Former US President Barack Obama tacitly joined calls for Joe Biden to end his reelection campaign, which lawmakers say could happen as early as this weekend, Axios and the Associated Press reported Thursday.
Democrats told Axios that Biden, 81, risks wiping out his legacy if he stays the course and is defeated by Donald Trump—a once-distant fear that recent polls suggest may soon be reality.
Read also: Joe Biden diagnosed with COVID-19, will self-isolate and continue duties
And now, according to The Washington Post, Obama is telling allies he thinks Biden has little choice but to bail out and save face, both for himself and for the Democratic Party.
Biden has remained defiant publicly, insisting he’s staying the race despite appearing more unsteady than ever in the last three weeks, punctuated by a disaster of a debate performance on June 27 and a COVID-19 diagnosis that has sidelined him from events this week.
The president’s campaign denied the Axios report, stating firmly that Biden is “running for reelection” and that “baseless conjecture from anonymous sources isn’t a scoop.”
But the denial did nothing to tamp down the mounting feeling among senior Democrats that the end is nigh for Biden.
Read also: Biden seeks boost as calls for him to step aside mount
The tipping point came Wednesday, when Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who has tight connections to powerful party donors and is a close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, went public and asked Biden to end his campaign for the good of the party.
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