Polling guru Nate Silver argued Wednesday that President Biden “should resign” and allow Vice President Kamala Harris to serve out the final two months of his term.
The FiveThirtyEight founder questioned the 82-year-old commander and chief’s ability to serve in light of a six-day foreign trip to Peru and Brazil — for the G-20 summit — during which Biden dodged the press and made few public comments.
“Is there any particular reason to assume Biden is competent to be president right now?” Silver wrote on X, in response to a Washington Post article on the summit noting that the president ignored repeated efforts by reporters to engage him.
“It’s a very difficult job. It’s a dangerous world. Extremely high-stakes decisions in Ukraine,” the pollster continued.
“He should resign and let Harris serve out the last 2 months,” Silver declared.
He has long suggested that it is “entirely reasonable” to consider Biden’s age and mental decline as “disqualifying” for the job of commander in chief.
In February, Silver argued that Biden was a “below-replacement-level candidate,” and he predicted that Democrats were heading for defeat in November as a result.
After Biden’s disastrous June 26 debate performance against President-elect Donald Trump and his uneven interview with George Stephanopoulos a week later, Silver said it was time for the president to step down.
“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 on July 5.
“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,” the pollster concluded, accurately predicting that “Democrats will apply incredible amounts of pressure” to get Biden to end his re-election bid.
On July 21, after losing the confidence of several top Democrats, Biden announced that he would drop out of the presidential race, and he immediately endorsed Harris to replace him at the top of the Democratic ticket.
Harris, 59, lost the popular vote and Electoral College vote to Trump on Election Day.
