The embattled re-election campaign of US President Joe Biden has descended into a full-blown crisis, with high-profile Democratic figures, including actor and donor George Clooney and Vermont Senator Peter Welch, publicly urging the 81-year-old incumbent to abandon his bid for a second term.
In a scathing essay published in The New York Times on Wednesday, Clooney, who co-hosted a major fundraiser for Biden last month, said he had personally witnessed the president's decline and that he was no longer the same person who had run in 2020.
He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate. Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn't see what we just saw, Clooney wrote, referring to Biden's performance in a recent televised event.
Clooney went on to state that Biden would not be able to defeat his Republican challenger, Donald Trump, in the November 2024 election, and that Democrats would also lose control of the House of Representatives and the Senate if the president remained on the ticket.
This isn't only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor who I've spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly, Clooney claimed.
In a separate op-ed published in The Washington Post, Democratic Senator Peter Welch of Vermont became the first member of the chamber to publicly call for Biden to withdraw from the race.
We cannot unsee President Biden's disastrous debate performance. We cannot ignore or dismiss the valid questions raised since that night, Welch wrote, echoing Clooney's concerns about the president's fitness.
I understand why President Biden wants to run. He saved us from Donald Trump once and wants to do it again. But he needs to reassess whether he is the best candidate to do so. In my view, he is not.
The growing pressure from within the Democratic Party has thrown Biden's 2024 candidacy into turmoil, with the president's allies now facing a critical decision on whether to stand by their longtime standard-bearer or seek a new path forward.
The revelations from Clooney and Welch come as Biden's campaign has struggled to gain traction, with the president's advanced age and perceived cognitive decline becoming a major liability. The White House has repeatedly dismissed such concerns, but the latest developments suggest that the party's establishment is growing increasingly uneasy about Biden's viability as a candidate.
As the 2024 election cycle heats up, the fate of Biden's presidency and the Democratic Party's future now hang in the balance, with the president facing a pivotal choice on whether to heed the calls for him to step aside.
