President Joe Biden could make a decision within days whether to continue running for re-election, said the governor of Hawaii, who recently attended a meeting with Biden and other Democratic governors and whose family has known the president for years.
And if Biden decides not to run, Hawaii Governor Josh Green told the Associated Press on Saturday that he believes the president will nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor.
“I think the president stays in the race unless he feels he can’t win it, or he feels he needs to listen to other voices in his inner circle saying he shouldn’t run,” Green said. “If the president felt he wasn’t up to the task, and he really wasn’t, he would resign.”
“We will probably know in the next few days what the president thinks about all this,” he said.
Biden has repeatedly stressed that he will stay in the race against his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump. But doubts about Biden’s mental state have arisen since his disastrous performance at last month’s debate. While some of his Democratic colleagues have encouraged Biden to drop out of the campaign, the president has pointed to the support of other elected officials in the party, particularly governors.
Green, who was a doctor on Hawaii’s Big Island before being elected governor, said everyone has parents or grandparents who have moments that aren’t so great or lack the ability to express themselves clearly. But, he added, they aren’t discarded because they are experienced, wise and play a role in the family.
“That’s why I stand with the president until he tells me otherwise,” Green said.
Green said the timeline of a few days for a decision takes into account the pressure that could be put on Biden after members of Congress return to Capitol Hill this week.
“I truly and honestly believe that the decision has to be his. And it should not come from another governor. It should come from no one other than the closest advisers closest to him and his own heart,” Green said.
Green was quick to point out that Trump is only three years younger than Biden and both will have bad days in the future, but he argued that temperament is more vital than age.
“For God’s sake, these two guys have to have the nuclear codes,” Green said. “I don’t want someone tweeting in the middle of the night and attacking other countries. That’s not good. That’s not the problem we have with President Biden.”
In the event that Biden drops out of the election campaign, President Green should be allowed to say who he thinks should be his successor on the ballot.
“I think it’s abundantly clear that the Democratic Party as a whole would be thrilled to have the president choose his vice president if it came to that,” Green said.
Harris “is a powerful person, she is also a leading woman, she is an African-American woman and was attorney general (of California),” Green said. “There are no better credentials than those of the current vice president.”
Green, whose uncle was Mrs. Biden’s college roommate, also provided insight into the governors’ meeting with the president last week. During the meeting, Green asked Biden about his health. Biden replied that everything was fine except for his brain.
Green told AP that the president was joking and that the context was lost when the information was shared by others.
“It was definitely a joke, and to make a self-deprecating joke you just have to have intact cognitive functions,” Green said.
He also refuted claims that advisers had designed the meeting so that Biden-supporting governors would speak first to stifle any dissent. Instead, he said it was a very open, unrehearsed conversation with 25 governors with differing opinions.
“This call was about what you would expect in a coffee shop. A few people were getting into it, a few were probably overly praising the president, but almost everyone just wanted to know, ‘Is everything OK?'” Green said.
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Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska.
