The Biden campaign reiterated in a new memo after the Republican National Convention that the president will be the Democratic nominee, but the party remains embroiled in disagreements over the direction it should take. The memo also targeted Project 2025, a plan Donald Trump has denied.
“Joe Biden has made it clear that he is in this race and he is in this race to win. Furthermore, he is the presumptive nominee and there are no plans for a replacement,” Dan Kaninen, the Biden campaign’s chief statewide operations manager, wrote in a memo obtained by The Hill.
“In a few weeks, Joe Biden will be the official nominee. It’s time for us to stop fighting each other. When we fight, the only person who wins is Donald Trump.”
Kaninen acknowledged that Biden’s age was brought up by the campaign when talking to voters, but argued that it didn’t stop voters from choosing Biden anyway.
The memo also criticized Republicans for their handling of Project 2025, a series of policy proposals organized by the Heritage Foundation that included people with ties to the Trump administration.
Trump and his team have flatly denied Project 2025 existed, and Trump campaign chief adviser Chris LaCivita called them “a real nuisance” at the RNC this week.
“This week, the choice became increasingly clear to voters in this tight race. Project 2025’s poster boy, J.D. Vance, solidified what we’ve known for months: If Donald Trump has his way, he will remake our government and our way of life in the image of Project 2025 — fewer rights, higher costs, and fewer opportunities for the middle class,” Kanninen wrote in the memo.
In the memo, Kaninen claims that “Project 2025 has come full circle,” citing former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Thomas Homan as “the architect of family separation on the convention stage.” Project 2025 cites him as a contributor to the policy’s writing.
Kaninen noted signs circulating at the convention that read “Deport Now,” and suggested Vance’s speech “provided a glimpse” of their policy vision, which he called “completely useless to the American people, an all-out assault on women’s reproductive rights, a crackdown on the Affordable Care Act, and a move of manufacturing jobs overseas.”
The memo also outlines how the campaign is filling its ranks in key states like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, where polls show Biden either on par with or behind Trump.
The memo comes as several prominent Democrats have called on Biden to drop out of the race. On Thursday night, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is in a tight reelection race, became the latest lawmaker to join the call.
The president and his team have maintained that Biden will stay, but new voices have raised further questions about Biden’s eligibility to run, and the Democratic Party is gearing up to crown its nominee at its own convention next month.
