Biden Under Intense Pressure to Resign
Silver commented on a Washington Post articlefrom Tuesday which described President Biden avoiding the press while attending the G-20 summit in Brazil.
"President Joe Biden was in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, unprotected from mosquitoes, fire ants and loud, squawking macaws. But there was another pest he did manage to avoid: the pack of reporters traveling with him," the Post reported. "During a six-day foreign trip to Peru and Brazil that wrapped up Monday, the president rarely spoke in public, answering almost no questions despite repeated efforts to engage him. One television producer took to writing messages on a large pad of paper, holding it up as Biden boarded and departed Air Force One."
Silver suggested the report was a further sign Biden was incapable of leading in the final weeks of his presidency.
"Is there any particular reason to assume Biden is competent to be president right now? It's a very difficult job. It's a dangerous world. Extremely high-stakes decisions in Ukraine. He should resign and let Harris serve out the last 2 months," Silver wrote on X Wednesday.
Prior to the election, Silver frequently floated the idea of Biden being replaced by a different candidate and even called for Biden to resign in July after his disastrous ABC interview with George Stephanopoulos.
"I wimped out in today’s col
umn and deleted a line saying he should formulate a plan to transition the presidency to Harris within 30-60 days, but I’m there now," Silver said at the time. "Something is clearly wrong here."
"The most generous way to put it is that he doesn't seem in command, and that's an extremely hard sell when you're Commander in Chief," Silver concluded — adding that he believes "Democrats will apply incredible amounts of pressure" to make the president resign.
He previously suggested Biden be replaced in June, adding the Democrats would have been better off had he dropped out of the race last year.
"But Biden just hit a new all-time low in approval (37.4%) at 538 yesterday. Dropping out would be a big risk. But there's some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk. Are we there yet? I don't know. But it's more than fair to ask," Silver wrote. "What's clearer IMO is that Democrats would have been better served if Biden had decided a year ago not to seek a second term, which would have allowed them to have some semblance of a primary process and give voters a say among the many popular Democrats across the country."
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