President Joe Biden is and reaffirmed its commitment to stay within the race for the presidency – despite the growing variety of calls from politicians and voters for him to step down, after a really criticized debate performance in June 2024.
After Biden said in an ABC news interview that only “The Lord Almighty” could persuade him desired to drop out, he wrote a letter to the congressional Democrats on July 8, wherein he explained “I am determined to stay in this raceto see this race through to the end and defeat Donald Trump.”
This comes as other distinguished democratic politicians are allegedly – and mostly private – calls on Biden to drop out of the race.
Biden has repeatedly stressed that he’s staying within the race, but that shouldn’t be necessarily the entire truth. Amy Lieberman, politics and society editor at The Conversation, spoke with Philip Klinkner, a Scholar of American politics and the Presidency at Hamilton College to higher understand what aspects might influence Biden's statements and his final decision to remain within the race or not.
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Can we take Biden's words to remain within the race at face value? Do they reflect what is happening behind the scenes?
Biden obviously knows that his support amongst Democrats – mainly elected Democrats in Congress, governors and others – slipped. He knows that if he shows signs of indecision, he could get less support from Democratic politicians, which might result in much more hesitation. He is trying to keep up a brave facade to forestall defection, doubt and bleeding. So far, that hasn't really had the intended effect.
Every day we see a trickle of Democrats in Congress who’ve called on Biden to resign. Biden's approach can have prevented that trickle from becoming a flood, but it surely could develop into a flood at any time.
What aspects do these politicians consider when deciding whether or to not support Biden?
There are a variety of considerations. One argument is that Biden has obvious flaws, but is there anyone on the market who can be a greater candidate to face Trump? Another factor is that Biden has been a fixture in Washington, DC, for many years. Many of those persons are friends with him and have worked with him. They don't necessarily need to be the friend who finally ends up turning against him.
The other factor is that these politicians don't need to be those calling for Biden to resign if he doesn't go anywhere. Then Biden and the people working around him could later say, “You let me down when I needed you most.”
Have we ever seen politicians make a powerful commitment to remain within the race before suddenly changing their minds?
Politicians are at all times fully committed to a selected plan of action until they alter, they usually often express this in absolute terms.
In 1972, Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern selected Thomas Eagleton as his vice presidential candidate. Then got here the news that Eagleton treated for depression and underwent electroconvulsive therapy. At that point, attitudes toward mental illness weren’t as tolerant as they’re today, and McGovern and Eagleton faced numerous criticism. McGovern initially said he supported Eagleton “1,000%”, after which he fired him a number of days later and removed him from ticket sales.
Until a day or two before Richard Nixon resigned as president In August 1974 he said he would never do it. For greater than a 12 months People called on Nixon to resign after the Watergate scandal, wherein Nixon agents were involved tries to bother the Democratic National Committee Headquarters. These calls intensified after the Saturday Night Massacre in October 1973, when he fired a special prosecutor and accepted the resignations of the 2 highest-ranking Justice Department officials—the attorney general and his deputy—who were involved within the Watergate investigation.
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What was the critical moment in these two cases?
In Nixon’s case – and this might now also affect Biden – support for his own party collapsed. Leading Republicans in Congress went to the White House and said, “Look, you're going to be impeached if you don't resign.” Nixon asked Senator Barry Goldwater what his support was within the Senate. Goldwater said, “There are not any greater than 15 senators for you.”
In Eagleton and McGovern's case, the dearth of support inside their party was also a key consider changing their vice presidential candidate.
In the case of Biden, I feel that senior Democrats like Congressman Jerry Nadler saideven in private phone calls that he should resign will cause him to drop out of the race. Biden can only take care of that to a certain extent, since the more that happens, the more room and safety there’s for other Democrats to become involved.
Is there something else happening behind the scenes that has convinced Biden and his allies that he should stay within the race?
There were some exaggerations in how bad Biden's poll numbers actually are. Yes, Biden has dropped within the pollsbut it surely wasn't a free fall and it's still a really close race. Historically, we see that when a politician suffers a setback within the polls due to a selected incident, it's normally pretty short-lived. What the Biden persons are probably pondering is, “Yeah, we suffered a setback in the polls after the debate, but if you wait two weeks, the race will go back to where it was before the debate.”
When Trump was convicted in 34 cases of significant crimes in May 2024, that only The poll numbers barely movedPeople will not be pleased with the Trump versus Biden election, but most individuals know who they are going to vote for in this example.
Most candidates are relatively resistant to attacks from the opposite party. What hurts most is when people from your individual party start criticizing you.
That's exactly what's happening here with Biden. The Biden people say if everyone just joined in, we wouldn't see a drop within the polls.
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