A meeting with Democratic state governors at the White House on Wednesday. A conference call with his campaign team in the presence of Vice President Kamala Harris the same day.
Then, two political rallies in swing states, one in Pennsylvania on Saturday, the other in Wisconsin on Friday, as well as a television interview, initially scheduled for next Sunday, but whose broadcast was brought forward to Friday evening, at “prime time”, because of the “national interest”, the ABC network explained this week.
For the past 24 hours, US President Joe Biden has been trying to convince his entourage and voters that he is still the right man for the job, a week after the disastrous debate against Donald Trump that raised questions among Democrats about his ability to hold out until the November election. And beyond.
In his entourage, it is now believed that the next 48 hours, which begin the long weekend of the American national holiday, will also be crucial to silence the skeptics, calm the anxieties and especially to reveal polls which, after a debate that was supposed to give a new lease of life to the outgoing president’s campaign, still announce voting intentions largely favorable to Donald Trump. Otherwise, the voices calling for an “alternative solution” risk going beyond the current margins to multiply, thus placing the Democratic Party in front of complicated paths.
Voters now give the Republican a 6-point lead in their voting intentions, according to a Sienna College poll released Wednesday, less than a week after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate.
Citing two people close to the president who spoke with him in recent days, the New York Times stressed this week that the president was aware of the gravity of the situation, acknowledging that his candidacy was at stake and that he had only a few days left to reassure his people. However, this was not enough time for Barack Obama’s former adviser, Van Jones, who on Wednesday, on CNN where he works as a political analyst, indicated that behind the scenes, the Democrats had already taken a step further by no longer discussing “if” to replace Joe Biden, but rather “how” to do it.
“I understand (that in public) people are defending him, protecting him, to give him the space and dignity to allow him to make his own choice,” he said. “But there is a big discussion right now about how (his replacement) is going to happen and not about if (this replacement) should happen.”
Since June 30, about twenty elected Democrats or former important figures of the party have publicly called for Joe Biden to step down or have expressed concerns about the rest of the presidential campaign, due to a candidacy weakened, according to them, by the poor performance of the 81-year-old politician during the first televised debate of the race. He appeared tired, often confused and sometimes lost in his sentences.
In the final hours, Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton added his voice to the chorus, saying the party should consider “all viable options.”
“When your strategy isn’t working, doubling down is rarely a good move. President Biden is not getting any younger,” the moderate Democrat said in a statement. “Defeating Trump is imperative to the future of our democracy, especially now that the Supreme Court has just written him a blank check to act like a king,” he added, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that partially shielded Trump from prosecution for his attempts to overturn the election and insurrection in 2020.
This week, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, called on Joe Biden to drop out of the race “to allow a strong Democratic leader to defeat Trump to ensure our security and prosperity,” he said. The statement, reported by the New York Timesclosely followed the appeal launched to the president by The Economist the day after the televised debate. According to the magazine’s editorial team, Joe Biden should perform his “last and greatest public service” by withdrawing from the race in favor of “another Democratic candidate.”
“The obvious choice to replace Mr. Biden is his vice president, Kamala Harris,” he continued. The Economistwhile stressing that it does not inspire confidence in voters.
In the end, it is Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the United States, who seems to have the greatest appeal to the masses, according to a poll conducted earlier this week by Ipsos on behalf of Reuters. She is the “alternative solution” most likely to lead the Democrats to victory over Donald Trump, garnering 50% of voting intentions. The populist? He gets 39%. However, the scenario remains unlikely: despite her constant popularity, Michelle Obama has repeatedly stated that she does not wish to run for the White House.
As a substitute for Joe Biden, Kamala Harris would trail the Republican by one point, according to the same poll. California Governor Gavin Newsom would be 3 points behind Trump, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, another favorite in a possible race for the Democratic nomination, would be 5 points behind.
In recent days, Harris has indicated that she fully supports Joe Biden’s bid for a second term and is not seeking to replace him. “We will not back down. We will follow the lead of our president. We will fight and we will win,” she said during a conference call with Democratic campaign officials Wednesday night.
A Democratic nomination contest four months before the election could send Democrats from post-debate panic to pre-convention turmoil—which will be held in August in Chicago—because of the legal implications that a candidate change could raise in several key states. In Wisconsin, for example, a candidate’s name can only be removed from the ballot in the event of death. In Nevada, the deadline to replace a candidate for the November election was… June 28. In Georgia, that change would have to be made no later than 60 days before Election Day.
“We have been monitoring calls from all sides for President Biden to step down, either now or just before the election, and have concluded that the process of substitution and removal is very complicated,” said Mike Howell of the Heritage Foundation, an ultraconservative group backed by Donald Trump that has vowed to pursue and challenge any changes the substitution might make to the ballot. “We will remain vigilant to ensure that election procedures and integrity are respected,” he added in a statement.