A veteran Democrat from Texas, Congressman Lloyd Doggett, is the first sitting Democratic congressman to publicly call on President Biden to withdraw from the race after his disastrous debate performance on Thursday, in what could be a pivotal moment for the party. 

“Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory — too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what was not turned around in the debate, can be turned around now,” Mr. Doggett said in a statement. “President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2020. He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024.”

Praising Mr. Biden’s work during his first term, Mr. Doggett said that publicly calling on him to withdraw “is not done lightly nor does it in any way diminish my respect for all that President Biden has achieved.”

Mr. Doggett, age 77 and representing a district based at Austin, said that he is calling on Mr. Biden to drop out because “unlike Trump, President Biden’s first commitment has always been to our country, not himself.”

His concerns echo those of many Democratic commentators, donors, and advisors in the aftermath of his debate performance. Yet,  inside the Capitol, Democrats had reportedly been trying to tamper down any calls for Mr. Biden to resign, fearing that moderate Senator Manchin would be the first to do so — something the West Virginia senator hasn’t done so far. 

“Nobody wants to be the first one to knife Julius Caesar,” one Democratic Party official said, per the Washington Post. 

Mr. Doggett on Tuesday noted that Mr. Biden has fallen “substantially behind Democratic senators in key states and in most polls has trailed Donald Trump.”

“I had hoped that the debate would provide some momentum to change that.  It did not,” he said. “Instead of reassuring voters, the President failed to effectively defend his many accomplishments and expose Trump’s many lies.”