A congressional Democrat from Texas has officially called on President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election.
Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) warned that the incumbent could impede the other Democrats down-ticket. He criticized Biden’s performance in his debate with former President Donald Trump and said the president “has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump.”
“I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not,” said Doggett in a statement on July 2, per Fox News. “Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump's many lies.”
“Our overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang," he continued.
The congressman warned that "too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory” and that it is too risky to assume “that what could not be turned around in a year, what was not turned around in the debate, can be turned around now.”
“President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020,” said Doggett. “He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024.”
Biden’s halting speech and low-energy presentation at the June 27 debate has raised concern among many Democrats and progressive political activists about his viability as his party’s presidential candidate.
Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin told MSNBC on June 30 that there are “very honest, and serious and rigorous conversations taking place” about Biden’s campaign.
“We’re having a serious conversation about what to do,” said Raskin. “One thing I can tell you is that regardless of what President Biden decides, our party is going to be unified, and our party also needs him at the very center of our deliberations in our campaign ... whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate.”
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said during a July 2 interview that questions about Biden’s ability to serve are “legitimate” in the wake of the debate. She added that voters should question the health of both Biden and Trump.
“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it’s legitimate — of both candidates,” she said, per HuffPost.
“We should be tearing up what [Trump] said the other day, because it was a pack of lies,” Pelosi continued. “It’s very hard to debate somebody when you have to undo or debunk everything they are saying. Both candidates owe whatever test you want to put them to, in terms of their mental acuity and their health.”
Biden’s administration and campaign team have both denied reports that the president may withdraw from the race.
Campaign communications director Michael Tyler downplayed the fallout from the televised event during a June 28 press event.
"Obviously, I think the president said himself he’s not as good as a debater as he used to be,” Tyler said, per Fox News. “But he knows how to fight like hell. … That’s what the American people are going to continue to see day in and day out for the remainder of this campaign: a president in Joe Biden who understands he’s never going to stop fighting for the American people, and he’s never going to stop contrasting that against Donald Trump, who every single day is clearly fighting for himself.”
Tyler argued the debate “crystallized the threat … that Donald Trump poses.”
Speaking from the White House briefing room for the first time since the debate, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied that Biden is suffering from Alzheimer’s or a degenerative illness.
