Some leading Democrats are turning up the heat on President Joe Biden, giving him a deadline to either prove that he’s fit for the job or to drop out of the presidential race to allow someone else to challenge presumptive GOP candidate Donald Trump.
That deadline, according to sources, is only a few days.
On Sunday, four senior Democrats in the House of Representatives who were on a private call with party leadership expressed significant doubts about Biden’s chances at winning re-election. They said that Democrats should remove Biden from the ticket and replace him with his vice president, Kamala Harris.
A little more than a week after Biden’s disastrous performance in the first presidential debate, questions of doubt and calls for Biden to step aside are growing. As of now, though, the group of congressional liberals who are explicitly calling for Biden to step aside is small.
Some other prominent members of the party are saying that Biden should have a week to calm people’s doubts and prove that he is capable of defeating Trump come November.
Everyone is panicking because polls that have been released in the wake of the debate show that Trump’s lead is widening.
Democratic Senator Christopher Murphy of Connecticut appeared on the “State of the Union” program on CNN Sunday, saying:
“The clock is ticking. This is going to be a really important and vital week for the country and for the president.”
Biden must, according to Murphy, prove to voters that he’s fit to serve in the role of president for another four years — and he must do it without relying on a teleprompter or scripted events.
As Murphy said:
“If that doesn’t happen, then, obviously, the president has a decision to make.”
The Biden campaign has been scrambling to save the president’s position atop the Democratic Party in the week since the debate. Biden has sought to prove that he’s mentally and physically fit by attending various campaign events, and by sitting for an interview with ABC News.
In that interview, which aired on Friday night, Biden took the blame for his poor performance in the debate. But, he insisted:
“I’m still in good shape.”
Yet, many people feel as though that interview continued to raise additional questions about Biden’s mental acuity, instead of dispelling them.
In addition to avoiding questions about whether he’s experienced any mental lapses recently, he said he would not take a cognitive test and release results to the public. He also struggled to say whether he had watched a full replay of his debate performance.
That interview only added to the number of Democrats who publicly questioned Biden’s path forward.
Appearing on the “Meet the Press” program on NBC, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff from California said:
“The performance in the debate rightfully raised questions among the people about whether the president has the vigor to defeat Trump. Biden should be mopping the floor with Trump. It shouldn’t even be close.”
