George Clooney has tossed his hat into the ring of the ongoing debate among Democrats as to whether or not Joe Biden should be the party’s official nominee in the upcoming presidential election. In a bluntly-worded guest op-ed in the New York Times, Clooney made clear he thinks President Biden should bow out, and the result is intense conversations and ruffled feathers.
Other celebrities have already voiced their opinion on Biden, strongly urging the President of the United States of America not to run for a second term.
Rob Reiner has been vocal about it on a daily basis on X, while Bill Maher has been stating it for months on his show Real Time with Bill Maher. Recently, Stephen King applauded Biden’s presidency, but also opined it was time for him to go.
However, there has been pushback to Clooney’s NYT essay, with many Democrat voters expressing their belief that if Biden doesn’t run for re-election, then Donald Trump will certainly win the presidency. This viewpoint hasn’t garnered as much attention, unfortunately, because the opinions of celebrities seem to wield a significantly bigger influence within the party, which also adds to the frustration of the common voter.
Enter George Clooney. He hosted a fundraiser for Biden three weeks ago when he helped the party raise $14 million for his campaign. Surely, he will be a vote for Biden.
Apparently, Clooney partly based his NYT op-ed on his experience with Biden at that fundraiser.
In his essay, Clooney calls Biden a friend, but also claims that the President is not the same man from 2020, adding, “This is about age. Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president.”
The op-ed is one of the biggest topics on social media presently, and adds to the big celeb scramble to push Biden out of the presidency.
However, not all reactions to Clooney’s op-ed are positive, because many non-celebrity voters — whose lives are more impacted by who the president is than a celebrity’s — are infuriated by Clooney’s statements. They speak with their vote, as they did in the primary, and they strongly believe that Biden is the ONLY one who can beat Trump, especially considering that changing the candidate now would likely be the same as stating that the Democratic party doesn’t know what it’s doing.
Clooney disagrees in his op-ed, more or less dismissing the primary as insignificant, explaining, “It is disingenuous, at best, to argue that Democrats have already spoken with their vote and therefore the nomination is settled and done, when we just received new and upsetting information.”
The new and upsetting information that Clooney is referring to is Biden’s health and cognitive issues, something that has been a hot topic for two years on social media and, contrary to Clooney’s claim, is not really news at all. The debate did not reveal anything that the common voter didn’t already know.
The question now is whether or not the party will heed the common voter or the celebrity.
Furthermore — and perhaps lost in all of this — if Biden wins re-election but his health issues ultimately force him to step down, then that’s what the Vice President is for. Thus, a call for Biden to step down is no different than a lack of confidence in Kamala Harris. This signifies to the independent voter that the donkey party doesn’t believe in either the President or Vice President.
Clooney singed off on the op-ed by suggesting that Biden could be a hero if he steps down, penning, “Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024.”
The Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago from August 19 to 22, and given the inter-party grumbling and extremely high stakes, it could be the most contentious convention yet.