Allies of former President Obama called on President Biden to bow out of the 2024 presidential election in the lead-up to the president officially announcing he won’t run.
A list of former President Obama’s allies and former advisers helped lead the charge in calling on President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race before he officially ended his campaign on Sunday afternoon.
Biden officially dropped out of the 2024 race after weeks of increasing pressure from traditional Democrat allies to bow out after his disastrous debate performance against former President Trump last month, which put concerns surrounding his mental acuity and 81 years of age under increasing scrutiny.
“My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term”, Biden posted on X after he dropped out of the race on Sunday afternoon.
“My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this”, he said in a separate social media post.
Among some of the most noteworthy voices calling on Biden to bow out were allies of Obama’s, including his former adviser, David Axelrod, who said this month that Biden is “not winning this race.” Biden served as Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017.
“There are certain immutable facts of life”, Axelrod said in an interview with CNN while discussing Biden’s age and leadership. “Those were painfully obvious on that debate stage. The president just … hasn’t come to grips with it. He’s not winning this race.”
Axelrod formerly served as Obama’s chief campaign strategist, and he said Biden is used to fighting “his way back from political defeats and against the odds.”
“So, his psyche is that he can beat anybody and any long odds”, he said this month. “What he can’t beat is Father Time.”
“And that’s really the concern here. It’s not about his record”, Axelrod continued.
Axelrod was soon followed by actor George Clooney calling on Biden to drop out of the race in a bombshell op-ed that was published just weeks after the Hollywood star co-hosted Biden, alongside Obama, for a ritzy campaign event in Los Angeles. Clooney has long had a personal friendship with Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama, including vacationing with the first couple in previous years.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010”, Clooney wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Another ally in Obama’s orbit, Jon Favreau, who served as former director of speech writing for Obama, also called on Biden to drop out of the race this month, saying he attended the fundraiser in L.A. with Clooney and Obama and saw Biden’s state of mental acuity.
“It was not surprising to any of us who were at the fundraiser. I was there. Clooney was exactly right, and every single person I talked to at the fundraiser thought the same thing, except for the people working for Joe Biden, or at least they didn’t say that”, Jon Favreau said during an appearance on CNN this month.
