Democrats make renewed push for Biden to step down from poll race

Publicly and privately, key Democrats are sending signals of concern, and some hope he will assess the trajectory of the race and his legacy during this few days' pause

Washington: Democrats worried about President Joe Biden’s ability to win this November are making a renewed push for him to reconsider his reelection bid, using mountains of data, frank conversations and now, his own time off the campaign trail after testing positive for Covid, to encourage a reassessment.

Biden has insisted he is not backing down, adamant that he is the candidate who beat Republican Donald Trump before and will do it again this year. But publicly and privately, key Democrats are sending signals of concern, and some hope he will assess the trajectory of the race and his legacy during this few days’ pause.

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Over the past week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries have spoken privately to the President, candidly laying out the views of Democrats on Capitol Hill, including their concerns.

Separately, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington, spoke with the president last week armed with fresh data. The campaign chief specifically aired the concerns of frontline Democrats who are seeking election to the House.

And on Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff, a close ally of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, became the highest-profile House Democrat to call for Biden to drop his reelection bid, saying that while the decision is Biden’s alone to make, he believes it’s time to “pass the torch.”

While the tensions over Biden’s ability to carry on a winning campaign subsided some, particularly after the Trump assassination attempt and as the Republican National Convention was underway in Milwaukee, Democrats know they have limited time to resolve the party turmoil after the president’s faltering debate performance last month.

To be sure, many Democrats want Biden to stay in the race. And the Democratic National Committee is pushing ahead with plans for a virtual vote to formally make Biden its nominee in the first week of August, ahead of the Democratic National Convention that begins Aug. 19 in Chicago.

Biden tested positive for Covid-19 while traveling Wednesday in Las Vegas and is experiencing “mild symptoms” including “general malaise” from the infection, the White House said. The president, who has spent the past several days campaigning, had already been scheduled to return to his Delaware beach home even before the diagnosis.

It was Pelosi who revived questions about Biden post-debate, when she said recently that “it’s up to the president” to decide what to do — even though Biden had already fully stated he had no intention of stepping aside. The former House speaker publicly supports the President, but has fielded calls from Democrats since debate night questioning what’s next.

The Democratic National Committee’ s rulemaking arm is set to meet on Friday to discuss how the virtual vote plans will work and to finalize them next week. “We will not be implementing a rushed virtual voting process, though we will begin our important consideration of how a virtual voting process would work,” Bishop Leah D. Daughtry and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, co-chairs of the rules committee for the Democratic National Convention wrote in a letter Wednesday.