Biden named former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as one of the leading Democrats who opposed his running for re-election.
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
In his first sit-down interview since dropping out of the presidential race, President Joe Biden told CBS Sunday Morning that elites within the Democratic party pressured him not to run.
He named former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as one of the leading Democrats who opposed his running for re-election.
The president said some Democrats in the House and Senate were worried about their own re-election chances and were worried he would drag them down.
Biden added that knowing this would be too distracting for his campaign.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races,” he said.
“And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic — you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something] … and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” he told CBS.
“When I ran the first time, I thought of myself as being a transition president. I can’t even say how old I am — it’s hard for me to get out of my mouth,” he admitted.
Biden concluded that he had to back out of the race to “preserve democracy.”
Following a disastrous debate performance against Republican candidate Donald Trump in June, there were calls within the Democratic Party for Biden to allow another Democrat to run instead.
During the debate, Biden froze mid-sentence and looked bewildered.
One of the President’s advisors, Cedric Richmond, told CNN that megadonors, not only top names in the Democratic Party, pressured Biden not to run.
“You can’t win without money, and then they were going to point the finger at the candidate. They were going to blame it on Biden,” he said. “For a president that has accomplished so much, it was a no-win situation.”
Richmond added he was “pissed off at all the big donors.”