SC Democratic candidate for Congress joins calls for President Biden to step aside as nominee

South Carolina Congressional candidate Michael B. Moore speaks at a rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 11, 2023, in Washington, DC. South Carolina voters and Civil Rights are calling on SCOTUS to protect Black voters in the Alexander V. SC State Conference of the NAACP court case. (Photo by Shannon Finney/Getty Images for Rooted Logistics)

The Democratic candidate for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District called for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the U.S. presidential race on Thursday.

Michael Moore, who won the Democratic primary last month and will challenge U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., in November, posted his call for Biden to step down on X, formerly known as Twitter. Moore said the president should help in transitioning to a new nominee.

Moore told the SC Daily Gazette on Friday that following the first presidential debate last week, where Biden performed poorly, he is concerned Biden will not be able to win again. Biden was trailing Trump already in the polls, he said, and has slid further since the debate.

“I think the debate performance – American’s not going to be able to unsee that,” Moore told the Gazette. “I don’t think that President Biden is the best person to lead the country going forward.”

That said, Moore wanted to emphasize that Biden should be acknowledged for what he has achieved in his first term, and still has an important role to play for the party by guiding a new nominee. He did not name a specific person he wanted to replace Biden.

Biden said on Friday that he is not stepping aside, but Moore said that statement did not change his concerns about Biden, or his position the president needs to step aside.

This week two other Democrats in Congress, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas and U.S. Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, have called for Biden to step aside. On Friday afternoon the Washington Post reported that Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, is trying to gather other Democrats to ask Biden to leave the race.

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, South Carolina’s only current Democratic member of Congress and a co-chair of the Biden-Harris Campaign told MSNBC on Tuesday that he still backs Biden at the top of the ticket. Clyburn did say, if Biden steps aside, he would support Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee.

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