By One potential replacement for Joe Biden has denied being connected to the chatter that she’s looking to replace him and has asked her supporters to continue backing Joe Biden.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who recently campaigned on behalf of Biden in Wisconsin, met with a senior Biden official on Friday evening to reassure the president’s reelection campaign that she has not begun working behind the scenes to take the nomination away from him.
Jonathan Martin, Politico’s senior political columnist, reports that “Whitmer’s conversation with the official, campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, was cordial but awkward by its very nature. In the aftermath of the president’s disastrous debate performance last Thursday, no would-be replacement has been the recipient of more wish-casting among despairing Democrats than the second-term Michigan governor.”
While the Democrat reaffirmed her commitment to Biden’s candidacy, the conversation with Team Biden revolved around more despairing news for the president. Whitmer allegedly said that the president’s poor debate performance has likely made Michigan unwinnable for him.
Wink, wink, nod, nod, who wants to guess if she offered a solution to that problem? Does Gretchen Whitmer know anyone whom Biden wanted as his running mate over Kamala Harris who could help him in the Great Lakes State?
An aide to Whitmer, Helen Hare, has since stated that the Politico article is false.
“I am proud to support Joe Biden as our nominee, and I am behind him 100 percent in the fight to defeat Donald Trump,” the governor said in a statement challenging Martin’s column. “Not only do I believe Joe can win Michigan, I know he can because he’s got the receipts: he’s lowered health care costs, brought back manufacturing jobs, and is committed to restoring the reproductive freedom women lost under Donald Trump.”
The Politico writer noted that, regardless of Whitmer’s true beliefs about Michigan, what was most telling was not the conversation itself with the president’s reelection team but that the news of the alleged phone call came to him from one of Whitmer’s rivals.
Despite Biden’s insistence that he’s staying in, the knife fighting has begun in the Democratic Party.
“The Democrats are in a real bind with Biden. He writes that such political bladework is already taking place illustrates how badly her rivals want to wound Whitmer, by portraying her as being disloyal to Biden in his hour of need. Yet it also captures what an extraordinary, and extraordinarily precarious, moment this is for the well-stocked bench of Democratic governors who are eager to succeed Biden.
If any of them dares speak up now about their concerns over his debilitated candidacy, when nearly every elected Democrat is publicly rallying to Biden, it would be construed by the president and his defenders as an act of self-interested treachery. And it would surely be hung around their neck if they ran in 2028.”
The New Republic, a liberal magazine, has claimed that the details of the conversation between Whitmer and O’Malley don’t really matter.
Whatever the case may be, this is not great news for Biden, except for Whitmer wishing to stay out of replacement discussions. The fact that a “Draft Gretch” movement has quickly arisen after Thursday night’s debate disaster shows that at least a segment of Democrats want to replace Biden. And if Whitmer actually called the campaign to tell them Michigan was lost, which she would have insight into as governor, that’s a key battleground state at risk in November.
Michigan was the target of a coordinated effort for voters to select an “uncommitted” option during the Democratic presidential primary elections to protest Biden’s support of Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. “Uncommitted” ended up with 13.2 percent of the vote in Michigan’s February primary and jumpstarted a national effort, with several other states with the option on their ballots registering strong showings. In total, 37 uncommitted delegates will be present at the Democratic National Convention in August, and could be a factor if confidence in Biden’s ability to defeat Donald Trump continues to drop.
Right now, Democrats and the Biden campaign are still reeling from Thursday’s debate, with calls echoing from across the Democratic Party spectrum for him to step aside or refuse to run again. While former President Barack Obama attempted to tamp down those calls with a tweet Friday afternoon, others have urged him to make a more forceful intervention. It seems that the next few weeks and months could have a crucial effect not only on November’s election but on the fate of the country at large.
Not to fear, however, the Biden campaign has responded to the concerns in only a way that a family full of incompetents could. Over the weekend, reports came out that Hunter Biden has begun serving as the president’s chief adviser and that one of the president’s granddaughters was planning to join the campaign.
Politico also reported that several members of the Biden family “trashed his top campaign advisers” during the meeting, blaming them for the president’s debate performance and urging Joe to fire some of his top campaign leadership.
Apparently, one major change the campaign has made is to paint the president with tanner, which, funny enough, makes him look more like Donald Trump.
Joe Biden has become more orange than Trump pic.twitter.com/0ClbV93gGC
— boxingMD (@BoxingMD1) July 2, 2024
A recent poll in Michigan showed Trump taking a four point lead in the must win state.
[Read More: After Debate, Jill Biden Doubles Down On Being Out Of Touch]
