A new poll shows that nearly two in five Democrats say that the president should not be their nominee. But no one who matters to the president seems willing to suggest he step aside.
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Some privately say that Georgia and Arizona may be out of reach, requiring Mr. Biden to sweep Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
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Surrounded by a loyal and devoted inner circle, Mr. Biden has given no indication that he would consider stepping aside to let someone else lead the party. Indeed, he and the people close to him bristle at the notion. [...] The Biden team views the very question as absurd.
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“Actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped, and deeply divided,” Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director, said on Saturday. “Our campaign is ignoring the noise and running a strong campaign to win — just like we did in 2020.”
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Plenty of dinner-table conversations in Washington these days focus on what would happen if Mr. Biden changed his mind at the last minute the way President Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968 or experienced a health situation that prompted him to drop out. If that happened before the Democratic National Convention in August, it would set the stage for the first open competition at a convention in decades.
After the convention, any vacancy at the top of the ticket would be filled by the Democratic National Committee.
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Ms. Kamarck [is] one of the country’s leading experts on the nomination process. [...] “Democrats are increasingly getting very, very vocal in their defense of Biden,” she said. “The guy’s a good guy. He’s not senile. He’s made good choices. The economy’s the best economy in the world. I mean, shut up. Let’s get behind this guy.”
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An important moment for the president to assert himself will come on Thursday night when he delivers his State of the Union address to what historically should be his largest television audience of the year.
Emphasis mine. For the following NYT article it's a shame comments are off. Lib rabid ranting about it would be glorious.