Should Biden Stay In The Race? [Patch Survey]

Editor’s note: This poll closed at 1 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.

ACROSS AMERICA — President Joe Biden is facing mounting calls by some Democrats to drop his reelection candidacy and let someone else be the party’s standard-bearer in the Nov. 5 presidential election against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

The 81-year-old president’s dismal performance in a debate with Trump last month renewed questions about Biden’s age, which polling has indicated is a top concern for voters. Trump, 78, also faces questions about whether he is too old to serve in what is arguably the toughest job in the world.

The White House has tried to frame the debate performance as an anomaly, a “bad night” complicated by a cold and lingering jet lag, and has dismissed suggestions the president showed signs of cognitive decline. A growing number of longtime Democratic allies who have worked closely with Biden say the performance revealed some worrying traits — memory lapses, incoherence and a vacant look, for example — that call into question his capcity for another term.

Biden has remained firm that he is staying in the race, insisting in a defiant letter to Democratic lawmakers, during friendly media interviews over the last several days and on the campaign trail that he is best-positioned to defeat former President Trump in November.

The editorial board of the New York Times on Tuesday published a piece rebutting Biden’s defense and encouraging Democratic leadership to publicly call for Biden to step aside and build support for a new nominee. The current “whisper campaign” in the party hasn’t convinced Biden to withdraw and has only made him more “defiant,” the editorial board said, describing him as “a man in decline.”

Democratic leaders “should listen instead to the much larger group of voters who have been telling every pollster in America their concerns for a long time,” the editorial board said. “Mr. Biden has to pay attention to the will of the broader electorate that will determine the outcome in November.”

The editorial concluded, “President Biden clearly understands the stakes. But he seems to have lost track of his own role in this national drama. As the situation has become more dire, he has come to regard himself as indispensable. He does not seem to understand that he is now the problem — and that the best hope for Democrats to retain the White House is for him to step aside.”

Whether Biden should remain at the top of the Democratic ticket has dominated the political news cycle in the nearly two weeks since the debate. Democratic voters are split on the question, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.

What do you think? Please take our informal, unscientific survey below. We don’t collect email addresses. Thanks in advance for civility in your responses.