President Biden is facing growing calls from members of the media, editorial boards, pundits and more to drop out of the race following a debate performance that caused anxiety among members of the Democratic Party.
Newspapers across the country and even his own fervent supporters in the press are begging him to get out for fear of former President Trump winning again, but so far he isn't budging.
"Biden is not the man he was four years ago," The New York Times editorial board wrote on Friday. "The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence."
The editorial board went on to call Biden's candidacy a "reckless gamble" and said that there are other Democrats "better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency."
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The New York Times' Maureen Dowd compared Biden to Trump after the debate and suggested the president was being selfish by remaining in the race.
"He’s putting himself ahead of the country. He’s surrounded by opportunistic enablers," Dowd said. "He has created a reality distortion field where we’re told not to believe what we’ve plainly seen. His hubris is infuriating. He says he’s doing this for us, but he’s really doing it for himself."
Dowd said Biden "succumbed to behavior redolent of Trump," and asserted it was not just an "off night" for the president.
Many of the figures calling on Biden to withdraw from the race have made clear they are strong supporters and even "love" the president.
One of Biden's close friends, Tom Friedman, a columnist at the New York Times, declared in a column published Friday that the president had no business running for re-election. He said the debate performance by Biden made him "weep."
Fellow Times columnists Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman also urged Biden to exit the stage; like Friedman, they fawned over his presidency as a progressive success but said he should not run again. Liberal journalist Jonathan Alter added Biden was "too old to serve," and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius has reiterated past calls on Biden to step aside as well.
A well-known watcher of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," if the president tuned in on Friday, he would have seen host Joe Scarborough saying that while he loved Biden, it was time to talk about him leaving the race.
"If he were CEO and he turned in a performance like that, would any corporation in America, any Fortune 500 corporation in America keep him on as CEO?" Scarborough asked.
Later on, frequent guest Donny Deutsch also mournfully said Biden was no longer the "best choice."
On Monday's "Morning Joe," however, Scarborough's wife and co-host Mika Brzezinski delivered a lengthy solo editorial at the top of the show, saying the party should stay the course and stand by Biden. Scarborough was not there due to being on a planned vacation.
Clarence Page, a senior member of the editorial board at the Chicago Tribune, also conceded in a column published on Sunday that "Biden needs to bow out."
"I was hoping to see Biden deliver a repeat performance of his State of the Union address. There he stood strong, confident and even jousted verbally and nimbly with his Republican hecklers," he began. "Unfortunately, on debate night a different Joe Biden showed up. He stuttered, stumbled, sounded annoyingly hoarse and even bungled some of his strongest selling points, including his health care record and his support for abortion rights."
The editorial boards for the Chicago Tribune and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's (AJC) also called on Biden to drop out in editorials published on Friday. The Chicago Tribune represents the city hosting the 2024 Democratic National Convention, while Atlanta was the site of Thursday night's debate and is the capital of one of the country's most important swing states.
"Biden, if we’ve not made that clear, should announce that he will be a single-term president who now has seen the light when it comes to his own capabilities in the face of the singular demands of being the president of the United States. He can do so with honor, but he is the only person who can do so," the Tribune editors wrote.
The AJC said the president "failed to outline the most fundamental aspects of his platform," and added, "The shade of retirement is now necessary for President Biden."
Even some of the president's biggest supporters on ABC's "The View" suggested it might be time for him to step aside after watching the debate.
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"Maybe he needs to go," liberal co-host Sunny Hostin said.
"Maybe he needs to be honest with himself and the American people," she continued. "He can bow out at this time with grace and dignity. He has a record he can be proud of."
Co-hosts Sara Haines and Alyssa Farah Griffin also said Biden should leave the race; Griffin asserted he would lose to Trump if he stayed in.
CNN political commentator and former Obama adviser Van Jones seemed close to tears during a roundtable discussion about the president after the debate.
"He's a good man. He loves his country. He's doing the best that he can, but he had a test to meet tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base. And he failed to do that. And I think there's a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now," he said.
He continued, "We're still far from our convention, and there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward if he will allow us to do that. But that was not what we needed from Joe Biden, and it's personally painful for a lot of people. It's not just panic, it's pain, of what we saw tonight."
Comedian Bill Maher, who had been calling on Biden to step down long before the presidential debate, said it was very apparent that the president would lose in November.
"He is going to lose. I said it nine months ago. I'm going to say it again tonight. And now, it seems like it's so apparent," Maher said Friday on HBO's "Real Time."
Liberal columnist Jill Filipovic pushed First Lady Jill Biden to wield her influence and get the president out of the race.
"Dear Joe, it's time to go," Jay Parini, a professor at Middlebury College, wrote in an op-ed for CNN.
Parini praised Biden and his accomplishments, but said, "you’re an old man now."
"You seemed ancient, pale and fragile. You almost groped your way to the podium. Your speech was halting, often incoherent. Your jokes fell flat, badly timed, out of context. You let crazy Donald lie with impunity and snicker at your responses," Parini continued.
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The Atlantic's Mark Leibovich also said in a column that it was time for Biden to go.
"Biden needs to step aside, for the sake of his own dignity, for the good of his party, for the future of the country. This debacle of a debate was a low point. It needs to be a turning point," he wrote.
Leibovich called on Biden's family to make it "abundantly clear."
The Bulwark's Bill Kristol told ABC News on Sunday that the president should not be the nominee.
"You can't unsee what we've seen, and it was not just a bad debate. He's older, he has a health problem, I'm going to put it that way, and I'm sympathetic to him," Kristol said. "We don't owe him another four years in the White House, and he should step aside."
The New Yorker's David Remnick also deemed Biden's debate performance to be troubling, suggesting that Biden was putting democracy at risk by staying in the race.
"To step aside and unleash the admittedly complicated process of locating and nominating a more robust and promising ticket seems the more rational course and would be an act of patriotism. To refuse to do so, to go on contending that his good days are more plentiful than the bad, to ignore the inevitability of time and aging, doesn’t merely risk his legacy — it risks the election and, most important, puts in peril the very issues and principles that Biden has framed as central to his Presidency and essential to the future," he wrote.
Should Biden stay in office and get re-elected, he will be 86 at the conclusion of his second term.
