co-founder Roy Disney, have said they will no longer be contributing to the party until Mr Biden is replaced.
The Biden campaign, on the other hand, says it received a vote of confidence from voters, raising US$38 million (S$51 million) from the day of the debate to the weekend, mainly through small donations.
In all, US$127 million was raised in June, the best fund-raising month of his re-election campaign.
Most damagingly, perhaps, the liberal media in America is turning against him, portraying Mr Biden as being in a fight for his political life.
The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, CNN and others have all weighed in with pieces suggesting that the presumptive Democratic nominee ought to be replaced.
The best-case scenario that would silence critics and detractors would involve Mr Biden’s poll numbers edging up – but he is yet to have a breakout moment that can undo the debate blow.
Two rallies since the debate saw him more animated and convincing. But critics said the teleprompter was his crutch.
The Stephanopoulos interview was judged to be a draw.
Mr Biden did not do too badly, but he did give some rambling answers that – again – raised concerns. He pointedly refused to take an independent cognitive test during the interview.
Overall, there are signs that important sections of the Democratic Party have participated in calls to replace Mr Biden. But has the countdown to a Biden replacement begun?
Not quite yet.
Technically, that can happen only if Mr Biden were to voluntarily relinquish the massive support he racked up through the party’s primary elections, in which ordinary Democrats across the country voted for him.
To secure the party nomination, he needed 1,976 delegate votes; he received almost 4,000.
If giving them up is a possibility, it is not one that Mr Biden is entertaining just yet.
And time is running out. The party is due to hold its nominating convention from Aug 19 to 22. That means only around a month remains to set up rules through which other candidates could throw their hats in the ring and jockey for support with 4,532 delegates or party officials who cast votes for the nominee.
In order to meet Ohio’s general election ballot deadline of Aug 7, the party had said it would hold a “virtual roll-call” before the convention.
This appears unnecessary after Ohio passed a Bill extending the date to Aug 23, but the party’s pro-Biden executive committee says it will hold the pre-convention roll-call anyway.
The date has not been announced, but it could happen by the end of July.
In the event that Mr Biden refuses to step aside, and enough public pressure has built up against him, there is scope for a mutiny of sorts.
The party delegates can feel free to vote for someone else, because the rule states that they are required “in all good conscience” to reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.
As any Democratic elector would readily concede, there is a moral case to be made in weighing Mr Biden’s candidacy against questions of his infirmity.
After all, as the President himself argues, Trump is an existential threat to democracy. And the Democratic Party cannot let Mr Biden stand in the way of victory.
