Pelosi Threatened Joe Biden 

Nancy Pelosi

Monday reports on Politico revealed the extraordinary length former Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) went to force President Joe Biden out of the 2024 race.

Biden had promised to return to the campaign trail next week, leaving some party members believing that direct and public opposition may be the only way to force him out. More than 12  House and Senate Democrats, including senior lawmakers, had planned to call for the president to withdraw from the campaign on Monday and Tuesday. According to Politico, one lawmaker even had a pre-drafted statement ready.

With pressure mounting and the president insisting on remaining in the race, Pelosi issued Buiden an extraordinary threat. Sources say the former speaker told Biden that he could either step out the easy or the hard way.

“Nancy made clear they could do this the easy way or the hard way,” an anonymous Democratic source told Politico. “She gave them three weeks of the easy way. It was about to be the hard way. We were giving him the respect of the weekend to make his decision. We were hopeful that this is the decision we would make.”

Pelosi had planned to publicly embarrass the president by publicizing internal Biden campaign polls conducted last week. The poll showed that Joe Biden was behind former President Donald Trump in every battleground state. The president was at risk in other states that Democrats bank on in presidential elections, including New Mexico and Virginia.

However, Politico insisted that Pelosi’s threat was not the reason behind Biden’s decision to drop out.

“It wasn’t that the president had grown tired of the drip of defections from within his own party — although he had,” Politico wrote. “Rather, it was that Biden himself was finally convinced of what so many other Democrats had come to believe since his poor debate performance last month: He couldn’t win.”

The president’s decision to withdraw did not go down well with many of his staffers, who were blindsided by his Sunday announcement.

One  White House official described the collective response to the news, saying there was “alot of crying.”

“People believe Joe Biden is a great president, and they’re sad to see him step aside,” the official said. “Most think he made the right move, but they’re still heartbroken.”

 

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