Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is working furiously behind the scenes to put pressure on President Biden to reconsider his place at the top of the 2024 ticket, according to a number of Democratic lawmakers familiar with her efforts.
The Speaker emerita is talking to a broad swath of House Democrats — from front-liners in tough districts to hardened veterans with institutional clout — to pump the brakes on the notion that Biden should definitively be the party’s nominee heading into November, these lawmakers said.
Pelosi has not said Biden should exit the race, but the lawmakers said she harbors deep concerns about Biden’s ability to defeat former President Trump, and she’s fighting to prevent the party from rubber-stamping Biden’s candidacy before there’s a broader discussion about the potentially damaging consequences of that decision.
Note: This is a "breaking" story, as in, its been leaked and is just now showing up on multiple outlets.
Which is why, whatever happens, we're voting Blue, and reminding everyone else who wants to not live (or die) under a fascist regime to do the same.
But Biden's advantages of a proven track record, incumbency, and massive name recognition, simply may not outweigh the damage anymore. The perception of his decline is severe, and there may be some truth to it - it's certainly not a reputation he's going to shed in the next five months.
Democrats will vote for a blue pet rock. The point is to get someone that independents will vote for. And if both candidates are a bunch of old cooters that keep mixing up names, they'll stay home or vote third party.
The perception of his decline is severe, and there may be some truth to it - it’s certainly not a reputation he’s going to shed in the next five months.
Which even if true, is just absurdist considering his opponent can't even finish a sentence without switching to a new topic and turning a statement into word salad. 2024 is freaking cursed.
The Dem chance at a clean change from Biden to a younger option was last year, not 4 months prior, at least not with how the antiquated US election system works. Changing it now is fucking stupid, the table has been set. People are calling to flip the table because somehow they're just now realizing that old people are old. This is what the Dem leadership has created, and regardless of their second guessing now it's what we need to live with.
Just another in a long running series of stupid decisions by Dem leadership over the last 30 years, always shooting themselves in the foot and assuming people will still vote for them. With middling success every time, yet never learning anything because the same old fucks are still running it all somehow.
It would be their own fault when it happens, The Biden we are seeing now is the Biden that they've known about for the last 4 years. Yet they still pushed him to run for reelection and sent their minions out to social media to claim anyone pointing out his problems are either Russian bots, paid by Putin, or Republicans.
“I did have a conversation with her, she is very concerned,” said a House Democratic lawmaker who spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s not like she’s like, ‘We’re sticking with this guy.'”
A number of other lawmakers have had similar discussions.
“I’ve had my own conversations with her,” a second Democrat said.
“It’s just an obvious concern. The stakes are so high. We can’t afford to do anything but have our best possible opportunity to win,” the lawmaker said, relaying Pelosi’s message.
Pelosi’s push for a deeper assessment of Biden’s candidacy, sources say, is rooted in concerns that the president’s campaign has responded to his disastrous June 27 debate performance with emotional appeals to staunch allies and a show of forceful defiance — but not an honest reckoning with underlying image problems or an objective analysis of the political fallout.
“Team Biden made it clear what their strategy was: ignore the problem, run out the clock, and force the rest of us to live with it,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), who has publicly called on Biden to step aside. “I felt a certain urgency to upset that strategy.”
This would be so much better if the Biden campaign didn't act like they were in denial.
If he's so hell bent on being president... OK. But he needs to come out with Kamala Harris, and emphatically say "I'm old. I know it. And I'll lean on my cabinet and my vice president, heavily, and do what we've been doing." Not act like everything's hunky dory when everyone knows it's not.
Act like Harris is an equal! Put her front and center! They can have their cake and eat it if he just puts his pride aside.
I have a feeling there may still be bad blood there considering Harris basically acted like she was the one elected president early in Biden's first term, until he reminded her who was president and who was vice.
Okay but he said he is running I'm going to assume he is. Either way I'm voting the same way and see very little difference who the Dems throw up next.