Former Biden Staffers Circulate Petition Calling for Him to Exit Race

Another petition with the same objective is also circulating among national security and foreign policy officials.

(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

FORMER JOE BIDEN STAFFERS ARE CIRCULATING a petition calling on their onetime boss to suspend his presidential campaign.

The effort, launched just yesterday as the chorus of Democrats encouraging Biden to step aside grew, has only a handful of apparent signatories so far. But its mere existence underscores how desperate some Democrats are to change the trajectory of the presidential campaign.

“We have tremendous admiration and deepest respect for who you are, what you stand for, and your phenomenal record of service to our country,” the petition states. “We will forever be grateful for your legacy and leadership.”

“It is therefore with a heavy heart that we call on you to announce as soon as possible that you will not seek the Democratic nomination for the presidency.”

The petition is the brainchild of Jamie Metzl, a staffer under Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee more than two decades ago.

“I saw it with my own mother, who’s starting to have cognitive issues,” Metzl told The Bulwark over the phone. “Some days it’s perfect, and some days it’s not, and it just gets worse. And so it was pretty clear to me, one, that there was just no conceivable way President Biden was going to be able to serve another four and a half years as president of the United States . . . and that everyone in America saw it. Everyone in America intuitively knows what this is, because we’ve all experienced it with our parents and grandparents.”

While a few initial signatories appeared to be fake and others couldn’t be reached, by Thursday afternoon at least one official with significant stature had added his name to the list: Karl Inderfurth, another former staffer for Biden on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who would go on to serve as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs during Bill Clinton’s second term.

“I have the utmost respect for President Biden, who I worked with, but I think it is time to pass the baton to a new generation,” Inderfurth said when reached by phone. “I think the debate performance confirmed the view that many of us have and had that at 81, he is not the same Joe Biden he was four years ago, eight years ago. We need new leadership and there are a lot of Democrats who can fulfill that role.” (Inderfurth himself is 77.)

Inderfurth relayed that he was also signing a separate petition also calling for Biden to drop out that is being circulated among “former foreign policy and national security office holders.” Metzl confirmed the existence of that petition as well, though neither offered to make it public.

Metzl said he did little groundwork ahead of circulating the petition involving former Biden staffers, sending it to his own network of former colleagues before posting it to his Twitter account last night.

“My hope is that, through whatever means, it will be diffused and distributed, and it will reach people who will consider signing it,” Metzl said. “That’s the tragedy of this, though, is that I’ve not met a single Democrat who believes Biden should be the nominee. And it’s just, in my view, extremely disheartening that every single person isn’t speaking up.”

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment.

Efforts to encourage Biden to leave the race have escalated in recent days, with a combination of damaging leaks of private conversations and open calls from others in the party for Biden to exit the race. Congressional Democratic leaders have reportedly told Biden that he is on track to suffer a damaging defeat in November. And a top party pollster, Stan Greenberg, has presented the White House with data suggesting that such a defeat would extend to downballot candidates.

Biden has reportedly become more open to the possibility that he may have to leave the race in recent days. But aides also caution that the situation is fluid and that, as of earlier this week, the president’s team believed he had a path forward.

“I think he is smart enough to know when he reads about [Adam] Schiff and all these people [calling for him to go] that none of this is good,” said a senior administration official. “What I don’t know is that [longtime Biden advisor Tom] Donolin and his election-related advisers have historically had—and seem to continue to have—a mentality that the numbers being told are not the real numbers.”

And while the pressure campaign has intensified to get the president to leave the race, opposing efforts are encouraging him to stay the course—and chastising Democrats for not supporting him more.