President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a campaign rally at Sherman High School on July 5, 2024, in Madison, Wisconsin.
Scott Olson | Getty Images
President Joe Biden did little to ease Democrats’ anxieties about his 2024 re-election bid in a highly anticipated ABC News interview on Friday night, his first television interview since a poor debate performance in June. .
On Saturday, House Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., formally called on Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
“This is not a decision I make lightly, but the stakes are too high for Donald Trump to be re-elected as president,” Craig said in a statement Saturday morning. “That’s why I respectfully call on President Biden to Resign as the Democratic nominee and be re-elected as president, allowing a new generation of leaders to step up.”
Craig is now the fifth House Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., announced his decision in an interview with MSNBC on Friday, just before the full 22-minute interview aired on ABC News.
They join a growing number of Democratic lawmakers, donors and strategists who have lost faith in Biden’s ability to successfully mount a campaign against Trump. Texas Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett. Raúl Grijalva, Arizona Democrat. and Massachusetts Democrat Seth Moulton have also publicly called for Biden to step down.
“The president is proud of his record,” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, said after the ABC News interview aired. “But he’s dangerously out of touch with the concerns people have about him. [capacities] Moving on and where he stands in this game.
Earlier this week, Biden’s closest allies, former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Jim Clyburn, publicly confirmed concerns about Biden’s suitability for re-election. For example, Pelosi said it was “legitimate” to ask whether Biden’s debate performance was just a one-time incident or representative of a longer-term situation.
Both Pelosi and Clyburn noted that they still support the president’s bid for a second term.
Jeffries meets on Sunday
Biden held a series of conference calls and meetings on Wednesday, including gatherings with Pelosi, Clyburn and Democratic governors, to try to reassure his worried supporters.
While the list of Democrats expressing doubts about Biden grows, much of the panic is taking place behind the scenes.
Several Democratic lawmakers and their staff spoke anonymously to NBC News on Friday night and Saturday morning, and even after speaking to ABC News, they doubled down on their concerns about Biden.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., is working to organize a virtual meeting of senior Democratic committee members on Sunday, with Biden likely to be a topic of discussion, according to NBC News.
On the other side of Capitol Hill, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner is reportedly trying to convene a meeting of Democratic senators next week to discuss Biden’s re-election concerns and their possible impact on the next election. NBC News reports.
Loss of donor support
At the same time, the donor class has been sounding the alarm on Biden.
“We need to move beyond gerontocracy!!” Galaxy CEO Michael Novogratz, a cryptocurrency billionaire and Democratic donor, posted on social media on Saturday morning. “We need to sweep away the team that has been in charge for the past 30 years and pass the reigns to someone else!! It’s time.”
Novogratz previously backed the campaign of Democratic challenger Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., but later dropped out of the race.
But Novogratz is part of a wave of Democratic donors losing support to Biden. Some of them, such as Disney heiress Abigail Disney, have banned future donations to the party until the president withdraws from the race, CNBC previously reported.
A series of polls, including those by The New York Times/Siena College and The Wall Street Journal, found that Biden was losing ground to Trump after his failure at the June 27 debate. His debating performance was mainly due to the moments when he made gaffes and failed in the debating.
“It was a terrible event,” Biden said in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Friday. “There was no indication of anything serious. I was exhausted. I didn’t listen in terms of preparation.” My own gut feeling, this was a bad night.
The president firmly added that he has no plans to drop out of the 2024 race.
“If God Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I would be out of the race,” Biden said. “But God Almighty will not come down.”
