Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) became the first House Democrat to publicly say that Biden needed to step down as the Democratic presidential nominee, underscoring how anxiety within the party over Biden’s debate performance was spilling out into the public view.
“President Biden has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump,” Doggett said in a statement. “I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not. Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”
“Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so,” he added.
Democratic candidate Adam Frisch, who’s running in Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) current 3rd Congressional District in Colorado, shortly made a statement of his own, also calling for Biden to drop out. Frisch barely lost the district in 2022 to Boebert by several hundred votes.
“We deserve better. President Biden should do what’s best for the country and withdraw from the race,” Frisch said. “I thank President Biden for his years of service, but the path ahead requires a new generation of leadership to take our country forward.”
Earlier in the day, former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) had also published an opinion piece suggesting that Vice President Harris should be positioned as the Democratic presidential nominee.
While that sentiment doesn’t seem to encapsulate the majority of the party – at least not publicly – it’s a largely different tune that Democrats are singing compared to Democratic leadership and Biden’s own campaign.
“It’s a familiar story: Following Thursday night’s debate, the beltway class is counting Joe Biden out. The data in the battleground states, though, tells a different story,” countered Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley in a memo on Saturday.
“On every metric that matters, data shows it did nothing to change the American people’s perception, our supporters are more fired up than ever, and Donald Trump only reminded voters of why they fired him four years ago and failed to expand his appeal beyond his MAGA base,” she added.
Public polling post-debate has done little to assuage Democrats that Biden’s debate performance is jeopardizing his chances in battleground states and blue-leaning states that could be soon put into play.
A Saint Anselm College poll released on Monday found Donald Trump edging out Biden 44 percent to 42 percent in New Hampshire, though it’s within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percent.
Meanwhile, a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released on Tuesday showed Trump sitting at 41 percent, while Biden sat at 38 percent – just within the survey’s 3.1 percentage point margin of error.
