President Joe Biden could decide within days whether to remain a candidate for reelection, said the Hawaii governor who attended a recent meeting with Biden and other Democratic governors and whose family has known the president for years.
And if Biden decides not to run, Hawaii Gov. Josh Green told The Associated Press on Saturday that he believes the president will nominate a vice president. Kamala Harris to replace it on the ticket.
“I think the president stays in the race unless he feels it’s unwinnable, or he feels he has to hear other voices in his inner circle telling him he shouldn’t run,” Green said. “If the president felt he wasn’t up to the task, and he really wasn’t up to the task, he would resign.”
“We will probably know in the coming days what the president thinks about all this,” he said.
Biden has repeatedly said he will stay in the race against his likely Republican opponent, former President Donald Trump. But questions about Biden’s mental acuity have mounted since his disastrous debate performance last month. While some of his fellow Democrats have encouraged Biden to quit the campaign, the president has pointed to the support of other elected officials in the party, particularly governors.
Green, who was a doctor on the Big Island before being elected governor, said everyone has parents or grandparents who have difficult times or times when they can’t express themselves clearly. But, he added, they are not dismissed because of their experience, their wisdom and their role in the family.
“That’s why I support the president until he tells me otherwise,” Green said.
Green said the days’ delay for a decision anticipates the pressure that could be put on Biden after members of Congress return to the Capitol this week.
“I really, honestly think that he should be the one making the decision. And it shouldn’t come from any other governor. It shouldn’t come from anybody other than his closest advisers and his own heart,” Green said.
Green was quick to point out that Trump is only three years younger than Biden and that both men will face difficult days ahead. But he argued that temperament is more important than age.
“For God’s sake, these two guys need 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 right. That’s not the problem we have with President Biden.”
If Biden were to leave the campaign, Green said, the president should be allowed to say who he thinks should replace him on the ticket.
“I think it’s very clear that the Democratic Party would be generally delighted to see the president nominate his vice president if that were to happen,” Green said.
Harris “is a powerful person, she’s also a woman of great influence, she’s an African-American who was attorney general (of California),” Green said. “There are no better credentials than the current vice president.”
Green, whose wife’s uncle was Biden’s college roommate, also provided insight into last week’s meeting between governors and the president. During the meeting, Green asked Biden about his health. Biden responded by saying everything was fine except for his brain.
Green told the AP that the president was joking and that context was lost when others leaked it.
“It was absolutely a joke, and to make a self-deprecating joke you have to have intact cognitive function, period,” Green said.
He also rejected any claim that advisers had set up the meeting so that pro-Biden governors would speak first in order to stifle any dissent. Instead, he said it was a very frank and unscripted conversation with 25 governors with differing views.
“The call went as you would expect in a coffee shop, a few people reacted violently, a few people probably praised the president excessively, but almost everyone was just trying to see if everything was OK,” Green said.
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Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska.
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