- The progressive group RootsAction.org is launching a national "DontRunJoe" campaign to 'dump' Joe Biden.
- They say if Biden runs in 2024, "he will have a fight on his hands."
- The group will launch digital ads in early nominating states after midterm elections, POLITICO reported.
A progressive group founded by supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders plans to launch a national "#DontRunJoe" campaign, saying President Joe Biden "will have a fight on his hands" if he plans to run for re-election in 2024.
RootsAction.org, an online activist group, will spend six figures on the campaign and launch digital ads in early nominating states one day after the midterm elections on November 9, POLITICO first reported.
The 1.3-million-member group says in a statement on its "DontRunJoe" website that Biden has unfortunately been "neither bold nor inspiring."
"And his prospects for winning re-election appear to be bleak," the statement continues. "With so much at stake, making him the Democratic Party's standard bearer in 2024 would be a tragic mistake."
Democrats eyed as potential 2024 contenders told CNN that they're backing Biden, who has said he intends to run in 2024 if he's in good health. But a recent New York Times and Siena College poll found nearly two-thirds of Democrats don't want Biden to be their party's presidential nominee in 2024.
RootsAction supported Biden in the 2020 general election, but their statement on the "dontrunjoe" website says Biden has "no automatic right to renomination."
"Joe Biden should not seek it," the statement says. "If he does, he will have a fight on his hands."
In an FAQ, the group says they are objecting to Biden because of his job performance.
"We see Biden as a logjam that has to be cleared away if Democrats are to look forward to election victories – and the enactment of big, broadly popular policies that could lead to even more election victories," they write.
They add, "Our immediate goal within the Democratic Party is to 'dump Biden,' much as the anti-Vietnam-War forces among Democrats set out to "dump Johnson" in 1967, which led antiwar candidates Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy to enter the race."
Former President Donald Trump has repeatedly teased another presidential run but he's held off on making an official announcement. Only half of Republican voters now say they'll support him in a primary, according to a new poll.
The 1.3 million-member Roots Action was co-founded in 2011 by progressive advocates and journalists, Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, longtime supporters of Sanders, the Vermont independent who ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
Sanders has said he will not challenge Biden in a 2024 primary and he will support Biden if he runs again. RootsAction says the group "respects Senator Sanders' views."
A Sanders delegate to the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Solomon called on progressives that summer to "keep the pressure on" Biden. He wrote then that "many 'Berners' are frustrated and angry," arguing that despite Biden's nods to the left, that he remains "largely oblivious to social imperatives."