Author and Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson has called on her party to hold an open convention next month as concerns over President Joe Biden‘s age and mental acuity mount.
Williamson, who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and has seen her campaign this year falter, cited Biden’s debate performance in Atlanta last week as the reason for an open Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month.
“President Biden deserves our respect, our compassion, and our gratitude. The debate last week, however, made clear that the time is now for another Democratic candidate to take his place on the November ballot,” Williamson said in a lengthy statement.
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“The nominating process for the Democratic Party needs to begin again. We need to recalibrate, and we need to do so quickly. Over the next two months we need to do what we should have been doing over the last year and a half: engaging in a robust conversation about this country and how we’re going to beat Donald Trump in November,” she added before pitching herself as a replacement.
Biden, his campaign, and his surrogates have all insisted that he will be the Democratic nominee on the ballot in November despite his shaky debate performance against former President Donald Trump.
While Biden did have opponents in the Democratic presidential primary, none of them were major challengers, and he coasted to securing enough delegates to win the nomination in March. The only offramp for Democrats seeking to have a different nominee in November would be Biden stepping aside and releasing his delegates or the party changing its nominating rules.
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Democrats are expected to nominate Biden virtually sometime before Aug. 7 to ensure he appears on ballots in all 50 states, while the rest of the Democratic convention will occur in person in Chicago from Aug. 19-22.
While Democrats have largely been unwilling to call on Biden to step aside, one House Democrat made a public statement calling Biden to do so on Tuesday. A CNN poll released on Tuesday shows Biden underperforming other Democrats head to head against Trump.
