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Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas has called for President Joe Biden to end his re-election campaign, marking the first time a sitting Democratic member of Congress has supported the president dropping out of the race after his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump.
Biden has run “substantially behind” other Democratic candidates in high-stakes races, has trailed Trump in most polls, and then “failed” to expose his Republican rival’s lies during the debate, according to Doggett.
“Our overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory — too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what was not turned around in the debate, can be turned around now,” he added.
Following a Supreme Court decision that grants Trump and other presidents immunity from prosecution for crimes committed in office, a “newly-empowered” Trump could “usher America into a long, dark, authoritarian era unchecked by either the courts or a submissive Republican Congress,” according to Doggett.
Doggett — who has been in office since 1995 and represents the largely Democratic capital city of Austin — noted that former President Lyndon Johnson once represented the same district. During a televised address in 1968, Johnson announced he would not seek re-election and would not accept his party’s nomination.
“President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said.
Biden “pledged to be transitional,” and leaving the race creates “an opportunity to encourage a new generation of leaders from whom a nominee can be chosen to unite our country through an open, democratic process,” according to Doggett.
“My decision to make these strong reservations public is not done lightly nor does it in any way diminish my respect for all that President Biden has achieved,” he added. “Recognizing that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so.”
Doggett’s statement followed former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s remarks on MSNBC that “it is a legitimate question” whether the president’s performance in his June 27 debate with Trump was “an episode or is this a condition.”
In an op-ed for Newsweek, former Democratic congressman Tim Ryan called on Vice President Kamala Harris to replace Biden as the the party’s nominee.
On June 30, Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin said there were “very honest, and serious and rigorous conversations taking place” within the Democratic Party about next steps.
Adam Frisch, the Democratic candidate for a House seat Colorado, also called on Biden to step aside, saying “we deserve better.”
Editorial boards for several major American newspapers — including The New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in crucial swing-state Georgia — have also called on Biden to drop out after last week’s debate.
“I know I’m not a young man, to state the obvious,” President Biden said in remarks from North Carolina the day after the debate.
“I don’t walk as easy as I used to. I don’t speak as well as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to,” he added. “But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong. I know how to to this job.”
In the first poll conducted by the network since hosting the debate last week, the results of a new survey from CNN show that most voters believe the Democratic Party would have a better chance of holding on to the presidency without Biden at the top of the ticket.
