Joe Biden will meet with Democratic governors on Wednesday as the president faces increasingly troubling poll numbers and growing calls to withdraw his candidacy, including from a Democrat in Congress.
Biden will meet with governors and Capitol Hill leaders this week, officials said Tuesday, to reassure them of his competence and address growing discontent among party leaders after last week’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. News of the meetings comes after Texas congressman Lloyd Doggett became the first House Democrat to publicly urge the president to step aside.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday also found that one in three Democrats said Biden should end his re-election campaign after the Atlanta debate, where he gave an unenergized and inconclusive performance.
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At a campaign event in Virginia on Tuesday night, Biden blamed his poor debate performance on his international travel leading up to the event, saying, “I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world a couple of times, travel through about 100 time zones … for … the debate. I didn’t listen to my staff and came back and almost fell asleep on stage. That’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation.”
He said his campaign has raised $38 million since last week.
While leading party members continued to publicly support Biden even amid feverish concern behind the scenes, Doggett raised his own reservations, saying he hoped the debate would “give some momentum” to the president’s flagging poll numbers in key states that matter.
“It didn’t,” he said. “Instead of reassuring voters, the president failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”
He urged Biden to follow the path of a previous Democratic president, Lyndon Johnson, and announce that he would not accept the party’s nomination as his candidate — a potential move that commentators have described as an “LBJ moment” (after Johnson’s full initials).
“I represent the heart of a congressional district that was once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw,” Doggett said. “President Biden should do the same.”
Johnson withdrew from the 1968 race amid a groundswell of opposition to the Vietnam War and to challengers within his own party, including Robert F. Kennedy, whose son is running as an independent in the 2024 election. The polls are at levels that could further disadvantage Biden in a close race.
Doggett — at 77, just four years younger than the 81-year-old president — praised Biden’s legislative accomplishments during his time in office but said the time had come to pass the baton to a younger generation, noting that he had promised during the 2020 campaign to be a transitional figure.
“While much of his work has been transformational, he has promised to be transitional,” he said. “He has the opportunity to foster a new generation of leaders from which a nominee can be chosen to unite our country through an open, democratic process.
“My decision to make these strong concerns public was not taken lightly and in no way diminishes my respect for all that President Biden has accomplished.
“Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not to himself, I hope he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully urge him to do so.”
It remains to be seen whether Doggett’s public stance will prompt other concerned Democrats to rise above the parapet, as mounting anecdotal and polling data suggests Thursday’s CNN debate had a devastating effect on the president’s standing.
A new poll in New Hampshire, a state Biden won by 10 points in 2020, showed him trailing Trump by two points since the debate.
While Biden’s campaign has tried to portray the debate as a one-off and has promised a fierce response, there have been murmurs of discontent within the Democratic ranks, Also from governors of some states who have reportedly complained that the president has not reached out to them personally.
Several figures who have allegedly aligned themselves with the president, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn, have issued statements suggesting ambivalence.
“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? If people are asking that question, it’s perfectly legitimate — from both candidates,” Pelosi told MSNBC, adding that she had heard “mixed” opinions about whether Biden was fit to run for president.
In another sign of simmering discontent, Peter Welch, a Democratic senator from Vermont, criticized Biden’s campaign for dismissing concerns about the president’s age as “bed-wetting.”
“But that’s the discussion we need to have,” he told Semafor. “It needs to go from the top of the Biden campaign down to the district leaders on the South Side of Chicago. … The campaign itself has raised the concerns. … So to dismiss others who are raising those concerns, I think is inappropriate.”
