Biden Allies Dismiss Calls for Him to Drop Out of Presidential Race

President Joe Biden has made it clear that he has no intention of leaving the presidential race.

While Biden was at Camp David for a family gathering, key Democratic leaders strongly supported him, dismissing suggestions that he should end his 2024 campaign due to his shaky debate performance against former President Donald Trump last week, according to Voice of America (VOA).

Biden’s Democratic supporters admitted that the 81-year-old had some difficulties during the 90-minute nationally televised debate. He struggled to finish sentences and mistakenly claimed he had ended Medicare, the health insurance program for older Americans.

A recent CBS-YouGov poll revealed that 72% of Americans believe Biden lacks the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, a seven-point drop from three weeks ago, VOA reported.

Despite this, national polls show that the race between Biden and Trump remains very close.

Key Democratic officials dismissed calls from some Democrats and editorials in The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for Biden to step aside for a younger candidate.

“The unfortunate truth is that Biden should withdraw from the race, for the good of the nation he has served so admirably for half a century,” stated The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a major newspaper in the crucial political battleground state of Georgia.

“The shade of retirement is now necessary for President Biden,” the newspaper added, according to VOA.

Georgia Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “Oh, absolutely not. Bad debates happen. The question is, ‘Who has Donald Trump ever shown up for other than himself and people like himself?’ I’m with Joe Biden, and it’s our assignment to make sure that he gets over the finish line come November.”

Representative Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, a strong Biden supporter, told CNN’s “State of the Union,” “I do not believe that Joe Biden has a problem leading for the next four years because he’s done a great job of leading for the last three-and-a-half years. I always say that the best predictor of future behavior is past performance.”

He argued that Biden’s debate issues were due to “preparation overload,” VOA reported.

Maryland Governor Wes Moore said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “the president had a difficult night just like every single one of us do” but that it should not force him out of the November 5 election.

“Joe Biden is not going to take himself out of this race, nor should he.” Biden’s campaign, in a Saturday night fundraising appeal, stated that replacing him as the Democratic candidate would lead to weeks of chaos before the August national party convention to pick a new nominee and be “a highway to losing” the national election.

Kate Bedingfield, a former Biden White House communications aide, told CNN that the Biden campaign had raised $33 million since the debate.

Reince Priebus, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee and once Trump’s White House chief of staff, said Biden staying in the race is “just all downside for Joe Biden.”

“This is not a bad debate night,” he said on ABC’s “This Week.” “This was an incoherent, almost impossible mess.”

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, said, “He’s (Biden) a decent man. He’s a failed president. He is compromised. That’s the storyline here. That’s what the world saw, a compromised president.”

After spending the weekend at campaign fundraising events in New York and New Jersey, Biden went to Camp David, the presidential retreat outside Washington, for a long-planned family get-together, according to VOA.

Biden has not indicated any plans to drop out of the race and, in fact, has expressed the opposite.

On Friday, the day after the debate, Biden told supporters, “I know I’m not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth!”

Biden added that he would not be running for a second term if he did not believe “with all my heart and soul I can do this.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)