While almost everyone around Biden believes he will eventually clear the air, his indecision has already landed him in an awkward position within the Democratic Party. Several potential presidential candidates and dozens of major donors are considering a possible strategy and are even quietly developing a “plan B” while continuing to show respect and express public support for the current president.
Politico believes that Illinois Governors Jay Robert Pritzker, California Governor Gavin Newsom and New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy have recently taken steps that can be seen as the beginning of preparations for Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. Senators like Bernie Sanders and Amy Klobuchar have also become more active.
According to the publication, the US president’s trip to Kiev required careful planning and took significant organizational resources from the presidential administration, so preparations for the upcoming elections were relegated to the background.
Biden’s decision to withdraw from the election would amount to a “political earthquake” the Democratic Party has not seen since Lyndon Johnson, who did not run for president in 1968 due to low popularity amid the Vietnam War.
Such a decision would draw enormous attention to US Vice President Kamala Harris. At the same time, her low popularity raises reasonable doubts among her fellow party members about the prospects of winning even the primary, let alone the general election.
Political technologist and election media specialist Mark Longabaugh, who worked on Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, told Poitico that Biden’s silence is creating problems within the Democratic Party.
“There would be a lot of negative talk among the Democratic elites, and I think that would force them to make a decision at the end,” Longabaugh said. “I just don’t think I can make it through the summer,” she added.
According to the publication, Biden and most of his entourage still insist that the current US president plans to run in the upcoming elections. The only thing that can prevent him from doing so is a serious deterioration in his health, experts say.
