After his horrible performance in Thursday night’s debate, even the left is calling Joe Biden’s future as the Democratic Party’s nominee into question.
“President Biden is a good man who capped a long career in public service with a successful presidential term,” wrote New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff. “But I hope he reviews his debate performance Thursday evening and withdraws from the race, throwing the choice of a Democratic nominee to the convention in August.”
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“I think there’s a lot of people who were going to want to see him consider taking a different course now,” lamented CNN’s Van Jones. “We’re still far from our convention and there is time for this party to consider a different way forward if he will allow us to do that.”
“What’s Joe Biden’s superpower? That he’s a good guy who will do the right thing for the country. In this case, that’s stepping aside and letting the DNC choose another nominee,” former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang wrote on X.
“We cannot do this, Democrats,” Democratic consultant and former Obama aide Johanna Maska declared in a video she posted on X. “Joe Biden can’t put a sentence together. We have to change our candidate — and we have so many good candidates who are sitting on the sidelines.”
Will Biden drop out? There’s very little the Democrats can do about that unless Biden willingly does so. And according to his campaign, he isn’t going anywhere.
“Of course, he’s not dropping out,” Biden campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster told The Hill.
The president himself brushed off talk over whether he should bow out during a stop at a Waffle House following the debate.
“No. It’s hard to debate a liar. The New York Times pointed out he lied 26 times,” he said, referring to former President Trump.
Biden’s performance in Thursday night’s debate with Trump was largely panned by Democrats, some of whom have acknowledged it will stoke conversations about whether the president should be replaced atop the Democratic ticket before August’s convention.
The president’s voice was often raspy, which the White House later attributed to a cold, and he at times lost his train of thought or struggled to make his point clearly.
“The chatter is very distracting, and it’s going to be very consuming for the campaign,” former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki said on MSNBC. “Should he be replaced? They’re going to be answering that question instead of breaking through on attacking Trump.”
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For what it’s worth, this is exactly what you’d expect the Biden campaign to say. If Biden were to be considering dropping out, it wouldn’t be right away. They’d find a way for him to make a dignified exit from the race, and that wouldn’t happen in the shadow of a universally panned debate performance.
Related: Who Thought It Was a Good Idea to Let Biden Debate?
“The American people know what they just saw: Joe Biden further embarrassed the United States with tonight’s debate performance, and he is too weak to serve as Commander in Chief,” Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Whatley said in a statement after the debate. “Biden’s cognitive decline has made him entirely unfit for office, and his open-border bloodbath, destructive economic policies, and emboldening of chaos around the world have made all families worse off. The contrast between President Trump and Biden is clear — it’s time to retire Joe Biden once and for all and allow President Trump to Make America Great Again.”