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President Joe Biden and Gov. Whitmer
Update: 11:55 p.m. Monday -- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer denied a report in Politico that she told the Biden campaign Michigan is not winnable.
“I am proud to support Joe Biden as our nominee and I am behind him 100 percent in the fight to defeat Donald Trump,” she said in a statement, according to Michigan Public Radio. “Not only do I believe Joe can win Michigan, I know he can because he’s got the receipts: he’s lowered health care costs, brought back manufacturing jobs, and is committed to restoring the reproductive freedom women lost under Donald Trump.”
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Report From Earlier Monday
A day after the President Joe Biden's troublesome debate performance, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer phoned the Biden’s campaign to say she hates the way her name is being bandied about as a replacement for the president, and she wasn’t behind the movement, Politico reports.
Jonathan Martin of Politico writes:
Whitmer’s conversation with the official, campaign chair Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, was cordial but awkward by its very nature. In the aftermath of the president’s disastrous debate performance last Thursday, no would-be replacement has been the recipient of more wish-casting among despairing Democrats than the second-term Michigan governor.
Whitmer, recognizing as much, disavowed the Draft Gretch chatter. She used the call to reiterate her commitment and willingness to help the president but also voiced her concern about how much more difficult the campaign would be now for Biden, I’m told by a person familiar with the call...
Even more revealing is how word of the call reached me: from someone close to a potential 2028 Whitmer rival for the Democratic presidential nomination. This person said Whitmer had phoned O’Malley Dillon with more of an unambiguous SOS: to relay that Michigan, in the wake of the debate, was no longer winnable for Biden.
So far, Biden doesn't appear to be stepping aside.
The New York Times reports that the family is urging him to stay in the race.
The general consensus is that only Jill Biden can convince to do otherwise.
Whitmer, in her second term, cannot run again for governor and is likely to be a factor in the 2028 presidential race, as a candidate or vice president.
On Monday night, journalist Carl Bernstein appeared on CNN and said sources have told him that Biden has certainly more than dozen similar incidents in the past year like on the debate night.
The New York Times also reports:
In the weeks and months before President Biden’s politically devastating performance on the debate stage in Atlanta, several current and former officials and others who encountered him behind closed doors noticed that he increasingly appeared confused or listless, or would lose the thread of conversations.
