Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas said in a statement Tuesday that Biden should “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw.”
“My decision to make these strong reservations public is not done lightly nor does it in any way diminish my respect for all that President Biden has achieved,” Doggett said. “Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so.”
Doggett, who represents an Austin-based district and is serving his 15th term in Congress, is the first sitting lawmaker in his party to publicly state what many have been privately whispering behind closed doors since last week’s debate.
Biden’s weak performance caused immediate panic even among many of his most ardent supporters, leading many to question whether the 81-year-old career politician is the strongest Democratic candidate to take on Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in November.
“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson,” said Doggett, the No. 2 Democrat on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee. “Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same.”
Biden himself has conceded the debate didn’t go well for him, but he has insisted he‘s ready to fight for a second term as president. The president and his campaign have not directly responded to fellow Democrats’ criticism of his performance, choosing instead to send surrogates to cable news outlets to draw a clear contrast between him and Trump to defend Biden as merely having a bad night.
Beyond the White House, control of both chambers of Congress is also hanging in the balance in November, and Democrats find themselves defending far more Senate seats than Republicans. The Democrats hold the Senate by a slim 51 to 49, and Republicans control the House by only a handful of seats.
Doggett’s explosive statement came minutes after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) told MSNBC that she believes “it is a legitimate question” whether Biden’s halting performance was just “an episode or is this a condition.”
“When people ask that question, it’s legitimate — of both candidates,” she said.
Pelosi said she had not spoken with Biden since the debate, but she emphasized that the president remained on “top of his game, in terms of knowing the issues and what is at stake.”
It all amounts to a stunning and swift turn of events for Biden, his campaign and his allies on Capitol Hill, who have spent the better part of his presidency combating criticism about his fitness for office and defending his ability to serve another four-year term, at the end of which he would be 86 years old.
But Biden’s shaky performance during the debate with Trump has rocked his Democratic support to its foundations, with members of the party at all levels entertaining the possibility that he can no longer be the nominee.
Maryland’s Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and an influential voice in the caucus, broached the possibility over the weekend of Biden stepping aside ahead of the Democratic National Convention in August.
“So whether he’s the candidate or someone else is the candidate, he is going to be the keynote speaker at our convention,” Raskin said of Biden on MSNBC. “He will be the figure that we rally around to move forward.”
Other elected Democrats said they were caught off guard by Biden’s rambling and raspy performance. Rhode Island’s Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, with whom Biden served in the Senate, said that he‘d known the president for years, and had “never seen that happen before.”
“I think people want to make sure that this is a campaign that’s ready to go and win, that the president and his team are being candid with us about his condition — that this was a real anomaly and not just the way he is these days,” Whitehouse told WPRI-TV in Providence, R.I., on Monday.
And then there are those in the Democratic Party who are deeply disappointed by Biden’s performance, but who point to the fact that with less than two months to go until the Democratic convention and four months until election day, the path to an alternative candidate would be rocky and uncertain.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who was Biden’s leading opponent for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, told the Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that while he’s not confident the president can win in November, he doesn’t want him to step aside, considering that the party views Trump as a threat to American democracy.
“A presidential election is not a Grammy Award contest for the best singer or entertainer. It’s about who has the best policies that impact our lives,” Sanders said. “I’m going to do everything I can to see that Biden gets reelected.”
Amiri writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Kevin Freking and Stephen Groves in Washington and Steve Peoples in New York contributed to this report.