The growing outrage among Democrats over President Joe Biden’s shockingly weak debate performance on Thursday night appears to be turning into a full-blown party revolt.
“For Biden’s own good and the good of the country, he should step aside immediately,” major Democratic donor and former hedge fund manager Whitney Tilson told DailyMail.com. “The fact that it’s now three days later and Biden has done nothing to reassure us confirms my worst fears.”
Tilson has donated more than $300,000 to the party in recent years.
Days after the president struggled to control his train of thought and wandered into incomprehensible babble midway through his answer during the CNN debate, left-wing do-gooders are still in an uproar.
On Saturday, Biden appeared at a New York City fundraiser in a glitzy Long Island resort town and, according to one attendee, read a simple 15-minute speech via teleprompter before leaving without taking questions.
“Doing that for the next five months is not enough,” the fundraiser guest said, stressing that Biden’s understandably anxious supporters deserve reassurance that he can beat Donald Trump in November.
But later Saturday night, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison and Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez only fueled concerns during a conference call with reluctant DNC members.
The growing outrage among Democrats over President Joe Biden’s shockingly weak debate performance on Thursday night appears to be turning into a full-blown party revolt.
Days after Biden struggled to control his train of thought and wandered into incomprehensible babble midway through his answer during the CNN debate, left-wing do-gooders are still in an uproar.
“The call was like a cheerleading speech,” said John Verdejo, a North Carolina member of the House of Representatives. He told the Mail he was surprised when call organizers didn’t address the “elephant in the room”: Biden’s inability to speak clearly.
Other DNC members went even further than Verdejo in their criticism. Some said they felt “gaslighted” by campaign officials on the call, who seemed to deny there was anything to worry about. The official Team Biden line seems to be: Nothing to see here.
‘On every key metric, data shows [the debate] “has done nothing to change the perception of the American people,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Biden-Harris 2024 campaign, stressed in a memo released over the weekend.
Almost no one believes that spider.
“The data!?” tweeted Mike LaRosa, former press secretary to First Lady Jill Biden. “If there is data that contradicts the impact of what we all saw, WHERE THE HELL IS IT???”
Democratic donor Whitney Tilson also pulled no punches.
“They piss on our legs and tell us it’s raining. It’s insulting. How stupid do they think we are?”
In fact, a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted in the two days following the CNN debate found that 72 percent of registered voters now do not believe Biden has the “mental and cognitive health to serve as president,” up from 65 percent in early June.
On Monday morning, Biden was still at Camp David with his family, where they had gathered for a post-debate photo shoot with famed celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.
He did not return to the White House until late Monday evening, where he gave a brief speech about the Supreme Court’s ruling that day on presidential immunity, before leaving the podium without taking questions.
The Bidens returned to the White House on Monday after retreating to Camp David for crisis talks amid calls for Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race.
On Saturday, Biden appeared at a New York City fundraiser in a glitzy Long Island resort town and, according to one attendee, read a simple 15-minute speech via teleprompter before leaving without taking questions.
A reporter could be heard shouting, “Are you going to drop out?”
That lack of urgency on his part is already raising concerns among Democratic lawmakers, who fear Biden’s missteps could harm their own election chances.
“Everyone is waiting to see what the president is going to do and say,” said one House member. “I think the president himself needs to make a big push with congressional leaders.”
An aide to a Democrat in the House of Representatives who faces a strong Republican challenger in November echoed those concerns, telling the Mail that there are real worries that dissatisfaction with Biden will depress overall voter turnout.
According to Brett Bruen, a former White House adviser to Obama, this growing panic among Democrats is entirely predictable.
“The donors are the canaries in the political coal mine,” he said. “As polls over the past day have shown, there are echoes of Biden’s performance at all levels.”
“The idea that things will be a mess if Biden leaves office ignores the fact that things are already a mess,” he added.
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing the party is that even if the president were to step down, there would be no clear replacement candidate or path forward.
A CBS News/YouGov poll conducted two days after the CNN debate found that 72 percent of registered voters now do not believe Biden has the “mental and cognitive health to serve as president.”
“The data!?” tweeted Mike LaRosa (above), a former press secretary to First Lady Jill Biden. “If there is data that contradicts the impact of what we all saw, WHERE THE HELL IS IT???”
Tilson’s prescription for Biden, then, is to drop the postcards, teleprompters and controlled questions and show he’s up to the task by holding weekly press conferences or sitting down with the New York Times editorial board to convince them it was wrong to call on him to withdraw from the race.
“It’s absolutely a sensible strategy,” former Obama adviser Bruen said. At least, he added, if Biden doesn’t make another major public misstep.
“There is significant concern among Biden’s advisers that another impeachment could play a significant role and only increase the already significant pressure among Democrats to remove the president,” he said.
And that’s not to mention the unprecedented challenge of replacing a presumptive major-party nominee with seven weeks to go before the nominating conference and four months to go before the general election.
The most discouraging news for those who want Biden to resign came Saturday from Chavez Rodriguez, who claimed that if Biden were to resign, only Vice President Kamala Harris would be able to use the funds raised by his campaign.
The $91.2 million the Biden-Harris ticket has raised through May 31 is not transferable to another candidate under Federal Election Commission rules, so the party may find its hands are tied.
A troubling thought for party officials who know all too well that Harris is regularly voted the most unpopular vice president in history.
As one exasperated senior official noted, “The irony is that anyone but Kamala Harris has a better chance of beating Donald Trump!”