New York Times columnist calls on Biden to step down at DNC: 'Shock the world'

A New York Times columnist argued it wasn't a question of whether President Biden should drop out of the 2024 race, but a question of "how" he should do it, following last week's widely-panned press conference and tough special counsel report.

"Joe Biden should not be running for re-election. That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor’s comments on the president’s memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst," opinion columnist Ross Douthat urged. "What is less obvious is how Biden should get out of it."

The release of Special Counsel Robert Hur's report last week on Biden's handling of classified material fueled questions about Biden’s mental acuity when it described the president as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" who could not remember significant life events. Biden then held a last-minute White House press conference to dispute the notion, but the event was slammed as a "political disaster" even by The New York Times.

While Douthat believed that Biden had "delivered results" despite his "obvious" decline, he feared that another nearly five years of Biden as president would not bode well for the country.

BIDEN'S AGE, MENTAL ACUITY IMPACTING ELECTION CHANCES BECOMES MEDIA FOCUS AFTER TOUGH SPECIAL COUNSEL REPORT

"The impression the president gives in public is not senility so much as extreme frailty, like a lightbulb that still burns so long as you keep it on a dimmer," he wrote, predicting memory lapses from the 81-year-old president were bound to show up more frequently during the campaign season.

However, there is no easy way for Biden to drop out of the race now because of "his own terrible vice-presidential choice" in Kamala Harris, he argued.

She is "even more likely"