A top Democratic fundraiser said she is fully behind President Biden’s candidacy as others in her party have spent the last week remaining silent on their support.
Philadelphia-area activist Lindy Li, who recently raised more than $1 million for Biden’s candidacy, said he clearly had a bad debate night, but maintained that he remains both the best hope to defeat former President Trump and a true personification of a traditional Democrat.
"Honestly, what we think or what anybody thinks is irrelevant because he is the one who holds all the cards here, and he's decided to stay in the race and hold onto his preponderance of delegates," Li said of Biden. "We just have to get behind him."
Li, a frequent political commentator on MSNBC and a member of the DNC's National Finance Committee, had previously clashed with the progressive wing of her party, including supporters of democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Li describes herself as a "conservative Democrat," but has long pledged her commitment to the president, despite his setbacks. She said that Biden has long been a consensus-minded politician.
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"He has been a moderate his entire life, and that's why he won the 2020 primary, because the majority of the party saw Bernie as not being able to defeat Trump. That's why they chose Biden," she said.
Li noted she is close to several Democratic figures floated as potential Biden replacements – such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore – and while she supports them, she said there is still tacit proof Biden remains the man for the job.
Quoting from HBO’s "The Wire," Li chalked up the lack of Biden criticism from Democrats as proof of the line, "if you come for the king, you better not miss."
"No one wants to be the person to knife Julius Caesar," she said.
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As for the other names bandied about as replacements, Li said any one of them could have faced Biden in the primary but chose not to.
"These are all ambitious people. I know them all. I know Josh [Shapiro], in particular, very well. If they could have run against Biden and won, they would have. But they looked at the empirical data during the primary and noticed that none of them could beat him," she said.
"This is not a matter of anyone being altruistic. They were being self-interested and realized that no one could beat Biden, and that's why they didn't dare to oppose him."
However, at the same time, it has been a "Herculean effort" to keep Democrats publicly on the same page in support of Biden.
When she was on a call with Moore on Monday, Biden himself interrupted the Zoom and took questions from the assembled Democrats.
"A lot of people had reservations and concerns. And people asked him point-blank, ‘what happened, what are you going to do differently?’ And he said, ‘going forward, I'm just going to be more vigorously attacking Trump’."
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"There were no softball questions, and he answered all of them. And I know he's doing everything he can to alleviate concerns. And I'm actually impressed by how he was able to outmaneuver all of his opponents yesterday."
Li also warned against a second Trump term, saying that all political issues aside, his behavior on and leading up to Jan. 6, 2021 disqualified him from office.
As an immigrant to the U.S., Li said, she understands what she saw as "authoritarian" tendencies from Trump, adding that the throngs who rioted at the Capitol on that day in support of him reflect the stakes this November.
Li, who was born in China but immigrated to the U.S. from England, said she lived under authoritarianism and that the U.S. must therefore "cherish" democracy at all costs.
She added that her life experience also conversely draws her to fully support Biden, who she said has taken recent steps to try to secure the border.
"The number of migrants coming down or coming over has certainly dropped because of his measures. But a lot of people in our party were really disgruntled by his actions," she said.
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"But I actually am in support of the measures that he's taken to secure our border. I'm in favor of legal immigration. My family waited years to come to the United States. My dad was a medical doctor who ended up at Harvard Medical School. And we brought useful skills to the country. So I'm all in favor of having a legal way of becoming an American."
Li rejected claims the president is dealing with health concerns to the extent Republicans crow about.
"For somebody who is accused of being senile and in cognitive decline, he was quite clever. He dropped a letter which basically prevented any more hemorrhaging in the House. And then he went on ‘Morning Joe’ to dare his opponents to run against him."
In that regard, she said Democrats must unite once again behind Biden as they had in the primary, continue pushing his agenda while preventing Trump’s return.
"I'm not here to gaslight anybody… I've had to reassure folks that Biden will remain in the race; that [Trump] is an existential threat to our country. We have to get on board. It's a binary choice."
