In the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, there was a pause in the Democratic campaign to pressure President Joe Biden to drop his White House re-election bid. That moment of quiet was appropriate, as the nation took a brief break from politics as usual to take in what had just happened and sought calm to ensure the shooting did not spark further chaos.
But that slowdown has come to an end. On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of California called on Biden to “pass the torch” in one of the most high-profile objections to Biden’s candidacy to date. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., did not deny an ABC report claiming that in a meeting he had with Biden he pressed the president to step down. And CNN, citing four sources briefed on the phone conversation, reported that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California told Biden he cannot win the race and that his candidacy could ruin his party’s chances of winning the House.
The way to think about this issue is to acknowledge that Biden cannot do his job.
The renewed pressure campaign on Biden is welcome news. The case against Biden’s candidacy did not grow any weaker in light of an assassination attempt against Trump. All the reasons Biden is ill-suited to be a candidate — and ill-suited to be president for four additional years — remain intact. In fact, the case is stronger than ever.
The polls present an unceasing torrent of terrible news for the president. Trump continues to best Biden in the polls despite his felony convictions and authoritarian rhetoric. According to New York Times and Siena College polling records, Trump holds his largest lead over a Democrat since his 2016 White House bid. A poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that a remarkable 65% of Democrats want Biden to drop out of the race and allow his party to select a different candidate. Biden is still getting clobbered by Trump in polls of swing states and lagging far behind his Democratic colleagues in those states, indicating that he is a distinctly weak candidate within the party. Data for Progress’ latest survey finds that swing voters consider Biden’s age to be a much larger concern than Trump’s criminal charges. (The same survey conducted before the debate had found the reverse to be true — swing voters were more concerned about Trump’s charges.)
There are concrete signs of how frustration over Biden’s candidacy is already demoralizing the party. NBC News reports that major donations have “fallen off a cliff” and that grassroots fundraising is falling short of campaign needs. In a worst-case scenario, this downturn is a preview of how disenchantment over Biden’s age could dampen his appeal not only to independents and swing voters, but also to ordinary Democratic voters. This is why top Democrats are warning that they fear a full-on wipeout of Democrats in government.
Biden’s debate performance has generated a strange and shortsighted media game. Every one of the president’s media appearances these days is scrutinized to determine whether he presents any better than he did during his mumbling and at-times incoherent debate performance. Journalists and Democrats assess the timbre and smoothness of every word he utters and then grade the performance afterward typically on the spectrum of somewhere from “bearable” to “alarming.” The problem is that these performances are measured against the unacceptably low standard of Biden’s debate performance, and that Biden is ultimately not defined by his unremarkable moments, but his most troubling ones.








