Democratic Governors Warn Biden He’s Quickly Losing Support
President Joe Biden met with a group of Democratic governors on Wednesday in an attempt to reassure them that his candidacy is still viable, after a disastrous debate performance last week and mounting reports that he’s become less lucid over the course of his presidency.
Some Democratic governors did not mince words with the president in the closed-door meeting, and told him that support for his candidacy was going down the drain in their respective states. None of the governors who met with Biden flat out told him to quit the campaign, as some top Democrats have already done, but a few raised their concerns about his candidacy, according to The New York Times.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who attended the meeting virtually, told the president that he’d seen a surge of calls from constituents for Biden to withdraw from the race, two people who were briefed on the call told the Times.
Maine Governor Janet Mills remarked that voters didn’t feel that Biden was up to the task of campaigning, and New Mexico Governor Michell Lujan said she was worried that Biden might lose the election in her state.
Although Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey remained quiet in the meeting, she told her fellow governors on Monday that she’d told Biden’s chief of staff that the president’s position was “irretrievable.”
The Times also reported that because Biden announced his intention to keep running at the beginning of the meeting, some felt that actual debate over his candidacy was off the agenda.
To be clear, after the meeting, some governors re-upped themselves as staunch Biden supporters. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and California Governor Gavin Newsom, who some were floating as a possible candidate to replace Biden, both tweeted their support of the president. Others, like Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who issued a dire warning to Biden about rescuing his floundering bid, remained notably silent.