On July 2, Thomas Friedman published a thoughtful and persuasive op-ed in the New York Times explaining why Joe Biden should step aside from the 2024 Democratic Presidential Nomination. It seemed quite persuasive.
President Biden is now seeking to convince people that he is, in fact, up to being the standard bearer of the Democratic Party (and thus the forces who want to continue the American Experiment as envisioned by Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Barack Obama) against Donald Trump's Republican Party.
So I watched with interest George Stephanopoulos' interview with President Biden this evening. Afterwards, Bobbi and I wrote this to our Congressman, the great and good Jamie Raskin.
Dear Congressman Raskin,
We just listened to President Biden’s interview with George
Stephanopoulos. The questioning was fair and sympathetic.
However, the President’s answers did not give us confidence
that he is the best choice to lead us in the campaign to defeat Donald Trump
and his MAGA crew. The stakes are too
high to nominate someone who is much less likely to win than other Democrats,
including Vice President Harris. We urge
you to join with your colleagues in the Democratic Party Leadership to tell the
President that, in the interest of the country, he should step aside as the
nominee.
While the President correctly pointed out how much he has
accomplished in the White House, he did not satisfactorily answer the relevant
concern: Whether he is cognitively able
to perform at the level we need if we are to be able to mobilize enough voters
to defeat Trump.
The President did not give clear answers as to whether he
had had a thorough medical examination regarding his cognitive abilities. Rather, he kept saying that he knows he can
do the job. We have no doubt that he
believes this in good faith. But this has
been a big concern, particularly among those who have seen declines – often steep
declines – of their elderly relatives and friends. This can be hard for the
person in decline to admit. But in this
situation, it is necessary.
The President turned every question about his ability to
continue by talking about the job he had already done. That is understandable, but not useful. The point is whether he can CONTINUE to be an
effective political leader in the current environment. Nothing he said assuaged our concern. Last week’s debate was not just a “poor
performance.” It was a performance that
leads voters to legitimately worry that he would not be able to be a 24/7
President.
The debate showed the country an incumbent President who
could not complete thoughts and sentences and who was unable to effectively
respond to Trump’s firehose of dangerous lies.
As a result, many of us began to fear that he would not be able to be an
effective candidate in the next four crucial months leading up to the November
election. The President’s record has
been very good. But there are others who
have been part of the progress of the last several years who could pick up the
banner and make a more effective case to the American voters. And, perhaps most significantly, the
continuing discussion about the incumbent President’s cognitive situation is
distracting from public focus on the existential threat the former President poses
to the American Experiment. This
distraction can only be eliminated if President Biden steps down from running.
We had hoped that the President’s “inner circle” would
convince him to step aside. That does
not appear to be happening. So it is the
responsibility of our most respected Democratic leaders to jointly urge him to
step aside. This may be an even more
challenging act of patriotism than your brave and effective resistance to Trump. But it is necessary.
Stephanopoulos ended his interview by asking the President
how he would feel in January 2025 if he
ran and lost in November. The President
responded that he would know that he did everything he could to prevent the
loss. But he could not admit to the
possibility that the most important thing he could do would be to step aside NOW. This crisis is not about him, but about the
country.
