Joe Biden vowed to stay in the presidential race and continue his re-election bid, telling his staffers: “No one is pushing me out,” according to multiple reports.
In a call on Wednesday following his lackluster performance during last week’s presidential debate and amid growing panic from Democratic donors and lawmakers, Biden said:
Let me say this as clearly as possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running.
Biden went on to add:
No one is pushing me out … I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.
In the same call, vice-president Kamala Harris – whose name has been increasingly floated around as Biden’s replacement – continued to voice her support for Biden, with reports of her saying:
We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight and we will win. Joe Biden has devoted his life to fighting for the people of our country. In this moment, I know all of us are ready to fight for him.
Amid the political crisis surrounding the Democratic party, Joe Biden hosted a Medal of Honor ceremony at the White House today during which he posthumously honoured two Union soldiers.
The soldiers, private George Wilson and private Philip Shadrach fought in a “military operation 200 miles deep into Confederate territory in April 1862”, Biden said, recognising them for their “gallantry and intrepidity”.
The next platform of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is going to be closed off from the public, Semafor reports.
Unlike previous years, next week’s party platform proceedings will not be aired via C-Span. Instead, it will be held privately and away from the public and members of the media.
According to RNC emails reviewed by Semafor, committee meetings “are only open to members of that particular committee”.
Speaking to Semafor, Oscar Brock, an RNC committee member from Tennessee, said:
The lack of transparency is unwelcome … When people operate behind closed doors, you always have to wonder what the outcome is going to be.”
Donald Trump’s campaign has released a statement on what it called the “total collapse of the Democrat party”.
On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign said:
Every Democrat who is calling on Crooked Joe Biden to quit was once a supporter of Biden and his failed policies that lead to extreme inflation, an open border, and chaos at home and abroad.
Make no mistake that Democrats, the main stream media, and the swamp colluded to hide the truth from the American public – Joe Biden is weak, failed, dishonest, and not fit for the White House.
Every one of them has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive state and supported his disastrous policies over the past four years, especially Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris.
The statement comes after last week’s presidential debate which saw an energized Trump with starkly more coherent delivery – despite being packed with lies and misinformation – compared with Biden who struggled to articulate his policies throughout the 90 minutes.
House Democrat Raúl Grijalva of Arizona has joined his fellow House Democrat Lloyd Doggett of Texas in calls for Joe Biden to withdraw his re-election bid.
In an interview with the New York Times, Grijalva said:
If he’s the candidate, I’m going to support him but I think that this is an opportunity to look elsewhere … What he really needs to do is shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat – and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race.
As Joe Biden’s campaign team rushes to soothe concerns among Democrats amid the fallout following the president’s poor performance during last week’s presidential debate, the team posted a new job listing: Kamala Harris’s social media platforms strategist.
In its listing, the team described the position as:
The VP Social Media Platforms Strategist will report to the VP Digital Director and be expected to write within an established organizational identity for multiple social media platforms and channels, while strategizing how to further develop and expand the vice-president’s and Biden-Harris campaign’s voice online.
Its duties include:
Write daily content and manage scheduling for Twitter/X, Threads, Facebook and Instagram accounts, including drafting, conceptualizing graphics, videos, brainstorming calls to action, and copywriting
Strategize and execute innovative social media projects to help grow and engage our audience
Project manage publishing assets across multiple social media platforms
Ensure materials are sufficiently accessible for users, including captioning and alternative text
Help the VP digital director report on audience growth, content performance and engagement that can adapt to and meet the needs of stakeholders across the DNC and manage daily outbound report
Michelle Obama is the only Democrat who ranks higher than Biden in a new poll on who is most likely to beat Trump.
According to a new poll on Tuesday conducted by Reuters and Ipsos, the former first lady is the only Democrat that is able to attain victory over Trump in November in a hypothetical match, leading with 50% support compared to his 39%.
In its findings, Ipsos wrote:
All other hypothetical Democratic candidates either perform similarly to or worse than Biden against Trump.
Vice-president Kamala Harris hypothetically wins 42% of registered voters to Trump’s 43%. California Governor Gavin Newsom hypothetically wins 39% of registered voters to Trump’s 42%.
All other hypothetical Democratic candidates earn between 34% to 39% of potential votes among registered voters.
Despite Michelle Obama’s popularity and calls for her to run for president, her office in March said that “she will not be running for president.”
“Mrs Obama supports president Joe Biden and vice-president Kamala Harris’s re-election campaign,” her office added.
The editorial board of the Boston Globe has called on Joe Biden to end his re-election bid, following in the footsteps of the New York Times which called on Biden last week to drop out of the race.
In an op-ed published on Wednesday, the editorial board wrote:
… while the party is demoralized, panicked, and angry, there is a ray of hope. A bevy of potential candidates – from vice-president Kamala Harris to the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and California, to name only a partial list – are waiting in the wings to take on Trump.
All that they need is for Biden to graciously bow out of the race and free his delegates to cast their votes for someone else at the Democratic National Convention.
For the good of the country, his party, and his legacy, Biden must do this. And soon.
It went on to add:
The real obstacle to any of this happening is Biden himself. He must walk away from the race on his own, something he seems disinclined to do. His wife and children are said to oppose the idea as well. But with the nation’s future at stake, this is not a decision that should be made by one family alone.
This is a moment when the Democratic party itself, never particularly good at behaving like a party, must step into the fray.
Joe Biden vowed to stay in the presidential race and continue his re-election bid, telling his staffers: “No one is pushing me out,” according to multiple reports.
In a call on Wednesday following his lackluster performance during last week’s presidential debate and amid growing panic from Democratic donors and lawmakers, Biden said:
Let me say this as clearly as possibly can, as simply and straightforward as I can: I am running.
Biden went on to add:
No one is pushing me out … I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win.
In the same call, vice-president Kamala Harris – whose name has been increasingly floated around as Biden’s replacement – continued to voice her support for Biden, with reports of her saying:
We will not back down. We will follow our president’s lead. We will fight and we will win. Joe Biden has devoted his life to fighting for the people of our country. In this moment, I know all of us are ready to fight for him.
Joe Biden is cleared-eyed and “staying in the race” for re-election, the White House insists.
“The president is not dropping out,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre just said at the media briefing in Washington DC.
She is finding different ways, in response to reporters’ questions, to reiterate the insistence of the Biden team that he is not about to succumb to pressure to drop out after his terribly halting performance when he debated Donald Trump last week.
“There was the travel. And the travel led to a cold. We have all been there, it’s not unusual. And you push through,” she said.
Jean-Pierre added later that such things affect people, whether they are 20 or 80. She said he spoke about how his age had affected his performance and was being upfront.
The White House is working painfully hard to extricate the president from his position between a rock and a hard place.
Karine Jean-Pierre claimed that Joe Biden “powered through” having a cold when he debated poorly against Donald Trump last week, as is normal for busy professionals.
It was not reassuring, as the White House continues on the defensive amid the crisis over Biden insisting he continue as the Democratic presumptive nominee for re-election, despite performing increasingly unreliably as an 81-year-old president of the United States.
And Jean-Pierre said that the president was jet-lagged and pushing through that, too, last Thursday, even though he had around 12 days back in the US between a spate of grueling overseas trips and the debate.
She said that people “push through” jet lag, trying to convince reporters decades younger than Biden that it would be unsurprising that a cold and jet lag would affect his debate performance.
Some reporters in the West Wing briefing room scoffed openly, mentioning that, yes, they have had colds and, even now, according to one, have jet lag – and yet they continue to perform their jobs much more vigorously than Biden did at the debate.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just been asked point blank if Joe Biden is considering stepping away from being the presumptive nominee for re-election to the White House in this November’s election.
“Absolutely not,” she said. Asked if there was anything that would change his mind, she said she can’t speak to that but says he has been “very clear” that he’s busy doing his job and will continue doing that.
“I’m not going to speak to [about] unnamed sources out there,” she said.
The White House press briefing has begun in the West Wing, with press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre at the podium.
Questions are already beginning about Biden’s performance.
He has owned that he had a bad night at the debate, the press secretary said.
“He also had a cold during the debate,” she said.
That, and the foreign travel that Biden blamed last night, are why he didn’t do well and wishes he could have done better, Jean-Pierre said.
“We certainly don’t want to explain this away,” she added.
She explained that he has “made outreach” to the leading Democrats in Congress, including the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.
Joe Biden and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, made a surprise appearance earlier today on a Democratic National Committee call, reiterating to staffers that they are in this fight for re-election together, according to three people familiar with the matter who were given anonymity to discuss the private conversation.
The people said it was a pep talk, stressing the stakes of the election and returning to Biden’s previous post-debates comments that when he gets knocked down he gets back up and still plans to win the election, the Associated Press reports.
Democrats have raised increasingly urgent questions about the US president’s ability to remain in the race, much less win in November, after his shaky debate performance last week.
Here’s a look at where the day stands:
The White House pushed back against a new New York Times report that Joe Biden allegedly told a key ally that he is weighing whether to stay in the presidential race. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported an anonymous source saying of Biden, “He knows if he has two more events like that, we’re in a different place,” referring to last week’s presidential debate in which Biden did poorly. In response, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates took to X, posting publicly: “That claim is absolutely false.”
House Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington said that Joe Biden “is going to lose to Trump” following the president’s poor debate performance last week. In a new interview with KATU News, Gluesenkamp Perez said: “About 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate. I was one of them for about five very painful minutes. We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”
Dozens of House Democrats are considering signing a letter to call for Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race, Bloomberg reports, citing a “senior party official”. According to the source, Democrats currently running for re-election in “traditionally safe Democratic districts are circulating the letter”.
Joe Biden has privately acknowledged how critical the next few days are to his presidential re-election bid, CNN reports. According to the outlet citing an anonymous source, Biden “sees the moment, he’s clear-eyed”. “The polls are plummeting, the fundraising is drying up, and the interviews are going badly. He’s not oblivious,” the source said, adding that Biden allegedly said in a private conversation on Tuesday: “I have done way too much foreign policy.”
The majority of people surveyed in a new poll said that they did not think Biden was fit to be president for another term following his debate performance last week. The latest survey by YahooNews/YouGov found that 60% of people surveyed felt Biden was “not fit” to serve another term as president, the Hill reported. Only 24% of respondents felt that Biden was fit, while 16% said they were unsure.
Another Democratic legislator has suggested that Kamala Harris could replace Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee amid growing discontent following Biden’s poor debate performance. House Democrat Summer Lee of Pennsylvania said Harris was the “obvious choice” in a scenario where Biden decides not to run, CBS News reported.
Uncommitted voters across the US have taken on increased influence as debates surrounding Joe Biden’s future swirl.
The Guardian’s Rachel Leingang reports:
After Joe Biden’s poor debate performance and calls by some prominent Democrats to replace him, the hundreds of thousands of anti-war voters and the delegates who represent them have taken on new significance in the US presidential race.
More than 700,000 voters cast ballots in the Democratic primaries for “uncommitted” options after a movement started in Michigan to pressure Biden to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and stop US funding and arms to the Israeli government.
These voters won 29 uncommitted delegates to the Democratic national convention, a small but vocal group that will use their position at the nominating convention to call for an end to the war. The uncommitted vote consists of likely Democratic voters who have consistently said they are anti-Trump and who used the primary process to send a message to Biden.
Their message has not changed, though uncommitted delegates said they have been hearing from more people about the role they could play in the convention since last week’s debate. Their sole platform remains a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo, and their focus is still on Biden – who is still the president.
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Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
