Democrat in competitive House race calls on Biden to drop out: ‘We deserve better’

A moderate Democrat seeking to flip a Republican seat in Colorado is calling on President Biden to withdraw from his re-election campaign.

Adam Frisch, who is the party’s nominee to replace Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, released a video statement Tuesday on X and filed an opinion column with the Washington Post in which he said Mr. Biden should step aside.

“Only in politics is stating the obvious rarely done. It has been apparent to me for some time, and the debate only reinforced it. Neither candidate is fit for president,” he said in his video.

“We deserve better. President Biden should withdraw from this race,” Mr. Frisch said.

In his Post column, which said “the entire country was left stunned during and after” the debate, added that Mr. Biden’s obvious infirmity and mental incapacity “make it impossible for Biden to win his election.”

“The indelible images and sound bites from that evening will remain with us, repeated in campaign ad after campaign ad,” he said adding that the months of White House and official Democratic claims about his health is “raising fears from the public that our president’s staff has been lying to us about his capabilities.”

Mr. Frisch came within an ace of unseating firebrand Republican Lauren Boebert in 2022. He had planned on running against her again and had accumulated a deep war chest, but she decamped to a more Republican-friendly district.

The Cook Political Report still ranks the 3rd District race as “Lean Republican” but it is among the fewer than 70 House races nationwide even rated as competitive.

Earlier on Tuesday, Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, became the first seated Democratic Congressmember to say publicly that Mr. Biden should drop out.

But Mr. Biden won almost all the delegates in the party’s primaries and caucuses, and they are bound by Democratic Party rules to vote for him. The only legal way he is not the nominee is if he agrees to step aside voluntarily, by “releasing” those delegates at the convention.