“It will be up to the president to decide whether to move”

Former Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, who is considered one of the legislators whose opinion matters most to Joe Biden, gave an interview to the MSNBC network this morning in which she indicated that the president’s future is not yet decided.

Although Biden insists he has no intention of suspending his re-election campaign despite concerns about his performance in the first debate against Donald Trump, Pelosi said, “It’s up to the president to decide whether or not he will contest the election.”

When the interviewer pointed out that Biden had already made that decision, Pelosi said, “I want him to do whatever he decides to do.”

“It is up to the president to decide whether or not he will run for office. We are all encouraging him to make that decision because timing is of the essence,” he said in a statement to the MSNBC program “Morning Joe.”

The 84-year-old California legislator is by far the most important member of the party, which wants to know from her whether she will continue in the election race against former Republican President Donald Trump (2017-2021), who has gained strength after the election debate of June 27.

Pelosi stressed that Biden is respected within the party, but insisted that the people want him to make the decision, a message that stands in contrast to the clear support given yesterday by a significant portion of the Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill.

The former Speaker of the House of Representatives appeared to ignore that the Democratic leader has in recent days stressed not only that he has no plans to withdraw his candidacy but that he believes he is best positioned to defeat Trump.

“I want him to do what he decides to do. Whatever he decides, let’s go with it,” Pelosi suggested, giving Biden his first chance to take charge of the NATO summit, which is being held in Washington this Tuesday through Thursday and of which the president is the host.

A Democratic senator has predicted Donald Trump will beat Joe Biden in a “landmark victory” while Pelosi has said it is up to Biden “to decide whether or not to be elected”, comments that will increase pressure on the president to reconsider his determination to stay in the race.

In an interview with CNN, Rep. Michael Bennet of Colorado said he believed Biden could no longer win the November election and said his campaign needed to evaluate the decision to step aside in “moral” terms based on the importance of saving the country from the “American tragedy” of Trump’s second presidency.

“This race is on a trajectory that is very concerning if you care about the future of this country,” Bennet told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “I think Donald Trump is on a path to win this election and probably win by a landslide, and take the Senate and the House of Representatives with him. “This is not a political question, it’s a moral question about the future of our country.”

Bennett and Pelosi’s comments came after a Senate Democratic caucus lunch meeting in which Bennett and two other senators, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Jon Tester of Montana, reportedly said they believed Biden was already in no position to win after the failure of the June 27 debate, in which he repeatedly seemed confused, lost the thread and failed to counter Trump’s falsehoods.

Although no senator has explicitly called on Biden to step down — unlike seven members of the House of Representatives who have asked him to drop his re-election bid — the fallout from the debate has left Democrats aghast as the campaign approaches a crucial phase.

Biden has steadfastly refused to bow to pressure to retire, writing a mass letter to the party’s congressional caucus insisting he will stay and daring skeptics to challenge him at next month’s convention in Chicago.

Bennett, however, stopped short of calling on Biden to withdraw, saying such a defiant stance was inappropriate at the moment, though he expressed sympathy for the position of a president who has served his party and his country for more than half a century.

“I’m sure President Biden has a different view of his chances in this election than I do, but we should have the debate,” he said. “The White House, since that disastrous debate, has done virtually nothing to demonstrate that it has a plan to win.”

“I haven’t seen anything even remotely close to the kind of plan that we need to see out of the White House that can show that they can actually beat Donald Trump, that this isn’t about the accomplishments that we all had in, you know, three and four years. “That’s something that the president needs to consider.”

Bennett’s comments came after a meeting of House Democrats on Tuesday did not yield the expected wave of calls for Biden to step down, but instead some previously skeptical members retreated before vowing for him to stay in office. However, discontent among House members continues.

The president himself held a virtual meeting with about 200 Democratic mayors from the White House on Tuesday night, reaffirming his determination to stay and apparently securing their support.

Biden spoke for the first 20 minutes of the 40-minute meeting, answering only three questions — selected by the moderator, Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego, The New York Times reported.

Participants couldn’t see who else was on the call or add comments to the chat screen, but they were able to show their emotions by adding emojis, and many provided smiley faces in response to Biden’s words.

Apparently, the president described the debate as a “terrific night.” He promised to prioritize housing construction in his second term and warned mayors about the consequences of another Trump presidency, focusing on the former president’s promise to become a dictator “only on day one” and emphasizing the right-wing Project 2025, a government project that Trump has recently rejected, albeit unconvincingly.