Former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Photo / Getty Images
Nancy Pelosi has suggested Joe Biden should reconsider his decision to stay in the race for President in the most high-profile intervention yet on his flagging candidacy.
In comments that ignored Biden’s repeated insistence he will be the Democratic nominee, the former House Speaker stopped short of endorsing him and said time was “running short” to make a decision.
“It’s up to the President to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi said on Biden’s favourite morning news show, MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
“We’re all encouraging him to make that decision.”
“I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with.”
The remarks, by one of the most senior Democrats in Congress, were seized upon as an attempt to reopen the debate over whether President Biden should remain on the ticket.
The 81-year-old President appeared to have temporarily silenced doubters within his party this week with a forceful letter to his colleagues and an interview with ABC when he said only “the Almighty” could get him to stand down.
On Wednesday, some Democrats who had privately called on him to quit the race reversed themselves in public, as the Congressional Black Caucus and Left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez weighed in behind the President.
Many House Democrats appeared resigned to him remaining on the ticket after a meeting in which they privately discussed concerns over his candidacy.
The former Speaker’s intervention is likely to reinvigorate efforts to persuade Biden to stand aside for a younger replacement, after a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump in which he repeatedly lost his train of thought.
Pelosi, 84, said that the President and his party should focus on the Nato conference this week before coming to a decision on Biden’s future.
The President is due to hold a press conference on Thursday evening in which his responses will be closely monitored for the slurring and moments of confusion that punctuated the debate.
“Let’s just hold off,” Pelosi urged on MSNBC, adding: “Whatever you’re thinking, either tell somebody privately, but you don’t have to put that out on the table until we see how we go this week.”
Nate Silver, the prominent analyst and pollster, said that Pelosi’s remarks on “Biden’s favourite show” were “as close as possible to saying he should drop out without saying it outright”, noting that the odds promptly jumped on Biden quitting the race.
Pelosi is often cited as one of the few key Democrats who could influence Biden’s decision-making, alongside the Obamas and his close family.
Lloyd Doggett, the first Democrat to call on Biden to stand down, said that the former Speaker’s comments were “keeping the situation very open, very fluid”.
“I don’t think it moves members, but I think it compromises the goal to solidify support for Biden/move forward,” a senior Democratic aide told the news website Semafor.
In the immediate aftermath of the debate, Pelosi said it was a “legitimate question” to ask if Biden had a “condition” that caused his stuttering performance.
It came after Democratic Senator Michael Bennet warned Republicans could take the White House, the House and the Senate in a “landslide” win if Biden stayed in the race.
“It’s critically important for us to come to grips with what we face, if together, we put this country on the path of electing Donald Trump again,” he told CNN.
On Thursday, Congressman Ritchie Torres of New York said that Democrats needed to consider the “down-ballot effect of whomever we nominate”.
“Blindness is not bliss,” he said, “amid the terrifying threat of a Trump presidency.”
Biden’s presence on the ballot could turn New York into a “battleground” state, data shows.
The President’s lead in the state, which he carried by 23 points in 2020, has narrowed to just 8.9%, according to polling aggregator FiveThirtyEight.
Mark Levine, the Democrat leader of the Manhattan borough, told Politico that while New York had been deep blue for decades, the data made him “truly believe we’re a battleground state now”.
Nationally, Biden’s support has dropped from around 47% on June 27, the day of the presidential debate, to 44%, in what the Cook Political Report termed the most dramatic “polling shift of the year”.