Top Democrats across the country said President Joe Biden should not run for re-election in 2024 as they expressed worries over his current leadership and age.
Nearly all 50 Democratic officials interviewed by the New York Times feared a Biden re-election campaign would not help their party against Republicans, who are expected to make sweeping victories in the coming midterms.
Democratic National Committee (DNC) member Steve Simeonidis, of Miami, said he was generally pessimistic about his party’s leadership and called on Biden, 79, to let someone new take over in 2024.
‘To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,’ Simeonidis told the Times. ‘[Biden] should announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.’
Shelia Huggins, another member of the DNC from Durham, North Carolina, was more critical of the president.
‘Democrats need fresh, bold leadership for the 2024 presidential race,’ she said. ‘That can’t be Biden.’
While grateful for Biden’s victory against Donald Trump in 2020, many of the interviewed Democrats, many of whom asked to remain anonymous, said the troubles facing the president’s administration have dealt a major blow to his party.
Among the big ticket issues are record-high inflation that’s the heighest its ever been in more than 40 years, surging gas prices – which hit $5 per gallon on Saturday, the lingering pandemic and the possible end of federal abortion rights as the Supreme Court is poised to end Roe V. Wade in the coming weeks.
Also stinging was Biden’s failure to pass his $1.8 trillion Build Back Better agenda and voting rights expansion, which faced opposition from his own party, and the chaotic U.S. military exit from Afghanistan last summer.
The question remains of who would be poised to replace Biden in this highly polarizing political climate as Democrats fear Trump might launch his own re-election campaign for 2024.
Few of those interviewed by the Times said they did not expect Vice President Kamala Harris to run.
Harris has faced her own failures in office, primarily through the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border despite her being appointed as the border czar.
Many of the interviewed Democrats instead touted U.S. senators Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Corey Booker, as well as U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Texas gubernatorial hopeful Beto O’Rourke.
This is an excerpt from The Daily Mail.
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