Representative Lloyd Doggett, of Austin, on Tuesday became the first sitting member of Congress to call for President Joe Biden to step down as his party’s nominee. In his statement, he referenced Biden’s lackluster performance in last week’s debate against Donald Trump, somehow finding a delicate way to acknowledge the disconcerting frailty displayed. “President Biden has continued to run substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump,” Doggett said. “I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that. It did not. Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”
Doggett also, in imploring Biden to follow the example of former president Lyndon Baines Johnson, who decided not to seek the 1968 Democratic nomination after one term, said Biden should “encourage a new generation of leaders” to step up to the plate. While Doggett is a mere four years younger than Biden, it’s difficult to argue with the still relatively spry congressman’s near-universal observation: Biden, up against a man who speaks in dizzying run-on sentences replete with falsehoods, still fell flat on his face.
Doggett, who represents a safely blue seat, shares the title of the longest-serving member of Congress from Texas with Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, of Houston. Both have been in Congress since 1995. Prior to serving in Washington, D.C., Doggett was a member of the Texas Senate and served on the state Supreme Court. As a longtime fixture in Texas politics, Doggett might better understand the stakes of such a decision: he was 21 during that infamous 1968 convention, in Chicago, in a similar time of intraparty strife among Democrats. His voting record has fallen almost entirely in line with the president’s agenda.
In his call for Biden to withdraw, Doggett is joined by current and former elected officials, left-of-center pundits, podcasters, strategists—and some other notable Texans in his party. On the night of the debate, just minutes after its conclusion, former San Antonio mayor and secretary of housing and urban development Julián Castro posted to social media implying that the president’s decision to seek a second term was a grave misstep. (He doubled down on those comments on Tuesday evening.) And on Friday, state representative Ron Reynolds, of Houston, called for replacing Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee. But the threesome’s stance, while notable, has hardly begun a domino effect. Many other Democrats are surely awaiting better polling data about the damage inflicted by the debate. After Doggett’s rebuke, at least four Democratic members of Congress—Sylvia Garcia, of Houston; Al Green, of Houston; Vicente Gonzalez, of McAllen; and Lizzie Fletcher, of Houston—all voiced support for the president. Others in more competitive races, such as Colin Allred, who is challenging Senator Ted Cruz, have remained tight-lipped.
Only Biden can decide whether to step down. So far, while acknowledging the limitations of his age, he has signaled that he plans to keep going. (At least his family really, really wants him to.) He’s expected to address Democratic governors and congressional leaders on Wednesday to reassure them of his ability to continue campaigning.
If Biden chooses to stay in the race, Democrats are not going to suddenly decide to dump him when they meet this summer in Chicago for the Democratic National Convention. If he does step down before then, the thousands of delegates currently pledged to him could decide to support another candidate—it would be unprecedented, but not impossible.
