U.S. President Joe Biden pauses during the CNN presidential debate at CNN Studios on June 27, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia. President Biden and Republican presidential candidate and former US President Trump face off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 campaign.
Justin Sullivan | AFP | Getty Images
New York Times Editorial Board President Joe Biden was urged on Friday to withdraw from the presidential election race against Donald Trump, citing the Democratic Party’s poor debate performance the night before.
The Times editorial said, “On Thursday night, the president was the shadow of a great public servant.” “He worked hard to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He worked hard to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He worked hard to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, failures and chilling plans. He worked hard more than once. Hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, failures and chilling plans.
“Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of confronting this tyrannical threat and defeating it. His argument is based primarily on the fact that he defeated Trump in 2020,” the statement said. “This is no longer a good reason why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.”
The shocking editorial comes just a day after Biden performed poorly in the first debate with Trump in the 2024 White House race.
“It should be remembered that Mr. Biden challenged Mr. Trump in this verbal duel,” the editorial said. “He set the rules and insisted on a date months earlier than any previous general election debate. He understood that he needed to address long-standing public concerns about his mental acuity, and he needed to do so quickly.”
“Mr. Biden now needs to face the fact that he failed his own test.”
The editorial comes as some Democrats and fundraisers consider pushing to remove Biden from the race.
For decades, The Times editorial board has been the leading voice in American liberal newspaper editorial.
But in recent years, the newspaper’s news column has been criticized by some liberals for its coverage of 2016 Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Biden.
Biden, for his part, gave no indication Friday that he was considering dropping out of the race.
While Biden acknowledged his questionable debate performance, he also stepped up his criticism of Trump in his North Carolina speech and in X’s social media posts.
“I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t speak as smoothly as I used to. My debates aren’t as good as they used to be,” Biden said at a campaign event on Friday. “But I know what I know: I know how to tell the truth. I know right from wrong, and I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”
“As Biden, I promise you, if I don’t believe wholeheartedly that I can do this job, I will not run again because, frankly, the stakes are too high.”
Replacing the Democratic presidential nominee at this stage of the election cycle would not only be politically risky for the party, it would also be extremely difficult. The only possible way to replace Biden is for him to voluntarily withdraw from the race.
“The last time Joe Biden lost the support of the New York Times editorial board, it worked out pretty well for him,” a Biden campaign aide told NBC in response to the New York Times editorial.
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