WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden met with the largest federation of labor unions in the United States on Wednesday in an effort to win support from a crucial constituency as he faces continued calls to withdraw from the 2024 election campaign.
Biden met with the executive council of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), a group representing 12.5 million members.
But while Biden seeks support from union members, one of the leading voices of the Democratic Party, Nancy Hairy, fueled speculation on Wednesday about the application of the president, that the surveys, Several congressmen and even actor George Clooney consider it doomed to failure.
“I love Joe Biden, but we need another candidate,” writes the actor, director and producer in The New York Times.
Lifelong Democrat George Clooney recalls a fundraiser for the US president in mid-June: “It’s terrible to say this, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago was not the same” as “the Joe Biden of 2010, or even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed in the debate” with Donald Trump in June.
That night, Biden seemed very confused and tired, he stumbled while speaking and lost the thread of what he was saying several times.
Clooney’s opinion is not anecdotal, given that Biden has always counted on the film world for media and financial support.
“Time is short”
On MSNBC, Nancy Pelosi, the 84-year-old former House Speaker, declined to explicitly endorse Biden in his re-election bid for the November election against his Republican predecessor.
“It’s up to the president to decide whether he’s going to run,” he told MSNBC. “Everyone We encourage you to make that decision. because time is pressing,” he added.
“I want him to do whatever he decides to do. Whatever he decides, we’ll go with it,” Pelosi said.
But the 81-year-old Democrat believes he has already made up his mind.
“Turn the page”
Joe Biden wrote to lawmakers in his party on Monday to tell them he was “firmly determined to stay in the race” and to ask them to “support” him.
He now wants to “turn the page”, as his spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Tuesday.
The Democrat, who is trying to dispel doubts about his physical fitness and mental agility, has another busy day on Wednesday.
Joe Biden will attend the NATO summit in Washington and will dine with the leaders of the member countries of this organization in the evening.
Seven House Democrats have now publicly called on him to throw in the towel. They were joined on Tuesday evening by a senior senator.
“I think Donald Trump is on track to win this election, and maybe win it in a landslide and take the Senate and the House of Representatives,” Sen. Michael Bennet told CNN.
Polls
The anxiety on Capitol Hill is so high because many congressmen fear that Joe Biden could make them lose their seats in the November legislative elections, which are taking place at the same time as the presidential elections.
Several polls since the debate have fueled these fears, showing Donald Trump maintaining or even widening his lead over his Democratic rival.
“What matters is not what we feel, but what the numbers tell us,” wrote Ritchie Torres, a member of the influential group of African-American congressmen, on social media X on Wednesday.
A study by the Cook Political Report Institute, based on 21 major polls, gives the Republican 47% of voting intentions nationwide, compared to 44% for Joe Biden. It is particularly noticeable that the Democrat has lost support among African-Americans, young people and Hispanics.
Source: With information from AFP