A handful of U.S. Democratic officials are beginning to publicly voice their concerns about whether President Joe Biden, after a faltering debate performance last week against former President Donald Trump, is physically capable of another run for the presidency heading to the Nov. 5 election.
Lloyd Doggett, a 15-term House of Representatives lawmaker from Texas, on Tuesday became the first Democratic official to call for Biden to step aside, saying Biden should "make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw."
Doggett said his "decision to make these strong reservations public is not done lightly nor does it in any way diminish my respect for all that President Biden has achieved."
But Doggett cited Biden's weak debate performance when he sometimes lost his train of thought and his failure to "effectively defend his many accomplishments."
Biden, speaking Tuesday at a campaign event in Virginia, pointed to a lack of sleep and a travel schedule that in the weeks ahead of the debate included D-Day commemorations in France, a G-7 summit in Italy and multiple campaign events in the United States.
“The fact is that you know, I wasn’t very smart. I decided to travel around the world a couple times, going through around 100 time zones ... before ... the debate. Didn’t listen to my staff and came back and nearly fell asleep on stage," he said. "That's no excuse but it is an explanation.”
Senior Democratic leaders, however, have been expressing support for Biden following the recent debate and saying he should stand fast against the growing angst among his party colleagues.
Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Senate majority leader, said he believed the 81-year-old president was fit to serve.
"I'm with Joe Biden," he said, echoing comments by other top party officials.
ABC News, which aggregates polling data, demographics and economic information to make its election forecasts, said Biden had slipped somewhat in national polling since the debate but nonetheless concluded, "Four months out from Election Day, the 2024 presidential election is a pure toss-up."
There is no indication Biden is actively considering dropping out of the 2020 rematch with Trump, the first time two major party presidential candidates have faced each other in consecutive elections since 1956.
Still, the White House is acting to quell worries about Biden's candidacy. He scheduled a meeting, mostly virtual, for Wednesday with all Democratic state governors to assure them he is physically and mentally capable of the intense, four-month push to Election Day and that he can defeat Trump again.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told a local television station in the northeastern state that he had been "horrified" by Biden's debate performance and asked the White House for assurances about Biden's "condition … that this was a real anomaly, and not just the way he is these days."
Peter Welch, a Democratic senator from Vermont, said the Biden campaign had adopted "a dismissive attitude toward people who are raising questions for discussion."
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi conceded in an interview with MSNBC that she was hearing "mixed" comments from Democratic donors on whether Biden was capable of another run for the presidency.
For his part, Biden has acknowledged he had a poor performance against Trump during the 90-minute nationally televised faceoff, the first of two scheduled debates, with the other one set for Sept. 10.
But the day after the debate, he seemed energized at a political rally in the mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina, even as he acknowledged, "I know I'm not a young man. I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to, but I know what I do know: I know how to tell the truth!"
Biden added that he would not be running for a second term if he did not believe "with all my heart and soul I can do this."