‘Dropping out would be a big risk. But there’s some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk,’ polling guru Nate Silver wrote on social media last week. ‘Are we there yet? I don’t know. But it’s more than fair to ask.’
Silver, founder of the website FiveThirtyEight, noted that Biden’s average approval rating had reached a new low of 37.4 percent. And chief among voter concerns is Biden’s age, which Silver concluded to be, ‘an extremely understandable concern, [as] Biden looks/acts his age and is a huge outlier to ask for the job until 86 [years old].’
Atlantic columnist Mark Leibovich cruelly stamped the President ‘Ruth Bader Biden’ earlier this month.
And James Carville, the political mastermind behind Bill Clinton’s presidential campaigns, said flat-out this month that Biden should not have run for re-election.
As the recognized leader of the Democratic Party, a stubborn Biden could refuse to step down and fight on to Election Day, even as the party grows more exasperated with his performance.
The former president famously backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 over Biden in the Democratic primary and even reportedly tried to stop his vice president from running in 2020.
Ironically, both Barack and Michelle Obama appear to have intentionally kept their distance from the Biden White House – knowing that their public appearances trigger nostalgia for the days when voters liked their nominees.