WASHINGTON-(MaraviPost)-The most devastating argument against Joe Biden’s re-election bid may have come not from a politician or a pundit, but from a film star.
But George Clooney, with his stinging New York Times opinion piece, isn’t the only one speaking out. A growing chorus from Democrats is sinking the president’s hopes of steadying his campaign this week – and perhaps ever.
This all comes after it appeared that the president had turned a corner, with the influential Congressional Black Caucus and key liberal members of Congress just voicing their support for him.
But now the ground has shifted once again – and all in the midst of a high-profile Nato summit with US allies here in Washington.
On Wednesday evening, Peter Welch of Vermont became the first Democratic senator to openly call on Mr Biden to withdraw, “for the good of the country”, as he wrote in a newspaper op-ed.
The drumbeat of defections makes the stakes for Mr Biden’s press conference at the end of the Nato summit on Thursday afternoon even higher. It will be the biggest unscripted test for him since his botched debate two weeks prior which triggered this crisis.
Mr Biden also has a sit-down interview scheduled with NBC News presenter Lester Holt on Monday. A fumble or misstep in the days ahead could buttress all the most damaging assertions Mr Clooney, a top Democratic fundraiser, makes in his New York Times piece.
The actor writes that the president’s decline is not an illusion; it’s real. He points to a Los Angeles fundraiser he threw for the president last month. “The Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe… of 2010,” he writes. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
The president is not up to the task of beating Donald Trump in November, Clooney continues. He calls the Biden campaign’s claim that he is the choice of Democratic primary voters “disingenuous, at best”. And, perhaps most devastating, he says every prominent Democrat he has spoken with knows all this – whether they’re willing to publicly admit it or not.
“We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November”, he writes, “or we can speak the truth.”
The Biden campaign is pushing back against the Clooney piece, noting that the president had flown across nine time zones, from the G7 summit in Italy, to attend the star’s fundraiser.
Campaign officials also note that the president has had serious disagreements recently with the star and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, about his administration’s Gaza policy. The opinion piece, published three weeks after that Los Angeles fundraiser, could be viewed like a strike timed for maximum effect.
But Clooney isn’t just any movie star. He’s a powerful fundraiser for Democrats and has been for years. Given that California, and the Hollywood industry in particular, is a key part of the party’s money base, Clooney’s comments present a very real threat to Mr Biden.
It also comes on the heels of expressions of dissatisfaction from other big-money Democratic donors, such as Netflix chair Reed Hastings and IAC chair Barry Diller.
The actor is also plugged in to party politics, with close ties to former President Barack Obama. It is difficult to imagine that he would have taken to the pages of the New York Times in such a dramatic way, with a double-barrel blast against the sitting president, without at least some tacit sign-off from prominent Democrats.
Revelling in the Democratic turmoil on Wednesday night, Trump posted to social media about Clooney: “He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are.”
Increasingly, prominent Democrats are saying things that should give Mr Biden pause.
Source: BBC News