No matter your take on the issue, it was really frustrating this week to get specific information on who is supporting the President and who is calling for change. It has been a deluge of sloppy journalism where a passing comment by a Senator or Representative expressing “concern” turns into clickbait with “Democrats divided” or “Floodgates” of dissent. (While searching this term, I did see that ABCNews is reporting today that “The floodgates didn't open with a wave of new calls for Biden to drop out” way down the page.) I wanted to know specifically the numbers behind the innuendo for a clue on how big a deal this really is.
Nice to see that NPR is keeping track, in their article this morning simply titled “Who is backing Biden? We're keeping track”.
They have three lists, “Called on Biden to step down”, “Backed Biden” and “Expressed Concern”. So out of 264 Representatives and Senators, 19 have called on Biden to step down, or 7.2%; 29 have publicly backed Biden (11.0 %) and 19 have Expressed Concern (7.2%). (I removed Governors from the count.) Not counted are the 72% who walked as fast as they could to avoid the question or those who said wish-washy things like “we are having a serious discussion.”
You can check out the list to see if your Congressman was bold enough to express an opinion either way or is amongst the duck and cover group. Take corrective actions if necessary.