The re-election campaign of US President Joe Biden on Wednesday hit new trouble as US Representative Nancy Pelosi said merely “it’s up to the president to decide” if he should stay in the race, celebrity donor George Clooney said he should not run, and Democratic senators and lawmakers expressed fresh fear about his ability to challenge former US president Donald Trump.
Late in the evening, US Senator Peter Welch called on Biden to withdraw from the election, becoming the first Senate Democrat to do so.
Welch said he is worried because “the stakes could not be higher.”
Photo: Bloomberg
The sudden flurry of pronouncements, despite Biden’s insistence that he is not leaving the race, put on public display just how unsettled the question remains among prominent Democrats.
On Capitol Hill, an eighth House Democrat, US Representative Pat Ryan of New York, and later a ninth, US Representative Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, publicly asked Biden to step aside.
“I want him to do whatever he decides to do,” Pelosi said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe rather than declaring that Biden should stay in.
While Biden has said that he has made his decision, she said: “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short.”
It is a crucial moment for the president and his party, as Democrats consider having the incumbent Biden step aside, just weeks before the Democratic National Convention that is on track to nominate him as their candidate for re-election.
Biden is hosting world leaders in Washington for the NATO summit this week with a crowded schedule of formal meetings, sideline chats and long diplomatic dinners, all opportunities to showcase he is up for the job despite a worrisome performance last month in the first presidential debate with Trump.
Welch said in a Washington Post opinion piece published on Wednesday evening: “We cannot unsee President Biden’s disastrous debate performance.”
The first-term senator said that Vermont loves Biden and he was calling on the president to withdraw from the race “with sadness.”
Pelosi has been widely watched for signals of how top Democrats are thinking about Biden’s candidacy, her comments viewed as important for the party’s direction as members weigh possible alternatives in the campaign against Trump.
Because of her position as a former speaker of the US House of Representatives and proximity to Biden as a trusted longtime ally of his generation, Pelosi is seen as one of the few Democratic leaders who could influence the president’s thinking.
The lack of a full statement from Pelosi backing Biden’s continued campaign is what lawmakers are likely to hear most clearly, even as she told ABC later she believes he can win.
Her remarks came as actor Clooney, who had just hosted a glitzy Hollywood fundraiser for the president last month, said in a New York Times op-ed that the Biden he saw three weeks ago was not the Biden of 2020.
“He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney said.
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