U.S. President Joe Biden waves at a press conference during NATO’s 75th anniversary summit, in Washington, U.S., July 11, 2024.
Nathan Howard | Reuters
The reelection campaign of President Joe Biden faced calls by an increasing number of Democrats in Congress to quit the race against former President Donald Trump and allow a new nominee to top the ticket.
Shortly after Biden gave a rare news conference Thursday that was intended to allay fears about his cognitive health, three more House Democrats said he should exit the contest.
Several more lawmakers joined that group Friday, making for at least 19 Democratic members of Congress so far who have called on him to drop out. There are 213 Democrats in the House, and 47 Democrats in the Senate.
“I have deep respect for President Biden’s five plus decades of public service and incredible appreciation for the work we’ve done together these last three and a half years,” said Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., in a statement on Friday afternoon.
“But I believe the time has come for President Biden to pass the torch,” Levin said.
Biden at Thursday’s news conference reiterated he would continue running for a second term, saying that nothing would make him reconsider that decision save for polls showing he had no chance of winning.
“No one’s saying that,” said Biden, who was set to give a campaign speech in Detroit later Friday. “No poll says that.”
Biden made it through the hourlong news conference and answered reporters’ questions, prompting his campaign to declare victory over his naysayers.
But his halting speech and misstatements — such as referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” — did little to win over members of his party. Nor did his argument for why he was staying in the race.
“I think I’m the most qualified person to run for president,” Biden said. “I beat Trump once, and I will beat him again.”
Biden briefly acknowledged his poor approval ratings, but only by noting that there were “at least five presidents running or incumbent presidents who had lower numbers than I have now later in the campaign.”
“There’s a long way to go this campaign. And so I, I’m just going to keep moving, keep moving, and because, look, I got more work to do. We got more work to finish.”
Still, very few Democrats are insisting that Biden must remain the party’s nominee. And several key figures in the party are blatantly ignoring Biden’s repeated assertions that his mind is made up, and emphasizing instead how much time still remains before the party’s August nominating convention.
Biden’s longtime ally, Rep. James Clyburn, on Friday morning said the president should “continue to make his own decision about his future.”
The South Carolina Democrat also hinted that Biden could eventually agree to step aside.
“If he decides to change his mind later on, then we would respond to that,” Clyburn said on NBC’s “TODAY” show.
“We have until the 19th of August to open our convention, and so I would hope that we will spend our time now focusing on the record that we will lay out for the American people, remind the American people of what is in store for them if Project 2025 were to become the law in any form, that is where our focus ought to be,” Clyburn said.
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Project 2025 is a 900-page treatise of hard-line conservative policy proposals assembled by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and is intended to set the policy agenda for a second Trump term in the White House. Trump last week said he had nothing to do with Project 2025, but several of his allies and alumni of his first White House term were involved in putting it together.
“We have to stop talking about ourselves, and have to start talking about the guy we’re running against,” a Biden campaign official told NBC News. “Every day that we don’t talk about Trump or Project 2025 is wasted,” the official said.
But the campaign for the past three weeks has been unable to tamp down calls for Biden to quit the election contest.
Those calls were sparked by the president’s poor debate performance against Trump on June 27, where Biden often garbled his words and lost his train of thought.
Since then, more news stories have highlighted concerns among Democrats and Biden’s allies about the mental acuity of the 81-year-old president.
This is developing news. Check back for updates.