President Biden continued to bleed support from Democrats Saturday, who called on him to leave the 2024 presidential race after his Friday ABC interview failed to silence worries about his age and cognitive abilities.
Minnesota Rep. Angie Craig became the fifth sitting House Democrat to urge Biden to call it quits.
“As an elected leader, I feel a responsibility to be honest about what I believe, even when it’s hard to hear. President Biden is a good man & I appreciate his lifetime of service. But I believe he should step aside for the next generation of leadership,” Craig, who’s in a tough reelection fight in Minnesota, wrote.
Meanwhile, David Axelrod, the architect of Obama’s two successful presidential campaigns, was far more blunt. He called the Friday sit-down “sad” to watch.
“When George Stephanopoulos asked him if he’d be willing to take a cognitive test, he said, ‘I take a cognitive test every day.’ Well, the fact is, that may be true, but 75% of the American people think he fails,” Axelrod said in post-interview analysis on CNN Friday.
The wave of defections suggest that President Biden’s attempt to clean up things by sitting for an ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos Friday has failed spectacularly.
When Craig came out against keeping Biden at the top of the ticket, she joined Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.). All five are calling on the president to step aside after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
However, the do-or-die sit-down received its most negative reviews from Biden’s old colleagues in the Obama White House.
While Biden again rejected calls to leave the race, saying only the “Lord Almighty” could make him, Axelrod said that wasn’t enough as polls show the incumbent slipping nationally and in battleground states.
“And somebody really needs to be honest with him about it. It’s not, it can’t be the good Lord, but it should be people who love and care for him and his closest advisers. His portrait of where he is in this race doesn’t comport with reality,” Axelrod said.
Long before Biden’s CNN debate with Trump reignited questions about his mental fitness, Axelrod had been sounding the alarm about age and spent months warning that Biden was slipping.
In November he flagged the Biden “age issue” as a major concern and warned then the president’s chances against Trump in a rematch would be at best 50-50.
There has been no love lost between the two men over the years and Biden is privately known to refer to Axelrod as a “prick.”
Julián Castro, a former States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Obama also said Biden’s clean up job with ABC was “not good enough.”
“I think the most chilling was when [George] Stephanopoulos asked him, ‘Well, what if you lose to [former President Trump,] then how are you gonna feel?’ and President Biden said, ‘Well, as long as I gave it my all,’ that basically that he would feel ok,” Castro said on MSNBC Friday.
Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder’s response to the interview was to post on X that “we are now engaged in a difficult determination about who our nominee for President should be.”
The Democratic primary — which crowned President Biden the presumptive nominee — wrapped up in March after he won enough delegates to clinch the party’s nod.
Biden did get some support from elected Democrats after his ABC interview — particularly Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who said he was ride or die with Biden.
“Democrats need to get a spine or grow a set—one or the other. Joe Biden is our guy,” Fetterman said in a terse posting on X.