Casten becomes yet another House Dem to call for Biden to step aside

A 21st House Democrat has joined the public call for President Joe Biden to step down.

Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois on Friday published a Chicago Tribune op-ed titled “It’s time for Joe Biden to pass the torch,” adding himself to a growing list of Democratic defectors as Biden world finds itself in crisis .

“[P]olitics, like life, isn’t fair,” Casten wrote. “And as long as this election is … litigated over which candidate is more likely to be held accountable for public gaffes and ‘senior moments,’ I believe that Biden is not only going to lose but is also uniquely incapable of shifting that conversation.”

Casten, who has represented a safe blue district just outside Chicago since 2019, began by complimenting the president’s record, calling him “a fundamentally kind, empathetic and decent human being.” On the other hand, Casten wrote, Trump is a “man whose singular talent is the shameless, narcissistic meanness innate to all the world’s most successful con artists.”

But Casten said his constituents “fear for the future of American democracy” and that “it breaks my heart to say it, but Biden is no longer up for that job.”

“It is with a heavy heart and much personal reflection that I am therefore calling on Biden to pass the torch to a new generation,” Casten wrote. “To manage an exit with all the dignity and decency that has guided his half-century of public service. To cement his legacy as the president who saved our democracy in 2020 and handed it off to trusted hands in 2024 who could carry his legacy forward.”

As more and more Congressional Democrats join the chorus calling for Biden to step aside, leaders in the party are reportedly urging the president to re-consider staying in the race behind closed doors, and allies of Vice President Kamala Harris are poised to position her to claim the top of the ticket.

Still, Biden has made no public indication that he will step down.

“Absolutely the president is in this race, you’ve heard him say that time and again,” Biden Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said Friday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

“I’m not here to say this hasn’t been a tough several weeks for the campaign, there’s no doubt that it has been, and we’ve definitely seen some slippage in support,” O’Malley Dillon added. “But it has been a small movement.”