Peter Welch Explains Why He Thinks Biden Needs to Drop Out

Senator Peter Welch of Vermont on Wednesday became the first Democratic senator to publicly call on President Biden to withdraw as the party’s presidential candidate in the aftermath of his disastrous debate performance last month.

“We can’t unsee what we saw,” Mr. Welch said in an interview shortly after publishing an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he called for Mr. Biden to end his campaign and allow another Democrat to take on former President Donald J. Trump. He said the president’s stumbles during the debate had only reinforced — rather than allayed — concerns about his ability to run a successful campaign.

“Age was a big issue going into the debate, and it was an opportunity, obviously, that the White House saw to put that to rest, and coming out of the debate, it intensified it,” the first-term senator said. “And that’s a real problem.”

Mr. Welch, 77, said his decision to call on the president to step aside was extremely difficult because he and voters in his home state “love Joe Biden.” He touted the 2020 election results, in which Vermonters delivered Mr. Biden the highest percentage victory of any state in the country.

But he said those same voters had deep anxieties about the future, fearing that four years under a second Trump administration would remove any chance of extending progressive policies championed by Mr. Biden and could wipe away the progress they have supported over the last four years.

Mr. Welch said it had become an existential issue for him to consider the threat of another Trump presidency, and that his determination was that Mr. Biden was not up to beating the former president.

“It’s not the elites in Vermont who are talking to me,” Mr. Welch said, brushing back an argument that Mr. Biden