‘This can’t continue’: Biden-sympathizing columnists urge him to step aside

“It made me weep.” A “total and unmitigated disaster.” “He looked like he wanted to be in bed.”

A slew of Biden-sympathizing top columnists are urging the president to step aside following a bumbling performance at Thursday’s debate against former President Donald Trump.

“Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election,” New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote Friday. “Biden has been a friend” for decades, Friedman wrote, but “it’s time for Joe to keep the dignity he deserves and leave the stage at the end of this term.”

From the New York Times to the Financial Times to the Wall Street Journal to the Atlantic, left-leaning columnists — many of whom have been covering Biden for years — admitted that the president didn’t just lose the debate: He confirmed his party’s greatest fears that his advanced age had rendered the election unwinnable for the Democrats if he remains their candidate.

“This can’t continue,” wrote Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan . “I am sorry to say this harsh thing, but allowing him to go forward at this point looks like elder abuse.”

Noonan called the early debate “a gift” for the Democrats, who still have months to find another nominee before the Democratic convention. “The dam broke,” she wrote. “There is still time, and Mr. Trump is still takable.”

That was a sentiment others repeated. “The best that can be said of Joe Biden’s stumbling debate performance was that it took place in June,” wrote the Financial Times’ Edward Luce . “The best part of this debate for Democrats is that it happened on June 27,” echoed the Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich .

Before Thursday, Democrats had largely thrown their support behind Biden as the nominee, sweeping aside questions about the 81-year-old’s age. But from the onset of Thursday’s 90-minute debate, during which Biden stumbled through several gaffes and at times was unintelligible, the problem was impossible to ignore .

It’s not immediately clear what it would look like if Biden were to step down and release his delegates prior to the convention, and Democratic heirs-apparent like California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro have parried on the topic when asked.

Still, even as they acknowledged Biden’s “bad debate night,” as Shapiro put it, the president’s surrogates doubled down on their support Friday morning as the dust settled.

“I think we can learn something from Republicans. Republicans will not abandon Donald Trump,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said Friday on FOX.

“We all have these days,” he added, calling Biden’s debate “certainly not the finest hour.” But “not every broadcast is perfect, not everything we do on it is where we want it, but we have to come back and make the case.”

The Biden campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.