US senator Joe Manchin called on Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race on Sunday, adding to mounting pressure on the president to step aside.
Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat turned independent, said on Sunday it was time for Biden to “to pass the torch to a new generation”. Leaving the race, Manchin said, would allow Biden to focus on issues the president cared about, including helping Ukraine fend off Russia’s invasion and ending Israel’s war on Gaza.
“He will go down with a legacy unlike many people, as one of the finest and truly a [patriotic] American,” Manchin said. “So, with that, I come with a heavy heart to think the time has come for him to pass the torch to a new generation,” he said during an interview on ABC’s This Week.
Before Manchin’s Sunday comments, four Democratic senators had called on Biden to leave the race. More than 30 Democratic lawmakers have called on Biden to end his re-election campaign amid concerns about his age, mental acuity and re-election prospects. The panic set in after Biden performed disastrously at a 27 June debate with Donald Trump.
While Manchin’s remarks don’t help the president’s standing, it’s unclear how much they will affect the president – if at all. Manchin is not running for re-election and stymied much of the most ambitious plans Biden and fellow Democrats had for a first term.
Biden – who was isolating Sunday at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, after contracting Covid – so far has declined to step aside, with campaign aides forcefully signaling he is committed to staying in the race. After digging in hard, Biden has opened his mind to the possibility he may have to leave the race, the New York Times reported last week.
Former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi has also emerged as a key Democrat pushing Biden to leave the race amid concerns it could hurt her party’s chances in her congressional chamber this fall. During a speech to North Carolina Democrats on Saturday, Pelosi notably made little mention of Biden’s candidacy. “Are you ready for a Democratic president?” Pelosi said at the end of her speech, according to the Associated Press, without mentioning Biden directly.
Biden has been relatively quiet since testing positive for Covid last week. On Sunday, his official Twitter account sent a tweet that said, “I’ll continue to speak out strongly for our democracy, stand up for our constitution and the rule of law, and call for action at the ballot box, not violence on our streets.
“That’s how democracy should work.”
It’s not clear if the pressure is working. Biden still has lingering frustrations over the way former president Barack Obama and other Democrats encouraged him not to run in 2016 when Trump won the White House, Axios reported Sunday. And efforts to push him aside again may be making him dig in more.
The Biden campaign on Sunday highlighted a letter from Democratic party chairs in seven key swing states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia – urging Democrats to stick with the president.
“We know that Democrats can and will win up and down the ballot, from president Biden and vice-president [Kamala] Harris down to state legislative candidates in toss-up seats to school board races,” the letter said. “The key ingredient is something that is up to all of us: focus.
“We understand the anxiety. But the best antidote to political anxiety is taking action. You can’t wring your hands when you’re rolling up your sleeves.”
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday found that 60% of Democrats believe Biden should end his presidential bid, though 58% would feel satisfied if he were the nominee. Overall, only about a third of Americans would feel satisfied if Biden were the nominee.
If Biden were to step aside, it’s unclear whether he would endorse Harris to replace him. Some Democrats, including Pelosi, believe that some sort of competitive nomination process would bolster the credibility of whoever the eventual nominee is because voters wouldn’t see it as a backroom deal.
About three-quarters of Democrats said they would be satisfied if Harris were the nominee, according to the ABC News/Ipsos poll. And the Washington Post reported that major Democratic donors were funding an effort to vet potential vice-presidential candidates if Biden exits and the race and Harris steps in to replace him as the nominee in November.
Meanwhile, the same poll found that Trump’s favorability rating had risen since a gunman tried to assassinate him on 13 July at a rally in Pennsylvania. The poll said 40% of Americans feel favorable towards Trump – the highest favorability that the former president has received since August 2020, when ABC News/Ipsos began asking about favorability. By contrast, 32% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Biden.
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South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, who is a key Biden ally, said on Saturday that fellow Democrats would be united going into their convention in August.
“We are not unanimous in our support for the president but we are certainly unified in that support,” he said in an interview on MSNBC on Saturday. “I have never seen in modern times a wide open convention be successful in November. It has not happened, and I don’t think it will happen now.”
The Trump campaign, which reportedly would prefer Biden to stay in the race, has started preparing a plan of how to attack Harris if she becomes the nominee, the New York Times reported. Ohio US senator JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, said in a tweet on Sunday that if Biden ends his campaign he should also step down as president. He also attacked Harris during his first rally on the trail Saturday.
If Joe Biden ends his reelection campaign, how can he justify remaining President?
— JD Vance (@JDVance1) July 21, 2024
Not running for reelection would be a clear admission that President Trump was right all along about Biden not being mentally fit enough to serve as Commander-in-Chief.
There is no middle ground.
House speaker Mike Johnson said during appearances on Sunday talkshows that Republicans would bring legal challenges if Democrats sought to remove Biden from the ballot.
“Every state has its own system, and in some of these, it’s not possible to simply just switch out a candidate,” he said during on ABC’s This Week. “It would be wrong, and I think unlawful in accordance to some of these state rules, for a handful of people to go in the backroom and switch it out because … they don’t like the candidate any longer. That’s not how this is supposed to work.”
On CNN’s State of the Union, Johnson rejected the idea that Republicans were trying to block voters from being able to cast their vote for whoever the party nominated.
Republicans objected strongly earlier this year when there were legal efforts to disqualify Trump from the ballot because of his role in his supporters’ January 6 2021 US Capitol attack. The US supreme court eventually blocked those efforts and allowed Trump to appear.
Johnson said it was an “apples to oranges” comparison. “What they’re trying to do, a handful of people in the party including some of the top elected Democrats in the country, are trying to push Joe Biden out,” he said.
Johnson was not specific in what kind of challenges the party would bring, but experts believe they would be unsuccessful.
Discussions around Biden’s future come as Republicans have shown strong fundraising numbers. The Republican National Committee reported $102m cash-on-hand at the end of June, according to the Washington Post, nearly double the amount it had at the end of May. The Democratic National Committee reported $78m in cash at the end of June.