Sen. Tester calls on Biden not to seek another term
President Joe Biden talks with Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., after delivering the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol, Thursday March 7, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Montana’s senior U.S. senator and only Democratic member of the congressional delegation is calling on President Joe Biden to not seek re-election in November.
Tester is only the second Democrat in the Senate to make the call on the Biden candidacy, but other media report that former President Barack Obama, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, and Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, have visited with Biden recently, privately asking him to reconsider his decision to stay in the race.
“Montanans have put their trust in me to do what is right, and it is a responsibility I take seriously. I have worked with President Biden when it has made Montana stronger, and I’ve never been afraid to stand up to him when he is wrong,” Tester said. “And while I appreciate his commitment to public service and our country, I believe President Biden should not seek re-election to another term.”
Only Vermont’s Sen. Peter Welch, a fellow Democrat in the Senate, has publicly called for Biden not to seek re-election.
Tester said that Biden should continue to finish out his current term, which ends in January 2025, despite some calls from pundits and politicians for him to exit early in order to give Vice President Kamala Harris better exposure.
Tester supports an open nominating process to select a nominee from the Democratic Party.
On Wednesday, Rep. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California who is running for a U.S. Senate seat there, also called on Biden to not seek re-election, becoming one of the most prominent members of the House Democrats to call for him to step aside. Schiff is perhaps best known as one of the chief members on the January 6th committee.
Tester is running for re-election this November to keep his Senate seat against political neophyte Tim Sheehy, a Bozeman Republican businessman and former soldier, hand-picked by Montana’s other senator, Steve Daines, who leads the Republican effort to flip the United States Senate back to GOP control.
Despite what many polls and analysts consider a tight race in Montana, which has swung to the right in recent elections, Tester has a track record of winning close competitions. In fact, former President Donald J. Trump came to Montana on three different occasions during Tester’s last re-election bid, something that could have doomed other Democrats in red states. However, Tester remains one of the few politicians to survive such a frontal political assault.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Biden cancelled a speaking event in Las Vegas when he was diagnosed with COVID-19. It is the second time Biden has gotten COVID-19, and video of the president walking gingerly up the stairs of Air Force One was aired on television and social media. The positive COVID test came on the heels of several notable gaffes and other problems, most prominently, a disastrous television debate on CNN on June 27 in which Biden appeared rattled and at times was hard to follow.
That began what became a growing chorus of people calling on the 81-year-old president to step aside.
Like almost every member of Congress, Tester was asked about his opinion of Biden’s chances of success after the debate, to which he replied that the president “has got to prove to the American people — including me — that he’s up to the job for another four years,” according to media reports.
Even after the debate, the polls showed little change, possibly suggesting an entrenched electorate. A National Public Radio/Marist/PBS News poll that was released last week shows Biden and Trump in a statistical tie in nationwide results.
Biden deciding not to seek another term would trigger states to lean on their own laws for what happens to replace a presidential candidate on the ballot. Those procedures widely vary state-by-state.