People say that Biden did okay during his interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. It was a low bar, and many media outlets think he tripped again. If it fell short of quelling concerns about his mental health, it’s a failure. It was also littered with lies, like Mark Warner running for president, his ability to draw crowds—he can’t—and this ‘I have a cold and was tired’ narrative to explain his historically abysmal debate performance against Donald Trump. The man made a 2 am pit stop at Waffle House after getting boat raced by the former president. It was a trainwreck. Also, the poll denialism was inescapable.
Even the most ardent liberal knows Biden is losing. Yet, Joe thinks this race is a toss-up. He’s losing ground in key swing states, his approval is 32 percent, and there’s a brewing revolt among Hill Democrats and megadonors. Another round of bad polling and his main source of muscle—Democratic governors—might jump ship as well. Yet, concerns about his mental health and ability to beat Trump are now leeching into the White House staff. Lower-level aides have been described as “miserable” since the debate, likening the operation to Weekend at Bernie’s. Now, senior White House aides, risking the wrath of Jill, are coming forward, agreeing that Biden should step aside (via NYT):
A senior White House official who has worked w/ Biden during his presidency, vice presidency and 2020 campaign said Biden should not seek re-election. They no longer believed Biden had what it took to campaign vigorously and defeat Trump, the person saidhttps://t.co/askWjud2uY
— Katie Glueck (@katieglueck) July 6, 2024
Senior White House official, speaking anonymously, said President Biden should not seek re-election - NYT
— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) July 6, 2024
Numerous officials, lawmakers and strategists in President Biden’s own party increasingly see his candidacy as unsustainable — and their private anxieties are slowly but steadily spilling into public view, interviews with more than 50 Democrats this week showed.
Growing swaths of Democrats now believe that by remaining on the ticket, the president is jeopardizing their ability to maintain the White House and threatening other candidates up and down the ballot. The moment is setting up an extraordinary clash between a defiant president of the United States who insists he is not abandoning his re-election campaign and members of his party who are beginning to suggest that he should.
“I have less and less confidence in this campaign’s ability to win this race,” Representative Scott Peters, Democrat of California, said in an interview. “If we know we’re going to lose, we would be foolish not to look at another course.”
Representative Angie Craig, Democrat of Minnesota, urged Mr. Biden on Saturday to step aside as the Democratic nominee. “I do not believe that the president can effectively campaign and win against Donald Trump,” she said in a statement.
[…]
And a Democratic member of Congress, a former high-ranking Obama administration official and a senior aide to a prominent Democratic governor all privately used the same word in separate interviews on Friday to describe Mr. Biden’s standing in the campaign: “untenable.”
[…]
Certainly, many leading Democrats have publicly expressed support for the president, or remained quiet about any misgivings. One senior White House official, however, who has worked with Mr. Biden during his presidency, vice presidency and 2020 campaign, said in an interview on Saturday morning that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election.
After watching Mr. Biden in private, in public and while traveling with him, the official said they no longer believed the president had what it took to campaign in a vigorous way and defeat Donald J. Trump. The official, who insisted on anonymity in order to continue serving, said Mr. Biden had steadily showed more signs of his age in recent months, including speaking more slowly, haltingly and quietly, as well as appearing more fatigued in private.
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It's just brutal: the president’s own allies are saying he doesn’t have what it takes to win but will keep working for him. The age and cognitive issues aren’t going away. We could see a new wave of scrutiny now that Biden’s personal doctor met with a Parkinson’s Disease expert at least eight times starting in August of 2023. It could be more since no visitor logs are kept at Biden’s Delaware home, where the president has spent a significant amount of his presidency there.
The people with the big bucks, those who push his agenda on the Hill, and now senior aides are starting to turn on the president. I can see how denialism can easily engulf this man—it’s the only thing he has left when everyone privately says what we’re all saying: he ain’t it.
It’s not exactly saying the quiet part out loud, but in this environment, where such utterances will get you skewered by Jill, everyone knows he’s cooked. If one senior aide sees it, the rest of them do.
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