The mood music emanating from Capitol Hill on Tuesday suggests President Joe Biden’s forceful rejection of calls for him to step down from the race to the White House is having an impact.
Mr Biden’s stance appears to have weakened internal Democratic sentiment leaning towards putting a new, younger candidate on the electoral ticket.
The Democratic Party held a behind-closed-doors caucus meeting on Tuesday at which elected members aired their views on whether Mr Biden should be confirmed as the presidential nominee. It lasted well over two hours and presented a party still mired in the uncertainty of the best path forward if it is to prevent Donald Trump returning to the White House in November.
As Tennessee representative Steve Cohen put it when asked if the party was on the same page: “We are not even on the same book.”
No Democratic leader has publicly called for Mr Biden to step down, but the six elected politicians who have made that call for change argued their case at the private meeting.
“Just what I said publicly before: that the debate will not be unseen,” said Texas congressman Lloyd Doggett as he left the meeting, referring to Mr Biden’s poor performance in his CNN debate last month with Republican candidate Donald Trump. Mr Doggett said the president had made a “great contribution” to the country, “but he shouldn’t leave a legacy that means we surrender to a tyrant”.
A series of separate caucus meetings took place after which the ongoing support for Mr Biden was affirmed.
“It is what it is,” Troy Carter said after a meeting of the congressional Black caucus. “The president and our team are convinced that the president should in fact be the nominee. We had a great call with the president, and he was clear, energised and motivated. It is clear he is up for the job. It is one thing to recognise and admit that the president had a bad debate. His performance was bad. He was off. One event does not determine the overall show. We know this.”
The White House continued to push back against the inference that the health of the president has been shielded from media and public alike. After a chaotic press briefing on Monday, a statement released on Monday night confirmed that Dr Kevin Cannard, a specialist in Parkinson’s disease, had met with the president’s physician in January: the circumstances of that meeting remain unclear.
But Dr Kevin O’Connor, the White House physician, said Dr Cannard had been chosen ‘because he is a highly trained and highly regarded neurologist here at Walter Reed [medical centre] … with a very wide expertise which makes him flexible to see a variety of patients and problems”.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby insisted on Tuesday that there has been no decline in Mr Biden’s day-to-day performance in the role.
“The president I see every day, including yesterday a couple of times if the Oval Office, is robust, is lucid,” he said. “He is clear. He is direct. And it doesn’t matter what the hour on the clock says. He is always there and always available, and they have ready access to him. And he will also note that the world doesn’t take a breather at a certain time of day – that things keep moving on. That is the commander-in-chief I see and the commander-in-chief he knows he has to be.”
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