Why Democrats are afraid to make their concerns about Biden public after the debate

• House Democrats don’t want to talk about Joe Biden’s poor debate performance.

• This is largely due to political self-preservation.

• Democrats who previously publicly criticized Biden’s age have suffered greatly as a result.

Rep. Tom Suozzi actually didn’t want to be there.

As the New York Democrat waited for an elevator to take him to the Capitol’s second floor, Suozzi found himself cornered by a gaggle of reporters seeking not only his assessment of President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance the night before, but also whether the congressman thought the 81-year-old president should remain his party’s nominee. “That’s beyond my purview,” Suozzi responded. “That’s not up to me.”

The congressman was lucky: The elevator doors opened behind him, and reporters can’t follow lawmakers into elevators without their permission. I was on board and headed down to the basement. Suozzi backed away slowly, apparently oblivious to the elevator’s direction. “We’re going down,” I told him as the doors closed on us.

“I just had to get out of there,” Suozzi said. “I’ll take the stairs.”

Friday morning votes are usually a sleepy affair, but this was no normal Friday morning. Because Biden’s campaign had pushed for the first-ever general election debate, Congress happened to be in session and Democratic lawmakers were forced to answer for a performance that had clearly panicked many of them.

About half of Democrats in the House of Representatives did the sensible thing: They kept their mouths shut and avoided saying anything, either by refusing to answer questions outright or by insisting that they really need to continue talking to an aide who was walking with them. A House Democrat, who I won’t name because I can’t prove it, appeared to be on the phone, his iPhone dangling slightly below his ear as he sipped a cup of coffee.

Others took the Kamala Harris route, frankly acknowledging Biden’s weak performance while broadly supporting Biden. “I don’t think this was his best performance,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California said bluntly. “Being a debater is different than being president.”

Only a few were willing to express publicly what they undoubtedly feel privately: that Biden’s poor performance against former President Donald Trump is prompting much “soul-searching,” in the words of Rep. Jared Huffman of California.

“I think there’s a lot of processing that I and a lot of my colleagues are doing, but it wasn’t a good evening,” Huffman said, adding that he doesn’t want Biden to have another debate and that he is also still “processing used to be’. “Or he thinks Biden should be the party’s nominee.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen now. I really don’t know,” said Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio when asked if he was considering Biden’s idea not have been nominated. “You know, I think the president and his team are going to sit down and have a conversation, and we’ll see what happens.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters on Friday that he stands behind Biden, and other senior Democrats — including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jim Clyburn, the man credited with delivering Biden the 2020 nomination — largely did the same. Rep. Robert Garcia, a Biden campaign deputy who traveled to the debate on Thursday, insisted to a large crowd of skeptical reporters that Biden simply “had a raspy voice.”

Despite the best efforts of the press on Capitol Hill, no one publicly stated that Biden had to go. This is despite widespread reports that the press harbors major concerns behind closed doors.

That’s because they’ve seen what happens to people who have previously made an issue of Biden’s age.

Rep. Dean Phillips mounted an entire primary challenge against Biden based on the premise that he is too old to continue and his colleagues know it. The Minnesota congressman was ultimately marginalized by the party, and his political career may effectively be over by the end of his term. In 2019, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro directly attacked Biden’s age and memory during a Democratic primary debate. He has been effectively shut out of the party’s top echelons ever since.

“The first Democratic politician who calls on Biden to resign will end their career,” Democratic strategist Paul Begala said Friday morning on CNN. “They may be right in the eyes of many Democrats, but if you’re the first one through the door, you get shot. And look, I think they all know that.”

Democrats who want Biden to step aside essentially face a collective action problem. If they were to unite and declare that Biden must step aside, they might be able to make an impact. But any individual lawmaker who thinks so could face political oblivion if he does it on his own.

Moreover, political incentives and partisanship may simply drive them back into Biden’s corner. Admitting that the president should step aside as the party’s nominee would be tantamount to giving in to long-running GOP attacks on the president.

On Friday morning, Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas took advantage of the moment and announced he would introduce a resolution calling on Biden’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove him from office.

It’s exactly the kind of event that could send Democrats running into Biden’s arms again.

Read the original article on Business Insider