Biden wants everyone to think it’s all over; he’s the nominee and that’s the end of the story. But that’s not the case. Both Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries told him if he’s at the top of the ticket, it will help the Republicans take both houses of Congress. And on Wednesday Adam Schiff called on him to drop his bid for another term. Wealthy donors have stopped giving to the campaign.
Schiff said Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history, and his lifetime of service as a Senator, a Vice President, and now as President has made our country better. But our nation is at a crossroads. A second Trump presidency will undermine the very foundation of our democracy, and I have serious concerns about whether the President can defeat Donald Trump in November.”
Schiff is hardly an outlier among Democrats. A couple dozen other Democrats in Congress have called on Biden to drop out and according to a new poll by NORC for AP, nearly two-thirds of Democrats say Biden “should withdraw from the presidential race and let his party nominate a different candidate, according to a new poll, sharply undercutting his post-debate claim that ‘average Democrats’ are still with him even if some ‘big names’ are turning on him… [O]nly about 3 in 10 Democrats are extremely or very confident that he has the mental capability to serve effectively as president.”
The poll provides some evidence that Black Democrats are among Biden’s strongest supporters, with roughly half in the survey saying he should continue running, compared to about 3 in 10 white and Hispanic Democrats. Overall, seven in 10 Americans think Biden should drop out, with Democrats only slightly less likely than Republicans and independents to say that he should make way for a new nominee.
…About 6 in 10 Americans want Trump to withdraw— but relatively few Republicans are in that camp.
As for Biden, younger Democrats are especially likely to want to see him bow out— and to say they’re dissatisfied with him. Three-quarters of Democrats under the age of 45 want Biden to drop out, compared to about 6 in 10 of those who are older.
One slight glimmer of hope: Biden, who’s suffering from COVID again at the moment, said in a BET interview “released on Wednesday that he would re-evaluate whether to stay in the presidential race if a doctor told him directly that he had a medical condition that made that necessary.
“Biden also said for the first time,” reported Michael Shear, “that he had expected to “move on” from the presidency and “pass it on to somebody else” but decided to run again because he believed his “wisdom” and experience would help heal the country’s worsening divisions. ‘You may remember Ed, I said I was going to be a transitional candidate, and I thought I would be able to move on from this and pass it on to somebody else,’ the president said. ‘But I didn’t anticipate things getting so, so, so divided. And quite frankly, I think the only thing age brings is a little bit of wisdom.’ It is the most explicit that Biden has been in suggesting that he considered serving only one term in office when he ran in 2020. At the time, he said he would be a transitional candidate who could serve as a bridge to a new generation of political leaders in the party. That was widely seen at the time by many Democrats as Biden— the oldest person elected to the White House— hinting that he would pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris to run in the 2024 election.”
Why the fuck then didn't he begin passing that torch in January so normal primaries could run? Unless he really had no intention of doing that or, as you posit, he wanted to be sure Harris got the job on short notice.
Biden's got an honorable and face-saving off ramp now.
.....That said, as far as COVID is concerned, good for an 81-year-old is not reliably good. And COVID does not have to kill someone to have troubling, lasting effects. Even mild bouts of COVID can lead to symptoms that linger for weeks or years and range from inconvenient to debilitating. In a study published today, about 7.8 percent of patients infected since Omicron became the dominant variant in the United States developed long-term symptoms. Given current concerns about the president’s health and brainpower, any....
https://archive.vn/M5GBZ
I think you're right -- but the reason why Biden hasn't withdrawn yet is because of the GOP convention -- not only does the GOP fired remain primarily focused on him (instead of a successor) but the constant media speculation and reporting on the Biden question means that the media is doing something other than firehosing GOP propaganda for four days. and I'll vote for Harris, but I don't think she'll win. I mean, we saw this whole thing once already -- a female candidate with a significant negative favorability rating, and who crashed and burned spectacularly in an earlier bid to become the Party nominee? Do we really need to do this all over again?
'Schiff said Biden “has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history..."' What did he do about the corrupt supreme court? Nothing. What did he do about codifying the norms and standards that Trump so grievously violated in his first term? Nothing. What did he do about the "how to turn America into a dictatorship" section of project 2025? Nothing. For someone who ran on the platform of protecting America from the death of democracy, he hasn't even attempted to do ANYTHING to make the next Nazi think twice. He couldn't even convince a large majority of people that Trump is a con-man who's policies would be bad for America in 4 years, after having 4 years of examples! And…
Why keep Biden until this late date? I would like to offer a speculation. Because for the first half of his term, Joe Biden was phenomenally competent.
Biden's real job wasn't to unite the country, it was to insure that 'nothing would fundamentally change.'
That meant insuring that a world-class crisis didn't result in genuine reform.
Joe Biden's first two years, were a master's class in that. The part of BBB that passed, were business subsidies. My view is, that was the only part Joe Biden ever intended to pass. Hundreds of people wasted thousands of hours, on a Potemkin bill, but pretending is the business of professional politicians. It is their day to day job.
Of course Nancy Pelosi…