FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver called for President Joe Biden to resign Wednesday, suggesting Vice President Kamala Harris should serve the administration’s final two months following the Democrats’ election defeat.
The call joins a chorus of various pleas for Biden to resign in recent months so that Harris could be, by default, the first female president in United States history.
“Is there any particular reason to assume Biden is competent to be president right now? It’s a very difficult job. It’s a dangerous world. Extremely high-stakes decisions in Ukraine. He should resign and let Harris serve out the last 2 months,” Silver wrote on X.
Silver’s comments came in response to a report over Biden’s avoidance of meetings and reporters at the G-20 summit in Brazil. In fact, the president has not taken questions from the press since Donald Trump won the presidential election on November 5.
This isn’t Silver’s first call for Biden’s resignation. After Biden’s June 26 disasterous debate performance against Trump and subsequent interview with George Stephanopoulos, Silver expressed concerns on July 5.
“I wimped out in today’s column and deleted a line saying he should formulate a plan to transition the presidency to Harris within 30-60 days, but I’m there now,” he said.
Former Harris aide Jamal Simmons echoed Silver’s sentiment on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Joe Biden’s been a phenomenal president; he’s lived up to so many of the promises he’s made. There’s one promise left that he could fulfill: being a transitional figure. He could resign the presidency in the next 30 days, make Kamala Harris president of the United States,” Simmons said.
Not all Democrats agree with these calls. Senator John Fetterman, D-Pa., mocked Silver’s suggestion.
“Senator John Fetterman Calls on Silver to Stop with Sh**ty Polls and Takes Immediately,” Fetterman wrote on X.
Biden, 82, stepped down from the presidential race on July 21 after losing support from top Democrats, endorsing Harris as his replacement. Harris, 59, subsequently lost both the popular vote and Electoral College to Trump.
Silver, who removed his election model on election night when early results showed strong Trump performance, later wrote on his Substack that “Trump’s win is mostly Biden’s fault, not hers.”
He criticized Biden’s campaign management, noting that Biden “gave her tough assignments—the border, perhaps Democrats’ worst issue, and voting rights, an issue on which the White House probably knew it wouldn’t make any progress.”