Former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau is arguing Monday that ‘voters have been voicing’ concerns about President Biden for months as the 81-year-old is resisting calls to end his re-election bid.
Favreau, in a post on X, rejected Biden’s claim that calls for his withdrawal are only coming from ‘elite’ sources. He cited a pre-debate poll from the New York Times/Siena College that found 64% of all voters wanted Biden replaced on the Democratic ticket, including 48% of people who planned to vote for Biden, and that 69% of the electorate finds Biden too old to be an effective president.
‘This is not an elite thing. This is not a media thing. This is not a one-bad-debate-freakout thing,’ Favreau wrote. ‘The voters have been voicing these concerns for months now. Denying them or dismissing them is not the way to overcome them.’
Favreau, who is one of the hosts of Pod Save America, also flagged that 55% of Black voters and 66% of Hispanic voters want Biden replaced as the nominee.
The post came after Biden made a surprise appearance Monday morning on MSNBC in which he challenged fellow Democrats to run against him for the nomination and dismissed widespread calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.
‘I’m getting frustrated by the elites – not you guys – the elites in the party, oh, they know so much more. Any of these guys that don’t think I should run, run against me. Announce for president, challenge me at the convention,’ Biden said.
Then in a letter fired off to congressional Democrats today, Biden urged his party to stop questioning whether he should end his re-election bid and ‘move forward as a unified party’ in order to defeat former President Trump in their 2024 election rematch.
Biden reiterated in the letter that he’s ‘firmly committed to staying in this race’ and argued that any further questioning of his candidacy ‘only helps Trump and hurts us.’
Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Patrick Ward contributed to this report.