President Biden is facing yet another call to drop out of the presidential race after his disastrous debate performance, this time from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a front-page editorial published Sunday, Georgia’s largest newspaper urges the 81-year-old incumbent to step aside and allow another Democrat to take on former president Donald Trump in November “for the good” of the country.
While Biden’s candidacy was once “grounded in his incumbency and the belief of Democratic leaders and pollsters that he stood the best chance of defeating Trump in November,” the board argues this is “no longer the case.”
“The shade of retirement is now necessary for President Biden,” the board writes, days after Biden struggled to form coherent sentences during the first presidential debate, showing signs of his advanced age and sparking immediate panic among many Democratic pundits and voters.
Biden failed to produce a “competent and coherent vision for the future of America” during the debate, the editorial says.
Attempts from Biden campaign surrogates and other Biden allies, including Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Barack Obama, to brush off the debate performance are “insulting to the American people,” the editorial board argues.
“President Biden’s ability to withstand the mental and physical rigors of another four-year term would be of concern regardless of his opponent. The fact that he is all that stands in the way of Trump returning to the Oval Office significantly raises the stakes,” the board says, pointing to Trump’s candidacy as “testament to the deep divisions and tribalism that has come to define American politics in the 21st century.”
If Biden truly wants to defeat Trump, “he must pass the torch to the next generation of Democratic leaders and urge the party to nominate another candidate at its convention in Chicago in August,” the board says.
“Doing this will require a massive and unprecedented string of legal and regulatory actions to get a Biden successor named and placed on each state’s ballot. This is difficult and necessary work that must start immediately,” it added.
The editorial concludes by arguing Biden “deserves a better exit from public life than the one he endured when he shuffled off the stage Thursday night” and that he can know that he served his country with honor if he steps aside and retires now.
A growing chorus of media figures and political pundits have called on Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race after his debate disaster, including the New York Times editorial board.
“Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election,” the Times editorial board wrote on Friday.
Biden, meanwhile, tried to play down his poor debate showing at a rally in North Carolina on Friday. “I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he said, as his supporters cheered.
“I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done. I know, like millions of Americans, when you get knocked down, you get back up,” Biden added.
And the Biden campaign previously shrugged off the Times editorial.
“The last time Joe Biden lost the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement it turned out pretty well for him,” Biden campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said in a response, referring to the paper’s decision to endorse Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Amy Klobuchar in the 2020 Democratic primary, before Biden ultimately won the nomination.