Texas Congressman Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday urged President Joe Biden to “make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw” from the 2024 presidential race.
Doggett, 77, is the first sitting Democratic lawmaker to formally call on his own party's incumbent representative to drop his re-election campaign against former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.
The call adds significant pressure on Biden, 81, whose disastrous debate against Trump last week sent supporters into a frenzy as he wonders whether he can win in November and serve another four years in the White House.
But Biden and his team have so far rejected any suggestion that he would withdraw from the race.
In response to Doggett's statement, a Biden campaign aide told NBC News, “He's staying.”
These and other pledges by Biden and the post-debate campaign have done little to assuage Democrats’ growing concerns, some of which have already become visible in the public eye.
“I think it's a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition?” former House Speaker and current Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday on MSNBC.
She advised Biden to do more face-to-face interviews with “serious journalists” to reassure his allies. Biden has participated in fewer press conferences or interviews than many of his modern-day counterparts.
Doggett explicitly tied his decision on Biden to the president's performance during Thursday's debate.
“President Biden continues to trail Democratic senators significantly in key states and is trailing Donald Trump in most polls,” Doggett said in a press release.
“I had hoped that the debate would provide momentum to change that. It didn't.”
“Rather than reassuring voters, the president failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump's many lies,” the lawmaker said.
“Our primary consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang,” Doggett wrote in the statement. “The stakes are too high to risk a Trump victory — too high 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.”
“President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020. He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024,” Doggett said.
The Texas Democrat also warned of the threat a second Trump presidency would pose, citing the Supreme Court's decision this week to grant former presidents “presumptive immunity” for all their official acts.
“Trump, now with immunity, could lead America into a long, dark, authoritarian era with little or no intervention by the courts or a submissive Republican Congress,” Doggett said in his statement.
He encouraged Biden to follow the example of former President Lyndon Johnson, who voluntarily declined a second term.
“Under very different circumstances, [Johnson] made the painful decision to withdraw. President Biden should do the same,” Doggett said.
“My decision to make these strong concerns public was not taken lightly and in no way diminishes my respect for all that President Biden has accomplished,” he said.
“Knowing that President Biden, unlike Trump, has always been committed to our country first, not himself, I hope he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw.”
