The New York Times editorial board A new opinion piece was published Last week, he called on Democrats to publicly denounce Biden’s 2024 presidential bid after the president failed to allay concerns about his mental health.
The outlet was the first to call on the embattled 81-year-old president to halt his campaign bid, a day after he showed signs of confusion and froze onstage during a debate with President Donald Trump in Atlanta.
The Times added a scathing postscript that since the June 27 debate, Biden has “offered little comfort” to Democrats who want him to abandon his party’s nomination and step aside for another candidate.
Biden said: script “Mr. Trump has controlled his public speaking schedule and rarely answered questions from voters or journalists. These exchanges have exposed his limitations and raised many questions on the debate stage,” The Times’ editorial board wrote.
“And when he threw away the teleprompter, especially at the 22-minute mark, interview “He continues to be portrayed as a man in decline,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Friday.
Concerns about his intellectual ability are so great that Democrats “from the grassroots to the highest levels of the party” need to “speak up” to Biden and tell him he is “embarrassing himself and putting his legacy at risk,” the Times said.
“He needs to hear loud and clear that he is no longer an effective spokesman for his priorities.”
“President Biden clearly understands the danger, but he seems to have lost sight of his own role in this national drama. As the situation becomes more dire, he has begun to see himself as indispensable,” the editorial board said.
“He doesn’t seem to understand that he is now the problem, and that the best hope Democrats have of keeping the White House is for him to step down.”
Last week, several Democratic lawmakers publicly voiced concerns about Biden and called for him to resign.
But the Times said not enough Democrats were willing to speak publicly and that a “whisper campaign” of Democrats patiently waiting for Biden to make a decision on his own was “insufficient” for this “urgent” moment.
Presidents have long been protected by aides’ frequent use of teleprompters, pre-screened questions, infrequent spontaneous news conferences and hand-picked journalists. Biden’s “improvised” remarks are usually responses to short, shouted questions.
The editorial board refused to take seriously ongoing surveys showing that a majority of Americans are concerned about his health and mental state, instead arguing that the octogenarian is “trying to defy reality.”
By ignoring the poll numbers, Biden “is putting the country at grave risk by continuing to claim he is the best Democrat to beat Trump,” the Times wrote.
The committee criticized a letter Biden sent to Democratic senators on Monday in which he stressed he would not withdraw from the debate. The Times noted that Biden never mentioned his own intelligence or concerns about the debate.
By refusing to acknowledge other possibilities, the article continued, “they are dismissing the potential candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris and other young, dynamic Democrats, and are in effect asking the American people to trust Harris rather than their own lying eyes.”
If Biden withdraws before the Democrats formally choose him as their nominee, it would ease the party’s process of choosing a successor.
The Times said Biden’s argument that he was selected as an elector in earlier state primaries was weak because that system was set up at the time as a “coronation” system.
Biden’s claim that voters care about track record, not age, is moot, The New York Times writes, but there’s no guarantee his track record will continue, and not stepping down now could ensure Trump’s reelection.
