Just months after party leadership protected President Biden from any kind of significant primary challenge, Democrats are suddenly turning their back on their presumptive nominee and seeking to replace him just weeks before his reelection nomination becomes official.
Biden’s dominant performance in last week’s debate sparked a dramatic shift in public opinion within the party about the president’s ability to run for a second term, with many who previously professed only loyalty to the 46th president now calling for Biden to step aside and for Vice President Kamala Harris or another promising Democrat to run in his place.
But the president doesn’t appear ready to back down, saying at a rally in Wisconsin on Friday, “I’m going to run again and I’m going to win.”
But the controversy might have been avoided if party leaders had allowed fierce challenges to Biden’s candidacy and chosen not to overturn primary precedent in favor of the incumbent.
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President Biden speaks at a campaign event at the Martin Luther King Recreation Center in Philadelphia on April 18, 2024. (Hannah Beyer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The Democratic Party Rules and Bylaws Committee voted earlier this year to adopt Biden’s own proposal to have South Carolina, a powerful state that helped Biden win the nomination in 2020, vote first in the Democratic nomination election in 2024. Under Biden’s proposal, New Hampshire and Nevada, states where Biden was weak in 2020, would hold their primaries days later.
New Hampshire rejected new rules for its 2024 primary and Biden’s name did not appear on the primary ballot, but he still won by a large margin thanks to voters who wrote in his name.
Biden also had postponed for months a debate with a presidential rival, saying in March when asked by a reporter about facing Trump that whether he would debate would be “depending on what the former president does.”
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President Biden at the White House in Washington, DC, December 13, 2023 (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
After Super Tuesday, Trump invited Biden to debate “anytime, anywhere, anywhere,” but the Biden campaign rejected the invitation, saying Trump was “craving attention.”
“We know Donald Trump craves attention and has struggled to expand his support beyond his MAGA base, and we will have conversations about that at the appropriate time during this election cycle,” a Biden campaign spokesman said at the time.
Biden’s poor performance in last week’s debate raised alarm bells about the president’s declining cognitive abilities, but concerns about the president’s mental state lingered long before the debate.
“The administration has not engaged in the conspiratorial chatter to seriously consider a scenario in which the president is suffering from a shocking decline that most Americans are unaware of,” Olivia Nuzzi wrote in a recent New York Magazine article.
“If the president has been portrayed that way, it has been by his political opponents on the right, who have promoted a caricature of an ineffectual and deranged man through what his spokesperson called ‘cheap fakes.’ They will not respond by granting dignity to those people, or to those who follow their orders.”
With 45 days to go until the Democratic National Convention, Biden’s campaign is working desperately to ensure supporters maintain confidence in the president and stave off calls for him to step down, even as major fundraisers have suspended campaign contributions.
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President Biden walks on the South Lawn of the White House after arriving in Washington, DC aboard Marine One on September 4, 2023. (Michael Reynolds/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Massachusetts’ Democratic governor, Maura Healey, publicly called on Biden to “listen to the American people” and consider whether he is the best person for the party to put forward as it seeks to defeat President Trump again in November.
“President Biden saved our democracy in 2020 and has done an incredible job over the past four years,” Healey said in a statement distributed by his political committee on Friday. “I am deeply grateful for his leadership, and I know he would agree that this is the most important election of our lifetimes.”
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“Over the next few days, I urge President Biden to listen to the American people and carefully evaluate whether he remains our best hope of defeating Donald Trump. Whatever President Biden decides, I will do everything in my power to defeat Donald Trump.”
Biden appeared defiant, telling a White House audience at an Independence Day event on Thursday that he was “not going anywhere.”
