CV NEWS FEED // Hollywood star George Clooney, a lifelong Democrat and megadonor, wrote an op-ed for The New York Times on July 10 arguing that President Joe Biden is incapable of winning reelection due to his age and the Democratic Party needs a new nominee.
Clooney’s op-ed comes just days after Biden sent a letter to fellow Democrats doubling down on his plans to stay in the race. Media outlets and various lawmakers have called for Biden to withdraw since his alarmingly weak performance at the June 27 presidential debate against former President Donald Trump.
In Clooney’s op-ed, he wrote that he loves Biden as a friend, senator, vice president, and president. Biden has “won many of the battles he’s faced,” Clooney wrote. “But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can.”
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“It’s devastating to say it,” Clooney wrote, but Biden is no longer the man he was in the leadup to the 2020 election.
Clooney recounted seeing Biden at a fundraising event three weeks before the actor penned his op-ed. There, Biden “was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney wrote:
Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign.
Clooney emphasized that his objection to Biden continuing his campaign “is about age” and “[n]othing more.”
“But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president,” Clooney continued:
On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.
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Clooney also wrote that various “[t]op Democrats — Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi — and senators, representatives and other candidates who face losing in November need to ask this president to voluntarily step aside.”
In an MSNBC interview on July 8, Pelosi suggested Biden has not made his final decision as to whether he will go through with his 2024 reelection effort.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run… We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short,” Pelosi said, according to FOX News. “I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with.”
In his op-ed, Clooney posited that having a new Democratic nominee this late in the campaign might bring advantages against Trump. Several strong candidates could rise to the occasion if Biden steps aside.
“Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020,” Clooney concluded: “We need him to do it again in 2024.”
Clooney is a longtime friend of former President Barack Obama, who has reportedly had very little faith in Biden for several years.
According to an August 2020 Politico report, “searing, anonymously sourced quotes from Obama kept appearing” throughout Biden’s bid for the presidency that year.
Politico reported that Obama expressed a lack of confidence in Biden to various sources and reportedly said on one occasion in reference to having a grasp of the Democratic base: “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.”
“According to Biden himself, when it came to the initial idea of his presidential run, Obama ‘was not encouraging,’” Politico reported.
