Colorado Governor Says Debate About Biden’s Candidacy Remains ‘Legitimate’

A day after President Biden offered a news conference performance that his allies hoped would end conversations about replacing him on the Democratic ticket, Gov. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, suggested such discussions remained “legitimate.”

In an interview on the sidelines of the National Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City on Friday, Mr. Polis called on Mr. Biden to demonstrate “what will change that will enable him” to win in November.

“When you are down — and I think it’s important that President Biden and his team realize that they’re underwater in the polls, if the election was held today, he likely wouldn’t win — you need to change something,” Mr. Polis, the incoming N.G.A. chair, said. “That could mean changing the message, the strategy, the candidate. But continuing to operate in the same way isn’t likely to lead to a different result.”

Democrats, he said, want to see “how are you going to win this and what are you going to do differently than what you have been doing, so that we can protect democracy and win in November?”

No Democratic governors have explicitly called on Mr. Biden to step down from the ticket, but a number of them raised private concerns at a meeting with him last week.

Mr. Polis said he had not watched Biden’s news conference on Thursday — but he signaled that urgent questions remained about the viability of the president’s campaign.

“It’s not about a debate or a news conference,” he said, describing what he saw as the stakes of the election. He went on to add: “They really need to look at how they can reinvent the campaign. Again, look at messaging, look at strategy, of course, it’s a legitimate discussion about the candidate, but how we’re going to win to protect democracy.”