Erza Klein, a columnist and podcast host for The New York Times, called on President Biden to end his White House bid and go out as a “hero.”
“I want to say this clearly: I like Biden. I think he’s been a good president. I think he is a good president. I don’t like having this conversation,” Klein said Friday in an episode of his podcast, “The Ezra Klein Show.”. “And I know a lot of liberals, a lot of Democrats are going to be furious at me for this show.”
“I think Biden, as painful as this is, should find his way to stepping down as a hero,” he added later.
“The people whom Biden listens to — Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, Mike Donilon, Ron Klain, Nancy Pelosi, Anita Dunn — they need to get him to see this,” he continued. “Biden may come to see it himself.”
Klein said the Democratic Party should want to help Biden to be “the bridge of the next generation,” making reference to what the president called himself during his 2020 campaign.
“The party should help him find his way to that, to being the thing he said he would be in 2020, the bridge to the next generation of Democrats,” Klein continued. “And then I think Democrats should meet in August at the convention to do what political parties have done at conventions so many times before, organize victory.”
Klein stated that while he appreciated Biden’s achievements while in office, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, he also noted that the president has been trailing in the polls — and invoked the recent stir over his age, after a damning special counsel report branded him “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“To say this is a media invention, that people are worried about Biden’s age because the media keeps telling them to be worried about Biden’s age?” Klein said.
“If you’ve really convinced yourself of that, in your heart of hearts, I almost don’t know what to tell you,” he added. “In poll after poll, 70 percent to 80 percent of voters are worried about his age. This is not a thing people need the media to see.”
A recent poll, conducted in the wake of the report found that 86 percent of Americans think he is too old for office.