“This is the first time in over 20 years that a Republican president has been in this part of the campaign,” Bennet said in an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election, and perhaps by a landslide, and take the Senate and the House of Representatives.”
“For me, this is not a polling issue; it’s not a political issue. It’s a moral issue about the future of our country,” Bennet continued. “It’s critical that we understand what’s ahead as we collectively put this country on a path to re-electing Donald Trump.”
Since his shaky June 27 debate performance, Biden has maintained that he has no intention of ending his candidacy and has argued that the party’s elite are trying to force him out of the race. At the same time, his aides and allies have aggressively tried to assuage Democratic lawmakers’ concerns and discourage them from speaking about them publicly. To that end, Biden sent a letter to congressional lawmakers on Monday arguing that it is time to end debate over his candidacy because it is a distraction from the effort to defeat Trump.
The Biden team’s efforts to prevent further defections appeared to pay off on Monday, as key party leaders, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), as well as members of the Congressional Black Caucus, voiced strong support for his candidacy.
Yet many members continue to privately express concern about the president’s declining poll numbers. They doubt whether he can regain the trust of the large group of American voters who no longer believe he is up to the task.
Bennet raised his concerns Tuesday after a tense private lunch with other senators on Capitol Hill. He confirmed that he had raised the same concerns with his colleagues over lunch earlier in the day. While he did not explicitly call on Biden to resign, he said in the CNN interview that the White House — since what he described as a “disastrous debate” — “has done nothing to demonstrate that they have a plan to win this election.”
“I think they should do that,” he added.
During the lunch, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who faces a tough re-election battle, said he had serious doubts that Biden could win the presidential election, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.
When asked for comment, Biden campaign spokesman Kevin Munoz did not respond directly to Bennet’s remarks. Instead, he said that “there are still many days between now and Election Day, and the hard work of earning every vote is far from over.”
“No one is more committed to defeating Donald Trump and defending our democracy than Joe Biden, and few know better than Joe Biden how important it is to show up and campaign to earn the support of voters,” Munoz said in a statement.