In an effort to silence his critics on the left, President Joe Biden asserted his steadfast commitment to the 2024 election in a letter he wrote to congressional Democrats on Monday. Despite mounting calls for his withdrawal following a lackluster debate performance, Biden's missive aimed to reassure his party that he remains resolute in his bid for reelection.
And believe it or not, he made a couple of valid points — whoever wrote the letter for him did, anyway.
"Now that you have returned from the July 4th recess, I want you to know that despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump,” the letter began.
Biden then acknowledged the concerns raised by party leaders, elected officials, and Democratic voters following recent events. He claimed to "know better than anyone” about the burden of being the Democratic nominee. "I carried it in 2020 when the fate of our nation was at stake,” he wrote. He went on to express gratitude for the support he has received from longtime allies and voters alike, before reaffirming his commitment to staying in the race and explaining his reasons why.
Here’s what he said.
We had a Democratic nomination process and the voters have spoken clearly and decisively. I received over 14 million votes, 87% of the votes cast across the entire nominating process. I have nearly 3,000 delegates, making me the presumptive nominee of our party by a wide margin.
He’s right. He is the candidate that his party’s voters chose. These voters may have been able to turn a blind eye to his cognitive issues in 2020 because he was running a basement campaign, but his physical and mental decline has been broadcast daily on television for three and a half years now. They knew. Okay, that’s not exactly the point Biden was trying to make here, but it nevertheless is a valid argument that Democrat voters knew who and what they were voting for.
This was a process open to anyone who wanted to run. Only three people chose to challenge me. One fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as an independent. Another attacked me for being too old and was soundly defeated. The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party.
Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?
It's another incredibly valid point. Of course, while voters could see Biden’s decline on television, Democrats, particularly insiders who work with Biden regularly, certainly knew better than anybody just how bad things were with Biden. Washington, D.C., isn’t exactly a place known for keeping secrets. As we’ve been reporting for over a week now, since the debate, many insiders have been speaking out expressing concern about Biden.
Since the beginning of his presidency, there has been a concerted effort to conceal Biden’s physical and mental decline from the public. That’s not a secret that's easy to keep. The problem was that so few outlets on the left were willing to report on it.
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Everyone from Biden’s inner circle to elected Democrats all the way down to Democratic Party voters put Biden in the position to be their party’s nominee in 2024. They all knew what was going on, and did nothing to stop it. They all deserve the blame for the chaos the party is going through now.
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