During an interview on MSNBC on Tuesday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Biden to participate in multiple interviews with journalists in the aftermath of his debate performance.
The California Democrat, who emphasized it is Biden’s decision about whether to step aside, said she has heard “mixed” responses to the debate from donors and others in her Democratic network.
“I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” Pelosi said, referring to Biden’s debate performance. She quickly added that this was a legitimate question for former President Donald Trump as well, citing his repeated lies during the debate.
He needs to do those interviews, get out there, and make his case that he has the same vitality that he used to have, and it was just an off night. There is too much at stake this year to just take a mulligan and count on someone new in four years.
He doesn’t have the benefit of the doubt anymore. He needs to prove that he’s up to it. If he can’t, he needs to step aside – from all of it. Give Harris the benefit of incumbency.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The stakes, already remarkable, were raised even higher after the Supreme Court on Monday ruled Trump is entitled to considerable immunity from prosecution, a development that some concerned Democrats say makes it more urgent for Biden to step aside.
The president who still thinks of himself as the stuttering kid so poor he had to wear nuts and bolts as cufflinks to a ninth-grade dance is still holding on to hope that this can be the latest time he comes back after being written off.
Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, the closest of Biden’s political allies, told CNN he would like to see the president counter the narrative of being too old and incompetent for the job by doing more public events, town halls and interviews.
The debate performance has so shaken Democrats that even stalwarts like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told local reporters back home in Rhode Island on Monday that he wants a fuller accounting of the president’s health.
As dark as the mood is among some aides — including those who feel the wind knocked out of them after years of internalizing a related Biden mythology that he always delivers in a crunch — others are hoping to prove wrong people who never believed in him.
Phil Murphy, the New Jersey governor who called Biden the “comeback kid” at a fundraiser he hosted with the president on Saturday night, said that at their dinner table they had a wide-ranging, coherent conversation that covered, by his telling, Ukraine, the Middle East, wage growth, job creation, dealing more effectively with corporations, and expanding prekindergarten and community college.
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