A pair of vulnerable Congressional Democrats vocally admitted this week that they believe President Joe Biden will lose reelection in November to former President Donald Trump. Both Jared Golden, D-ME, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-WA, cited Biden’s performance in last week’s presidential debate – which was widely panned by critics from across the political spectrum. Golden and […]
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A pair of vulnerable Congressional Democrats vocally admitted this week that they believe President Joe Biden will lose reelection in November to former President Donald Trump.
Both Jared Golden, D-ME, and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-WA, cited Biden’s performance in last week’s presidential debate – which was widely panned by critics from across the political spectrum.
Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez both represent Republican-leaning districts that Trump won in 2020 by seven and four points respectively.
In a Tuesday op-ed published by The Bangor Daily News, Golden wrote that “Biden’s poor performance in the debate was not a surprise … because the outcome of this election has been clear to me for months.”
“While I don’t plan to vote for him,” the Maine lawmaker stated, “Donald Trump is going to win. And I’m OK with that.”
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“There are winners and losers in every election,” Golden wrote. “Democrats’ post-debate hand-wringing is based on the idea that a Trump victory is not just a political loss, but a unique threat to our democracy.”
Golden indicated that he “rejects” this popular leftist talking point: “Unlike Biden and many others, I refuse to participate in a campaign to scare voters with the idea that Trump will end our democratic system.”
He went on to state that American voters by and large agree with him.
“This election is about the economy, not democracy,” Golden wrote:
I urge everyone — voters, elected officials, the media, and all citizens — to ignore the chattering class’s scare tactics and political pipedreams. We don’t need party insiders in smoke-filled back rooms to save us. We can defend our democracy without them.
On the same day on the opposite side of the country, Gluesenkamp Perez told KATU “the truth I think is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”
“I know that’s difficult, but I think the damage has been done by that debate,” she added.
The congresswoman said “about 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate” and she “was one of them for about five very painful minutes.”
“We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that,” Gluesenkamp Perez said.
KATU is an affiliate of ABC based in Portland, Oregon.
Unlike other prominent members of her party, the Washington lawmaker “stopped short of calling on the President to drop out of the race, saying the Democrats have to accept the results of the primary elections,” KATU reported.
She told the station that a “core tenet of democracy is that you accept the results of an election and the reality is that primary voting has already happened to a degree that Biden is the nominee.”
The incumbent president is not yet officially the 2024 Democratic nominee – which will be formally decided at the Democratic National Convention in mid-to-late August.
Biden however became the party’s presumptive nominee in March when he had won the requisite number of delegates.
Gluesenmamp Perez’s Republican challenger Joe Kent questioned the reason behind the congresswoman’s comments, citing the fact that Perez had sided with Biden more than half of the time on 54 key roll call votes in 2023 – more than double the percentage of any Congressional Republican.
“Perez will try to distance herself from Biden and hide behind insults,” Kent told KATU. “I will hold her accountable for her voting record.”
In 2023, the only House Democrat to vote less with Biden on key votes than Gluesenmamp Perez was Golden. He only sided with the president, his fellow party member, on slightly more than a third of the votes.
Both Golden and Gluesenmamp Perez are co-chairs of the Blue Dog Coalition, a struggling 10-member caucus of moderate House Democrats.
The Blue Dogs have consistently lost members over the past few election cycles in both primary and general elections.
During the first two years of the presidency of Barack Obama, the caucus boasted 54 members. While the number of Blue Dogs has drastically shrunk, the left-wing Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) consistently continues to grow.
While neither Golden nor Gluesenkamp Perez have stated on the record that they want Biden to drop out of the presidential race, one of their Democratic colleagues has.
On Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-TX, a CPC member, stated: “I represent the heart of a congressional district once represented by Lyndon Johnson.”
“Under very different circumstances, he made the painful decision to withdraw [from the 1968 Presidential race],” Doggett pointed out. “President Biden should do the same.”
As of Wednesday evening, Doggett is the only sitting congressional Democrat to call for Biden to exit the race.
But according to The Washington Post, six others so far have “expressed concerns” over Biden being the Democratic nominee.
The six other “concerned” Democrats are Sen. Peter Welch, D-VT, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-RI, Rep. Summer Lee, D-PA, Rep. Mike Quigley, D-IL, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-SC, and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-CA.
Many observers credit Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden in 2020 with helping the then-former vice president cinch the Democratic nomination.
Clyburn on Tuesday stated: “I think that the American people want an explanation [about Biden’s debate performance]; they need to be reassured, and I hope that over the next several days, we’ll do that.”
The lawmaker was for many years the third highest-ranking House Democrat, while Pelosi served as the leader of the Democratic House Caucus.
The same day, Pelosi said: “I think it’s a legitimate question to say, is this an episode or is this a condition? When people ask that question, it’s completely legitimate — of both candidates.”
According to The Washington Post, prominent Democrats that have called for Biden to withdraw from the race post-debate include former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, former Sen. Tom Harkin, D-IA, former Rep. Tim Ryan, D-OH, and former Democratic National Convention Vice Chairman R.T. Ryback.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
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