United States President Joe Biden is facing increasing pressure from within his party to prove his physical and mental fitness for office, with a Democratic lawmaker publicly calling on him to end his re-election bid for the first time.
Biden’s candidacy has been under scrutiny since a disastrous debate performance against Republican challenger Donald Trump, where the 81-year-old Democrat stumbled over his words and lost his train of thought.
On Tuesday, Lloyd Doggett, a House Representative from Texas, became the first member of his party to publicly call on Biden to quit the race.
“I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson. Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw,” Doggett said in his statement. “President Biden should do the same.”
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a House Representative for Washington state, stopped short of calling on Biden to withdraw but expressed concerns that Thursday’s debate performance could cost him the election in November.
“We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth, I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump. I know that’s difficult, but I think the damage has been done by that debate,” Perez said in an interview with the KATU news channel in Portland, Oregon.
Jared Golden, a House Representative in Maine, also voiced his belief that Trump would win and said he was “OK with that.”
“Lots of Democrats are panicking about whether President Joe Biden should step down as the party’s nominee,” Golden said in an opinion piece published in The Bangor Daily News. “Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise.”
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Jim Clyburn also joined in raising concerns about Biden’s condition, stating it was legitimate to question his health following the debate.
“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode, or is this a condition? And so, when people ask that question, it’s completely legitimate – of both candidates,” Pelosi said in an interview with MSNBC.
While Democratic insiders have been privately expressing concerns about Biden’s fitness to media outlets for days, the series of public comments intensifies the pressure on the president to address the growing doubts about his electability.
I am an experienced writer, analyst, and author. My exposure in English journalism spans more than 28 years. In the past, I have been working with daily The Muslim (Lahore Bureau), daily Business Recorder (Lahore/Islamabad Bureaus), Daily Times, Islamabad, daily The Nation (Lahore and Karachi). With daily The Nation, I have served as Resident Editor, Karachi. Since 2009, I have been working as a Freelance Writer/Editor for American organizations.
