The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
President Joe Biden
***UPDATED July 21 - President Biden has withdrawn from the race but will remain on as President for now at least. He has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for POTUS.
President Joseph R. Biden slammed "elites" who were plotting against his getting the Democratic nomination for President and vowed to stay in the race. That did not stop the effort by top Democrats to retire the oldest President in American history.
"I'm not going anywhere," Biden told Mika and Joe Scarborough on a televised phone interview on MSNBC. "I absolutely believe that I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024."
"I'm getting so frustrated by the elites in the party," pressuring Biden to get out of the race and not pursue the Democratic nomination. "I don't care what the millionaires think."
Top Democratic strategists David Axelrod and James Carville have both been hammering the drum that President Biden cannot beat President Donald J. Trump (R) and more and more powerful Democrats have gotten on board the dump Biden effort.
Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California) who is also the Democratic nominee for Senate there is the latest to join the effort to dethrone President Biden.
"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 said.
Schiff's change comes on the heels of release of a second quarter FEC report showing that his campaign raised significantly less funds in the quarter than his Republican opponents – baseball and sports broadcasting legend Steve Garvey. Schiff only raised $4.2 million; while Garvey raised $5.4 million even though most politicos believe that Garvey has no chance in November.
There is a growing consensus among Democrats in Congress that Biden is a drag on the ticket.
The Washington Post is reporting that both House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) have privately told Biden to drop out of the race.
Schumer, a decades long ally of Biden, reportedly told Biden to withdraw in a private meeting on Saturday in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware following Leader Jeffries similar meeting earlier in the week on Thursday night at the White House, and Schumer (D-N.Y.) met with him on Saturday in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware where the President spends much of his time.
They warned Biden not only that he could lose the presidency; but having him at the top of the ticket could cost Democrats the majority in both Houses of Congress, meaning that President Trump could move his legislative impact through a Republican Congress that is much more Trump friendly than the one he had in 2017 when Republican 'never Trumpers' like John McCain, Jeff Flake, Adam Kinzinger, and Liz Cheney were in powerful positions to thwart the full force of the Trump agenda.
Jeffries and Schumer have both released short statements acknowledging that the meetings occurred; but have neither confirmed nor denied the substance of WAPO's reporting.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that Biden told Schumer and Jeffries in their private meetings that he would remain at the top of the ticket.
"The President told both leaders he is the nominee of the party, he plans to win, and looks forward to working with both of them to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families," Bates said in a statement.
Trump is winning the national popular vote in ten of the last twelve major polls taken and one of those showed the race tied. The latest, by Emerson College, has Trump leading Biden 44% to 38%. That would be the worst popular vote performance by a Democratic nominee in this lifetime. Emerson also has Trump beating Biden in the swing states. He leads by 10 percentage points in Arizona, 9 in North Carolina, 6 in Pennsylvania, 5 in Georgia, 3 in Nevada, 3 in Michigan, and 3 in Wisconsin.
https://emersoncollegepolling.com/july-2024-swing-state-polls/
Other pollsters have found Biden in trouble in reliably blue states like Minnesota, Virginia, New Hampshire, and New Mexico. Even in New York Biden is not polling well. In mid-June (before the debate meltdown) he was leading Trump 47% to 39%. This is a state that Biden won by 23 points in 2020.
To make matters worse for President Biden, he tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday while campaigning in Los Vegas and has shown mild symptoms.
The President has resisted all calls for him to drop out of the race, but on Wednesday he did tell BET TV in an interview that he would drop out of the race if he some sort of an illness.
Many think that the President is suffering from Parkinson's; though that is a claim that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has denied.
Most think that if Biden did drop out of the race that Vice President Kamala Harris would then step up and be the Democratic nominee for President; but others within the Democratic Party favor an open convention where delegates can select from a number of potential candidates.
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