Dem Rep. Torres on Biden: Numbers Matter, Feelings Don't

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., said Wednesday that Democrats must put poll numbers over feelings in determining whether to continue with President Joe Biden as the party’s presidential nominee.

"In determining how to proceed as a party, there must be a serious reckoning with the down-ballot effect of whomever we nominate," Torres said in a post on X. "What matters is not how we feel but what the numbers tell us."

According to The Hill, the New York Democrat raised the alarm over potential down-ballot consequences that could result from ignoring Biden’s plummeting poll numbers since the first presidential debate on June 27. The president’s shaky and halting debate performance did little to inspire confidence among members of his party that he is capable of defeating former President Donald Trump in November’s election.

In the nearly two weeks since the debate, seven House Democrats have publicly called for Biden to drop out of the race, while others have doubled down on their support for the embattled president as he struggles to revive his candidacy.

Biden and his allies maintain that he is the best-positioned candidate to beat Trump in November and is physically and mentally fit for office, despite eight visits to the White House by a Parkinson’s disease specialist last year.

Torres said the time has come for Democrats to take a look at the "cold hard numbers" and base their decision on the figures.

"An unsentimental analysis of the cold hard numbers — which have no personal feelings or political loyalties — should inform what we decide and whom we nominate," Torres said in his X post. "If we’re going to choose a particular path, we should be clear-eyed about its consequences. Blindness is not bliss amid the terrifying threat of a Trump presidency."

On Monday, however, Torres took to X to criticize Democratic infighting, calling the "intra-party mixed messaging … deeply self-destructive."

"The drip, drip, drip of public statements of no confidence only serve to weaken a President who has been weakened not only by the debate but also by the debate about the debate," Torres wrote.

"Weakening a weakened nominee seems like a losing strategy for a presidential election," he added. "The piling-on is not so much solving a problem as much as it is creating and compounding one."

His remarks on Wednesday came after the nonpartisan Cook Political Report made six changes to its Electoral College ratings on Tuesday, all of which favored the GOP. Arizona, Georgia and Nevada went from toss-ups to "lean Republican," while Minnesota, New Hampshire and Nebraska’s 2nd District switched from "likely Democrat" to "lean Democrat."