The day after the midterm elections, a progressive group associated with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., officially launched a campaign to prevent President Biden from running for re-election. “It’s clear that Joe Biden should not be the party’s presidential nominee in 2024,” the grassroots organization RootsAction said in a press release on Wednesday, announcing their “Don’t Run Joe” campaign.
The campaign’s intention is to highlight Biden’s unfavorability and the perceived risk of running a presidential candidate with one of the lowest approval ratings in US history against historic Republicans. Renominating Biden would be a “tragic mistake,” according to the “Don’t Run Joe” campaign.
It added: “A president is not his party’s king, and he has no automatic right to renomination. Joe Biden should not seek it. If he does, he will have a fight on his hands.” “We cannot risk losing in 2024. We shouldn’t gamble on Joe Biden’s low approval rating,” the campaign will say in its digital advertisements.
The organization stated that its “nationwide organizing drive” was launched “in the aftermath of the election” and that its “initial focus” would be on the state of New Hampshire, which hosts the first presidential primary election. RootsAction told Fox News Digital in July that they planned to launch a campaign to defeat Biden, and that they expect “many allied groups and notable individuals” to join them in opposing Biden’s re-election bid in 2024.
“We object to Biden running in 2024 because of his job performance as president,” RootsAction confounder Jeff Cohen told Fox News Digital at the time. Cohen also told Fox News Digital that Biden’s potential presidential run in 2024 loomed large over Tuesday’s elections, potentially discouraging some voters from supporting a Democratic Party led by gerontic leadership.
“Democrats would do better in this year’s midterms if the public knew Biden would not be heading the ticket in 2024,” Cohen said. “We believe that would shift voters’ attention away from Biden to the extremism of Republicans, on everything from abortion rights to voting rights to climate-change denial.”
According to RootsAction, their decision was influenced by the Biden administration’s failure to do more to combat climate change, protect voting rights, and reduce student debt. The organization shared a statement from New Hampshire Democratic State Representative Sherry Frost, who expressed her dissatisfaction with Biden.
“While I appreciate the many good things that Biden has proposed – specifically, student debt relief and the American Rescue Plan – I am not confident that Joe Biden is the leader we need to take us into the next term. I am eager to support a candidate who understands the fatal dysfunction in our economy and is willing to hold the ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations to their obligations to the rest of us, who is going to actively champion meaningful civil rights and voting protections, and who will spearhead a shift away from the military-industrial complex and oligarchy and toward a culture that works for the most vulnerable of us first,” the statement read. “I am not confident that Biden is that candidate, and while I appreciate his rescuing us from another Trump term, I believe we need someone else to champion the big and systemic changes we need to continue to strive toward our more perfect union.”