The Democratic Majority Leader in the US Senate (the upper house of the US Parliament) - Chuck Schumer, has personally signaled to party campaign donors that he is open to the option of replacing the current President of the country, Joe Biden, as a contender for the elections on November 5 this year, Reuters reported, citing information from last night on the news website "Axios".
At the same time, the "Fox News" television channel reported that at their meeting with Biden scheduled for today, the Democratic Party senators will express to him and his campaign headquarters their reservations about his candidacy in the competition with his predecessor in the White House and Republican contender Donald Trump.
With an opinion in the American newspaper "Washington Post" Democratic Senator Peter Welch became the latest to personally call on Biden to end his campaign. "For the good of the country, I call on President Biden to step down," Welch wrote.
His fellow Republican in the US House of Representatives, Earl Blumenauer, also expressed his opinion last night that the current head of state should not be the Democratic nominee for the fall elections. Blumenauer became the ninth congressman in the lower house of parliament to publicly call for Biden's resignation, Reuters notes.
Meanwhile, Biden met last night with leaders of the largest American federation of labor unions in an attempt to strengthen support for his candidacy for a second term in the November 5 elections in the context of increasing calls for him to withdraw from the race with Donald Trump, the Associated Press reported, quoted by BTA.
"I think of you as my internal alliance (similar to) NATO – "It's not a joke," Biden, 81, told the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) board of directors in Washington.
He highlighted the power of unions and recalled his long-standing support for them. "I said I would be the most union president in American history. Well, guess what. I am!", Biden said.
With this meeting, he continued his election campaign. The 81-year-old president has been struggling in the past two weeks to prevent donors, partners and members of his own party from backing out of his campaign, who are concerned about his unconvincing performance in the first televised debate with Republican challenger Donald Trump on June 27, Reuters reported.
Biden answered questions from union leaders and discussed their "shared commitment to defeating Donald Trump this November." The union vote was crucial to the current US president's success in previous elections – in 2020, in some of the strategic states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada.
At the same time, Democratic representatives in the US Congress remain deeply divided on the issue of the current president's chances for a second term in the White House, Reuters points out.
Biden's party representative - Nancy Pelosi, who is a former speaker of the House of Representatives, said on the MSNBC television channel today that the president "has to decide for himself" whether to stay in the race with Trump. She urged her colleagues on Capitol Hill to wait until after the head of state's meeting with the leaders of NATO member countries in Washington this week. The alliance's summit is underway in the US capital, marking the 75th anniversary of its founding.
Congressman Mickey Sherrill of New Jersey became the seventh House Democrat on Tuesday to publicly call on Biden to drop out of the race with Trump.
Those who have publicly withdrawn their support for Biden, however, remain a small percentage of the 213 Democratic members of the lower house of the US parliament, and the party leadership continues to publicly support Biden.
After the NATO summit in Washington, which ends today, Biden plans a campaign tour in two of the states where he faces serious competition from Trump - Michigan and Nevada.