Several Democratic lawmakers call on Joe Biden to withdraw from the race

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A growing number of Democratic lawmakers, including two US senators, are calling on Joe Biden to drop out of this year’s White House race, raising the stakes for his re-election campaign.

Sherrod Brown, the senior Democratic senator from Ohio who is in the midst of a fierce re-election battle of his own, issued a statement Friday night saying: “I think the president should end his campaign.”

Brown became the fourth senator to urge Biden to resign and the latest of several Democratic lawmakers who called on the president to abandon his re-election campaign on Friday.

New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich also urged Biden to drop out on Friday, while two other senators, Jon Tester of Montana and Peter Welch of Vermont, have publicly called on Biden to abandon his White House bid.

“This moment in our country’s history demands a focus greater than any one individual,” Henrich said, adding that it was “in the best interest of the country” for the president to end his campaign.

Nearly a dozen House members also said Friday that Biden should resign.

In a joint statement, four members of the US House of Representatives — Jared Huffman, Mark Pocan, Chuy Garcia and Marc Veasey — said it was time for the 81-year-old president to “pass the torch to a new generation of Democratic leaders.”

“We have to face the fact that widespread public concern about your age and fitness is jeopardizing a campaign that should have been won,” the politicians added. House Democrats Sean Casten, Greg Landsman, Zoe Lofgren, Kathy Castor, Betty McCollum, Morgan McGarvey and Gabe Vasquez also called for Biden dropout.

Biden stressed on Friday that he would still racingsaid in a statement that he “looks[ed] looks forward to continuing to campaign next week to continue to expose the threat posed by Donald Trump’s Project 2025 agenda.”

The president has been self-isolating at his Delaware vacation home since testing positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday. White House physician Kevin O’Connor said Friday that Biden’s symptoms have “improved significantly” and he will continue taking the antiviral drug Paxlovid.

The new wave of lawmakers calling for Biden to resign comes as senior Democrats like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as major donors who played a key role in funding his campaign, are putting pressure on him behind the scenes.

Financial Times reported on Thursday that donors and other senior party officials believed Biden was close to dropping out of the race.

On Friday, Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist and major Democratic donor, called on Biden to resign, saying the president must choose between “vanity or virtue” in comments first reported by The New York Times and confirmed by Moritz.

He added that Biden’s efforts to secure a second term risked harming the country, but did not specify who he would support to replace him.

Chris Coons, a Democratic senator and close Biden ally, said Friday that the president is getting the advice he needs to make a decision about his political future.

“I believe he is hearing what he needs to hear,” he said in remarks at the Aspen Security Forum.

But Coons — who insists Biden is “strong” and “capable” enough to continue — acknowledged the uncertainty within the Democratic Party, saying: “There’s a lot of anxiety and insecurity because the stakes are so high.”

The latest interventions come a day after Trump formally accepted the Republican nomination for president, less than a week after he survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania.

The former president has surged ahead of Biden in polls despite his recent criminal convictions, creating a lead in key swing states that will decide the November vote.

More than 30 members of Congress have now said Biden needs to abandon his re-election bid, a view shared by many privately but not yet publicly.

But some fear it could cause new divisions within the party.

But some Democrats, including many progressives, have come out in support of him. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez used an Instagram Live early Friday morning to fiercely defend the president, accusing “donors” and “elites” of trying to sideline him and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Biden’s disastrous debate performance with Trump last month sparked panic among Democrats about his age and fitness to hold office, and after testing positive for Covid in Nevada, he appeared to struggle to climb the stairs to Air Force One to return home.