Joe Biden has been desperately and defiantly pushing back on calls for him to drop out. While he remains confident that he can stick it out and several Democrats who wanted him to drop out appear resigned that this won’t happen, the cracks in his coalition have deepened, and many of his most loyal supporters are still throwing him under the bus.
For example, actor George Clooney, who just recently held a fundraiser for Joe Biden, is calling on him to drop out.
"But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Wednesday. "It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal' Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
Clooney continued, "Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.”
For the record, conservatives have been pointing this stuff out for years, but Clooney didn’t acknowledge them.
"Is it fair to point these things out?” Clooney asked. "It has to be. This is about age. Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate."
If you think that’s brutal, Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) is so confident that Biden is going to lose in November that he’s predicting a Donald Trump landslide win if Biden remains the nominee.
"This race is on a trajectory that is very worrisome if you care about the future of this country,” he told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday. "Joe Biden was nine points up at this time, the last time he was running. Bill Clinton was five points up. This is the first time in more than 20 years that a Republican president has been up in this part of the campaign."
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"Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election. And maybe win it by a landslide and take with it the Senate and the House,” he added. "So, for me, this isn't a question about polling, it's not a question about politics, it's a moral question about the future of our country. And I think it's critically important for us to come to grips with what we'd face if, together, we put this country on the path of electing Donald Trump again."
“Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election. And maybe win it by a landslide and take with it the Senate and the House,” Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet tells me in a very newsy interview. “I think we could lose the whole thing and it’s staggering to me.” pic.twitter.com/k0M97PntVA
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) July 10, 2024
There are even cracks forming within the Congressional Black Caucus, which earlier this week expressed support for Biden to continue the campaign.
"In determining how to proceed as a party, there must be a serious reckoning with the down-ballot effect of whomever we nominate,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), a member of the caucus, said in a statement posted to X/Twitter. "What matters is not how we feel but what the numbers tell us. An unsentimental analysis of the cold hard numbers—which have no personal feelings or political loyalties—should inform what we decide and whom we nominate."
He added, "If we’re going to choose a particular path, we should be clear-eyed about its consequences. Blindness is not bliss amid the terrifying threat of a Trump presidency."
How does the underside of the bus look now, Joe?
It was looking like Biden was going to survive all of this, but suddenly, the forces trying to get him to drop out are getting more vocal, and it may be too hard to ignore. Biden's most faithful supporters have lost faith, and how do you continue a campaign like that?
