One House Democrat said he spoke for others in the wake of the president’s stunningly feeble debate performance on Thursday: “The movement to convince Biden to not run is real.”
The House member, an outspoken defender of the president, said that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should consider “a combined effort” to nudge President Joe Biden out of the race.
Crestfallen by the president’s weak voice, pallid appearance and meandering answers, numerous Democratic officials said Biden’s bet on an early debate to rebut unceasing questions about his age had not only backfired but done damage that may prove irreversible. The president had, in the first 30 minutes of the debate, fully affirmed doubts about his fitness.
A second House Democrat said “reflection is needed” from Biden about the way ahead and indicated the private text threads among lawmakers were even more dire, with some saying outright that the president needed to drop out of the race.
You know I agree with much of what you say here. All I’ll say is that while there’s uncertainty in the outcome of this route, I’m convinced there is certainty at this point that Joe Biden will lose. Why? Because there is all there is to know about Joe Biden. Call it media saturation; diminishing returns… There is fundamentally nothing Joe Biden can do or say that people don’t already know and now their minds are pretty much made up. The desperation-play of even asking for that debate shows the Biden campaign knows how bad of a position they’re in… And it of course backfired tremendously.
So at this point, I view it as uncertainty versus a known loss.
And in that respect, I’m looking at this alternate path as appealing to those lizard-brain American Idol-watching popularity-contest voters. If we could distill election cycles down to a handful of things, chief among them would be “People Vote for the more interesting candidate” and “People vote for the fresher face” – Within the backdrop of age being a huge issue for >70% of American voters when polled, that rings even more truthful now.
So personally, I say we take the chance.