Seven more Democratic politicians, including a third US senator, have called for Joe Biden to withdraw from this year’s White House race, deepening the peril for his campaign for re-election.
In a joint statement on Friday morning, four US House members – Jared Huffman, Mark Pocan, Chuy Garcia and Marc Veasey – said it was time for the 81-year-old president to “pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders”.
“We must face the reality that widespread public concerns about your age and fitness are jeopardising what should be a winning campaign,” the politicians added. House Democrat Sean Casten and Greg Landsman also called on Mr Biden to drop out on Friday.
New Mexico senator Martin Heinrich on Friday became the third Democratic member of the chamber to urge Mr Biden to drop out, joining Jon Tester of Montana and Vermont’s Peter Welch.
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“This moment in our nation’s history calls for a focus that is bigger than any one person,” Mr Henrich said, adding it was “in the best interests of our country” for Mr Biden to end his campaign.
Mr Biden insisted on Friday he would remain in the race, saying in a statement he “look[ed] forward to getting back on the campaign trail next week to continue exposing the threat of Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda”.
The president has been isolating at his holiday home in Delaware since testing positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday.
The new wave of politicians calling for Mr Biden to quit comes as Democratic Party grandees such as former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as the megadonors crucial to funding his campaign, heap pressure on the president behind the scenes.
The Financial Times reported on Thursday that donors and other senior party operatives believe Mr Biden is very close to a decision to exit.
The latest interventions came a day after Mr Trump formally accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president, less than a week after he narrowly escaped assassination in Pennsylvania.
The former president has surged ahead of Mr Biden in the polls despite his recent criminal convictions, building a lead across the crucial swing states that will decide November’s vote.
Thirty-two congressional Democrats have now said Mr Biden needs to drop his re-election bid, a view shared privately by many more who have not yet gone public. Those who have spoken out make up more than one in 10 Democrats in Congress, where Biden’s party controls 213 seats in the House of Representatives and 51 in the Senate.
Former president Barack Obama has conveyed to allies that Mr Biden needs to consider the viability of his campaign but has also made clear that the decision is one the president needs to make.
Mr Obama has taken calls in recent days from members of congressional leadership, Democratic governors and key donors to discuss their concerns about his former vice-president.
However, some Democrats, including many progressives, have defended the president. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used an Instagram live-stream in the early hours of Friday to accuse “donors” and “elites” of trying to cast aside the president and his vice-president, Kamala Harris.
Ms Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged that there were good-faith arguments for Mr Biden to leave the ticket. But she said the ongoing debate was being clouded by wealthy donors to a “disturbing” degree and being distorted by social media, “groupthink” and anonymous leaks by her colleagues to the news media.
She added bluntly: “I have not seen an alternative scenario that I feel will not set us up for enormous peril.”
Mr Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Mr Trump last month sparked panic in the Democratic Party over his age and fitness for office. After testing positive for Covid in Nevada he was seen apparently struggling to ascend a staircase into Air Force One to return home. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024. Additional reporting: AP, New York Times
