We’re not plotting to replace Biden insist top Democrats

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer is forced to deny she’s angling for Joe Biden’s job, as a sitting congressman becomes the first Democrat to publicly call for the President to step down.

The governor of Michigan has insisted to President Biden’s re-election campaign that she is not angling for his job, despite feverish speculation about her as a possible successor and infighting among Democrats nervous that the president has blown his chances.

Gretchen Whitmer called Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, the campaign chairwoman, to say she was not behind a “Draft Gretch” movement and was not actively seeking to replace Biden after his disastrous TV debate last week.

Lloyd Doggett became the first Democrat to publicly call for Biden to step down. “Recognising that, unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so,” the Texan congressman said.

Were Biden to withdraw, Whitmer, 52, is considered a favourite with party activists for the way she comfortably won re-election in 2022. She was credited with helping the Democrats take full control of the crucial swing state’s legislature for the first time since 1983.

She is also popular with donors and was the subject of a recent funding call from Chet Atkins, a former Massachusetts congressman turned lobbyist, who wrote: “How can you not love a governor who is affectionately called ‘Big Gretch’ by Detroit rappers, who faced down a kidnap attempt and passed gun safety legislation in response.

“A massive outpouring of small and large dollar donations to Gretchen Whitmer’s political committee will send a strong and clear message. It will also allow her to be ready on day one when the nomination opens up.”

Whitmer, who retains her political committee for her state campaigns, was said to have been unaware of the email.

She is among the top tier of Democrats who are likely to compete with Kamala Harris, the vice president, for the 2028 nomination and who could yet be drafted in should Biden, 81, drop out.

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In a sign of future presidential ambitions, it was announced in April that Whitmer’s book, True Gretch: What I’ve Learned About Life, Leadership, and Everything in Between, will be published on July 9, although no one could have guessed at the time that Biden’s campaign would by then be in crisis.

“I am proud to support Joe Biden as our nominee and I am behind him 100 per cent in the fight to defeat Donald Trump,” Whitmer told Politico after it reported her phone call to insist she was not undermining Biden. She denied reports that she also told O’Malley Dillon that Biden could no longer win Michigan after his stumbling debate. Politico said it had learnt of Whitmer’s call from a possible rival for the Democratic nomination, a sign that the backstabbing is already under way in a behind-closed-doors contest to emerge as the heir.

Biden’s team has been trying to damp down panic in the ranks, holding phone calls with numerous donors in the days after the debate.

“There have been 15 to 20 occasions in the last year and a half when the president has appeared somewhat as he did in that horror show that we witnessed,” the veteran journalist Carl Bernstein told CNN.

The Biden campaign’s national finance committee held a call with hundreds of fundraisers on Monday evening, with a message that early polls showed little damage from the debate.

The Times