Democratic strategist David Axelrod said discussions about ousting President Biden as the Democratic Party’s nominee have become public because the president has been “cloistered.”
Axelrod joined CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday to discuss the growing number of Democratic lawmakers and donors who are calling on the president to step aside and the conflicting information coming from the White House about Biden’s health and well-being.
“The reason that these conversations are public was because there was … no way to have them in private, because the president was cloistered and did not want to hear it and his aides did not want to hear it,” Axelrod said.
Concerns around the 81-year-old president’s ability to beat former President Trump and serve another four years if reelected were already present prior to the first presidential debate, and his poor performance in Atlanta exacerbated them and sparked panic.
Biden has insisted he is not dropping out, bluntly rejecting the congressional calls.
Axelrod, a longtime adviser to former President Obama, said the conversations about Biden’s age “tumbled out into the public” because his debate performance “became a kind of ‘break glass’ situation.”
“So, yes, it would be nice if everything were neat and orderly, but that’s not the circumstances that presented themselves,” he said.
Axelrod has become increasingly critical of Biden in recent weeks and said the situation is “terribly hard” and disappointing.
“I don’t think you can blame the Democratic Party for this situation. I think this situation, you know, has also resulted from the denial from folks in the White House,” he said.
After Biden’s first solo press conference of the year Thursday evening, Axelrod said the president’s chances of beating Trump are “very very slim.”