Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) on Tuesday gave the harshest public assessment yet among Senate Democrats of President Joe Biden’s candidacy, telling CNN that he believes Biden “cannot win” in November, in line with prior reporting by the network on what he told his Democratic colleagues in the Senate during a private lunch meeting in the Capitol earlier in the day.
“I just think this race is on a trajectory that is very worrisome if you care about the future of this country,” Bennet told The Source anchor Kaitlan Collins, as internal discord in the Democratic Party over Biden’s candidacy stretches into its second full week. “Donald Trump is on track, I think, to win this election and maybe win it by a landslide and take with him the Senate and the House.”
While polls have generally shown Biden losing to Trump in most battleground states, Bennett said that was irrelevant to him.
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“For me, this isn’t a question about polling. It’s not a question about politics. It is a moral question about the future of our country,” he explained. “And I think it’s critically important for us to come to grips with what we face if, together, we put this country on the path of electing Donald Trump again.”
CNN reported Tuesday that Montana Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown (D-OH) also voiced their doubts about the 81-year-old president’s ability to win re-election.
Thus far, no senators have outright called on Biden to end his campaign.
“This is something for the president to consider,” Bennet said Tuesday. “I think it’s really hard for the people that are working for him to acknowledge. I think they have a moral obligation to look themselves in the mirror and to be able to say, ‘we know we can win this race.’”
Still, Bennet warned that “a huge tragedy” looms.
“If we just sit on our hands, if we say we’re going to disregard what is plainly in front of us–and plainly in front of the American people–and we end up electing Donald Trump again as president of the United States, that’s going to be a huge tragedy beyond epic proportion,” he warned. “It’s something I can’t live with.”
