A handful of other prominent Democrats were questioned on Wednesday Joe Biden‘s viability as a presidential candidate — and while there has not been a flood of defections, several people are openly saying that time is running out for the president to decide the future of his campaign.
Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) said he would support a “mini-primary” ahead of the August convention to determine the nominee if Biden steps aside, while Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) called Vice President Kamala Harris the “clear choice” to top the ticket if he does. Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) reiterated that the “clock is ticking” for the president to convince voters he can act unprepared.
The comments from leading members of the party reflect a shift in message over the past 24 hours: While outspoken Democrats still largely support Biden, their patience is running thin.
Biden said Wednesday afternoon during a Zoom call with campaign staff and Democratic National Committee staff, “I’m in … nobody’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win,” POLITICO reported.
A Biden campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment from POLITICO.
Biden plans to meet with a host of Democratic governors on Wednesday night and will appear Friday for an interview with ABC News host George Stephanopoulos that will air over the weekend. Democrats are urging Biden to use these unforeseen opportunities to show he is equipped to win against former President Donald Trump in november.
Earlier on Wednesday, Welch stressed in an interview with CNN that “time is short” for Biden to show the public he is still ready for the job.
“The only way he can respond in the campaign is not by talking to senators or governors, because this is not a ‘tell me’ situation. It’s a ‘show me’ situation,” Welch said. “So he should be out in the thick of a campaign, having open press conferences with people like you, talking to voters.”
Clyburn, a longtime friend and ally of Biden whose support was crucial to the president’s 2020 win, told CNN that Biden’s debate performance was “concerning.” He said that if Biden were to step aside, he would support a “mini-primary” between Harris and Democratic governors to determine the ticket. His office stressed in a statement to POLITICO that the lawmaker was answering “a hypothetical question” and that he still supports Biden.
In a radio interview, Lee called on the party to “act very quickly” if the president decides to step aside, adding that “there will be no time for a primary. That time is over, which means the vice president is the obvious choice.”
“Maybe people don’t want to hear this, but we’re running out of time. Time is not on our side,” Lee told SiriusXM host Zerlina Maxwell on Wednesday. “We have a few months to do a monumental task. It’s not cheap and it’s not easy.”
Republican Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) said Wednesday that he had previously felt comfortable publicly calling on Biden to resign because of his 15-term seniority in the chamber and his safe district in deep-blue Austin.
“I felt I was in a position to speak to what I was hearing from so many of my colleagues and say, we need a different course,” Doggett said on CNN. “We can prevail in this election.”
And Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Tuesday that the party-wide discussion is a “moving target” that “needs to happen quickly.”
“I can assure you that there will be tremendous unity and focus on that task as we get to the end of this process,” Raskin said. “And it will happen very quickly.”
Biden’s campaign has characterized Democratic defectors as “bedwetters,” and surrogates and the White House have largely dismissed concerns about the president’s health and mental acuity — a strategy Doggett said has been counterproductive.
“They would do better to show that this president is fully capable of handling all the comers, all the questions, all the difficult reporters who want to ask him something he doesn’t want to answer,” Doggett said. “It’s disturbing that since Thursday, while there’s been a big rally-around-our-man approach and public opposition of any kind has been discouraged, we haven’t seen the president do that.”
“It tells me they’re either pursuing the wrong strategy or they’ve got a problem,” Doggett added.
While Trump and his key allies have remained largely silent on the possibility of a replacement for Biden, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) — one of the former president’s leading vice presidential contenders — weighed in via a post on X on Wednesday.
“The Democratic Party elite and their media mouthpieces are now obsessed with replacing Biden on the ballot. But if he is not fit to run for president, he is certainly not fit to be *president*,” Vance wrote. “If he does not run again, he should resign as commander in chief.”
