Election pollster and analyst Nate Silver argued there’s no “particular reason to assume Biden is competent to be president right now” and called for him to resign on Wednesday.
Silver made his remarks after the Washington Post reported that Biden had avoided the press during his trip to Brazil this week for the G20 summit.
“President Joe Biden was in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, unprotected from mosquitoes, fire ants and loud, squawking macaws. But there was another pest he did manage to avoid: the pack of reporters traveling with him,” the Post reported.
“During a six-day foreign trip to Peru and Brazil that wrapped up Monday, the president rarely spoke in public, answering almost no questions despite repeated efforts to engage him. One television producer took to writing messages on a large pad of paper, holding it up as Biden boarded and departed Air Force One,” The Post continued.
Silver commented that the details of the post report were further proof that Biden wasn’t able to lead the country anymore despite having roughly just two months left in office.
“Is there any particular reason to assume Biden is competent to be president right now? It’s a very difficult job. It’s a dangerous world. Extremely high-stakes decisions in Ukraine. He should resign and let Harris serve out the last 2 months,” Silver wrote on X Wednesday.
Before the election, Silver often suggested the possibility of Biden being replaced by another candidate. In July, he even called for Biden to resign following his poorly received interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC.
“I wimped out in today’s column and deleted a line saying he should formulate a plan to transition the presidency to Harris within 30-60 days, but I’m there now,” Silver said at the time. “Something is clearly wrong here.”
“The most generous way to put it is that he doesn’t seem in command, and that’s an extremely hard sell when you’re Commander in Chief,” Silver concluded — adding that he believes “Democrats will apply incredible amounts of pressure” to make the president resign.
That turned out to be the case. Led by the likes of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and — reports said — former President Barack Obama, Biden eventually agreed to end his reelection campaign, which also followed a disastrous debate with then-former President Donald Trump in June.
Biden, however, quickly endorsed his vice president, essentially leaving the Democratic Party with little choice but to rally behind who many privately believed was one of their worst choices.
“…Biden just hit a new all-time low in approval (37.4%) at 538 yesterday. Dropping out would be a big risk. But there’s some threshold below which continuing to run is a bigger risk. Are we there yet? I don’t know. But it’s more than fair to ask,” Silver wrote over the summer. “What’s clearer IMO is that Democrats would have been better served if Biden had decided a year ago not to seek a second term, which would have allowed them to have some semblance of a primary process and give voters a say among the many popular Democrats across the country.”
Republicans have frequently countered that Biden’s mental status decline was evidence during his 2020 presidential bid and that it had been getting steadily worse ever since. They have also accused Democrat insiders as well as those in the legacy media, of covering for Biden as he continued to decline.
