Protesters demand US President Joe Biden drop out in front of the White House at a rally held on July 20, 2024.DANIEL SLIM/Getty

While President Joe Biden was holed up in Rehoboth, Delaware, recovering from Covid on Saturday afternoon, about 50 people came out in the rain to attend a rally at the White House to pressure him to abandon his reelection campaign. “Hey, hey; ho ho; thank you Joe it’s time to go,” they chanted, waving hand-painted signs emblazoned with “Pass the Torch” and “Country before Ego!”

“Young people have been shutting down streets, lobbying Congress, pressuring the White House, organizing for a chance to save our democracy, beat MAGA fascism, and win November’s presidential election with a new democratic presidential nominee,” said speaker Claudia Nachega, a 19-year-old college student and reproductive justice activist. Other speakers included Quentin Colón Roosevelt, a Princeton student and DC advisory neighborhood commissioner who is a member of the Sunrise Movement, the youth climate change organization that has called on Biden to exit the race.

The rally was co-organized by Aaron Regunberg, a former democratic Rhode Island state legislator who also helped start a new Pass the Torch political action committee. The PAC was created on July 9, just a few days after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump, which proved to be a turning point in his support among Democrats. The PAC has spent nearly $40,000 in the past two weeks running ads in DC and Delaware urging Biden to step aside.

President Biden, you........

© Mother Jones