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A former advisor to Barack Obama has claimed that President Joe Biden is trying to “run out the clock” so it winds up being too late to nominate a new candidate to replace him on the Democratic ticket.
The electorate believes that Biden’s time in office is up following his disastrous debate performance last month, with more than half of American voters saying the president should drop out of the 2024 race, according to a new The Washington Post poll.
With Biden defiant that he is staying put, several of his top aides are meeting with disgruntled Senate Democrats on Thursday to try to reassure the party of the president’s fitness for office.
But David Axelrod, former chief strategist for Obama’s presidential campaigns, has said that Biden is employing another tactic to get his party to play ball: eating up time until the election.
“I do think he is trying to run out the clock,” Axelrod told CNN this week.
“And then time gets very short if you were to make a change.”
Axelrod has been outspoken with his criticism of the Biden campaign in recent weeks.
On Sunday, he raised concerns about the 81-year-old president’s age, saying: “The one person that no one can outrun is Father Time”.
His sentiment that the president is trying to run out the clock has also been suggested by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, however, as she warned in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday that “time is running short” for the preisdent to make a decision about his future.
At least 15 congressional Democrats and several party megadonors have publicly called for the 81-year-old incumbent to step down from the race over fears he is too old or lacking the mental acuity to beat Donald Trump in Novembr and serve another four terms.
A growing list of celebrities have also joined the calls including George Clooney, who penned a bruising op-ed in The New York Times saying that the “one battle” Biden “cannot win is the fight against time.”
Axelrod noted that Clooney’s blunt assessment of the president was “devastating” – coming just weeks after the Oscar-winning actor headlined Biden’s Los Angeles fundraiser.
Obama was given advance notice of the op-ed, according to Politico. Although he didn’t encourage Clooney or share any notes on what to say, he didn’t have any objections to it, the outlet reported.
Despite the mounting calls for him to cull his re-election efforts, Biden has vowed that he’s not going anywhere.
Last Friday in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, the president said that only the “Lord Almighty” himself could stop him from running for a second term.
