Nate Silver urges Biden: Reassure voters or ‘stand down’

Election handicapper Nate Silver, the founder of FiveThirtyEight, on Monday called on President Biden to reassure voters he is capable of running a campaign.

Otherwise, Silver said, Biden should step aside ahead of the August nominating convention and let the party select a new candidate.

“Biden needs to reassure the American public that he’s capable of handling public appearances that aren’t on easy mode. Or he needs to stand down. Or he’s probably going to lose to Trump,” Silver wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

In a Substack post also published Monday, Silver sharply criticized Biden and his team for shielding the president from the media spotlight, in particular for forgoing the Super Bowl interview.

“Personally, I crossed the rubicon in November, concluding that Biden should stand down if he wasn’t going to be able to run a normal reelection campaign — meaning, things like conduct a Super Bowl interview,” Silver wrote. “Yes, it’s a huge risk and, yes, Biden can still win. But he’s losing now and there’s no plan to fix the problems other than hoping that the polls are wrong or that voters look at the race differently when they have more time to focus on it.”

Silver wrote that shielding Biden from the media leads people to conclude there is something to be concerned about. He noted that “even the most optimistic Democrats, if you read between the lines, are really arguing that Democrats could win despite Biden and not because of him.”

Concerns about Biden’s age have come to the forefront, especially following a recent special counsel report that painted Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Voters have listed it as a top issue in polls.

Biden and his allies have criticized the report, saying special counsel Robert Hur went beyond his purview and emphasizing that the report exonerates Biden in a confidential documents investigation.

But Silver argues the campaign should address the issue head-on.

“Over the course of the next several weeks, Biden should do four lengthy sitdown interviews with ‘non-friendly’ sources,” Silver wrote, noting, “‘Non-friendly’ doesn’t mean hostile: nonpartisan reporters with a track record of asking tough questions would work great.”

“A complete recording of the interviews should be made public. The interviews ought to include a mix of different media (e.g. television and print) and journalistic perspectives,” Silver added.

“So could I, other critics and 75 percent of Americans be wrong about this? Sure. I’m wrong about a lot of things. But if we’re wrong about this, it ought to be easy to prove it,” Silver said.

Silver’s piece comes after New York Times columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein argued Democrats should convince the president not to run again and then pick a new candidate at the party convention in August — a practice, Klein noted, that used to be far more common in presidential elections.

The Hill reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.