He hoped to have stemmed the revolt, but Joe Biden faced a new surge of pressure on Wednesday from members of his party and even from George Clooney, who asked him to leave the race for the White House.
“I like Joe Biden. But we need another candidate,” the actor, director and producer wrote in a well-reasoned op-ed for The New York Times.
George Clooney, a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party, recalls having participated in a fundraising event for the American president in mid-June.
“Last month, I co-hosted the largest fundraiser ever for a Democratic candidate,” he added.
The gala, attended by Hollywood stars and donors and attended by former President Barack Obama, raised $28 million, a record for the party.
Joe Biden’s campaign team had then highlighted the “enthusiasm” of the influential entertainment industry. California, and its progressive bastion Hollywood, is a major contributor to the party’s campaigns, since it also includes Silicon Valley.
The actor says he saw a weakened Joe Biden at the gala, far from the candidate he was in 2020: “It’s terrible to say, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago is not the (…) Joe Biden of 2010. Nor even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we saw during the failed debate” on June 27 against Donald Trump.
That evening, the American president appeared very confused and very tired.
“I love Joe Biden. As a senator. As a vice president and as a president. I consider him a friend and I believe in him. I believe in his character, his morals. Over the last four years, he’s won a lot of the battles that he’s had to face,” George Clooney acknowledged.
“But the only battle he can’t win is the one against time,” the actor wrote, referring to the growing doubts about the 81-year-old president’s cognitive abilities since his disastrous debate with Donald Trump in late June.
“Joe Biden is a hero, he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to save it again in 2024,” the actor concluded.
George Clooney’s exit comes after other defections in the world of cinema, which had until now been a powerful media and financial relay for Joe Biden.
On MSNBC, Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives who remains very influential, subtly but relentlessly put the Democrat against the wall.
“Hurry up”
“It’s up to the president to decide whether he’s going to run” in November against his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, she said on the network popular with Democrats. “We all encourage him to make that decision because time is running out.”
With this statement, it is as if Nancy Pelosi is opening a way out for the 81-year-old Democrat, who nevertheless considers that his decision is already made: to continue campaigning for a second term.
Joe Biden wrote to his party’s parliamentarians on Monday to tell them that he was “firmly determined to stay in the race.”
The president, who has been redoubled his activity in recent days, spoke briefly on Wednesday during a meeting of the main American union group, the AFL-CIO.
Then he went to the opening of a NATO summit in Washington, where French President Emmanuel Macron, himself politically weakened, embraced him.
It is on the sidelines of this meeting of the defense organization that Joe Biden is to give a highly anticipated press conference on Thursday, because it will allow his mental alertness to be gauged.
This will also be the case for an interview, just announced, on Monday on the NBC channel.
Doubts about Joe Biden’s energy and stamina are currently completely undermining his campaign team’s attempts to raise awareness about Donald Trump’s plans on abortion rights and social rights.
Golf
The 78-year-old Republican challenged Joe Biden to face him again in a debate, “man to man”, and… at golf. He accused him on Tuesday during a rally in Florida of orchestrating “the biggest cover-up in political history” about his health.
At least eight House Democrats have now publicly called for him to throw in the towel. Pat Ryan, a Democrat from New York state, joined the list Wednesday in calling on him to throw in the towel “for the good of the country.”
Many representatives and senators fear that Joe Biden will drag them down with him in the November general election, which is being held at the same time as the presidential election.
Several polls conducted since the debate indicate that Donald Trump is maintaining or even widening his advantage over his Democratic rival.
A study by the Cook Political Report institute, based on 21 major opinion polls, credits the 78-year-old Republican with 47% of voting intentions at the national level, compared to 44% for Joe Biden.
Kate Bedingfield, who was a campaign manager for Joe Biden in 2020, wrote on X on Wednesday that if the president’s current team “has numbers that support their vision of a winning strategy, (they) should release them now.” “People want to know what the strategy is,” she insisted.
