Biden ‘privately’ rants about architects of ‘historic’ Democratic losses, urges him to resign

Even as President Joe Biden recovers from his battle with Covid-19, he is reportedly responding to key Democratic strategists who are pressuring him to withdraw from the 2024 race.

The New York Times reported that the 81-year-old Biden is still criticizing his opponents, despite “coughing and crying” while in isolation at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The 46th president is facing a new wave of Democrats in both the House and Senate calling on him to step aside to give Democrats the best chance to defeat former President Donald Trump in November.

In the report of the TimePeter Baker, Michael D. Shear and Katie Rogers, senior Biden aides who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the president had fiery words for Democratic strategists who tried to convince him to abandon his reelection campaign. Even former President Barack Obama — who said this week that Biden should reconsider his viability as a candidate — was reportedly a target of Biden’s ire.

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“By privately railing against Obama and even advisers to former President Bill Clinton, Biden has made clear that he finds it particularly opulent that the architects of the historic Democratic losses in the 1994 and 2010 midterm elections would lecture him on how to save the party after he runs a better-than-expected midterm in 2022,” Baker, Shear and Rogers wrote.

Biden did not mention him by name, the Timebut it is likely that his commentary about the Clinton adviser behind the Democrats’ stunning loss in the 1994 midterm elections is James Carville. In an op-ed for the Time Earlier this month, Carville wrote that Biden would not be able to beat Trump and that the Democratic Party should choose another candidate this summer.

“It has been a painful time for those of us who believe President Biden deserves more than a second term but will not win one. But now we must move on,” he wrote.

As one of Clinton’s top strategists 30 years ago, Carville was largely responsible for the Democrats’ strategy for the 1994 midterms, which saw Democrats lose 34 House seats and Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia) become speaker. His slogan (“it’s the economy, stupid”) rang hollow as Republicans defeated Democrats and further thwarted Clinton’s first-term agenda. And in 2022, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the main organization behind Project 2025, cited Carville’s slogan to justify his ultimately incorrect prediction of a “red wave” in the most recent midterm, which never materialized.

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Biden has reiterated that he has no plans to leave the race, despite more than 30 Democrats in the House of Representatives and Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), Jon Tester (D-Montana) and Peter Welch (D-Vermont) all urging him to end his re-election bid. But Biden also has high-level support: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) have both said they believe Biden has the ability to defeat Trump this fall.

In a video posted to Instagram Live early Friday morning, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) walked her followers through the details of a phone call she had with top Democratic congressional leaders, lawyers and strategists about the pressure campaign to persuade Biden to step aside. She said that while the base appeared to be coalescing around Vice President Kamala Harris as Biden’s heir apparent, Democratic megadonors were eager for an open convention that would allow a lesser-known candidate to emerge as the nominee.

“A large portion of the donor class and a large portion of these elites, and a large portion of these people in these rooms that I see pushing for President Biden not to be the nominee, are also not interested in seeing the vice president as the nominee,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “Will they win with that? I don’t know. But I’m here to tell you: Don’t take that for granted.”

Click here to Time‘ report in its entirety (subscription required).

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