While riding with President Joe Biden through the Hamptons to a fundraising event on Friday, reporters spotted people holding signs with calls for the President to drop out of the race.
“Please drop out for US” read one and another read “We love you, but it’s time,” according to a CNN report on the event.
A picture posted on X taken by Bloomberg reporter Amanda Gordon affirmed what CNN reported.
Reporters were unaware of whether Biden saw the signs, but elsewhere they are unavoidable.
In the barrage of post-debate op-eds, pleas and desperate calls to top aides and the President himself, Biden has been stalwart in staying the race.
Some untraditional channels have opened to apply additional pressure.
Novelist and poet Jay Parini, who was a childhood friend and neighbor of Biden’s, penned an open letter to the President entitled “Dear Joe, it’s time to go,” on CNN’s opinion page.
Like others, Parini appealed to the President on the basis of his old-age and his perception of Donald Trump as an existential threat.
“I found myself weeping. Weeping for you. Weeping for our nation. You’re a man of huge integrity, Joe, and you must—you MUST—stand down. Do it for your country and your party. The threat of another four years of Trump, a grifter and con man, is existential.” Parini wrote.
It seems Joe Biden’s list of supporters only shrinks by the day, even longtime Biden booster and democratic strategist James Carville told Axios on Saturday “That which can’t continue … won’t.”