商界领袖呼吁拜登下台
【中美创新时报2024 年 7 月 4 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）一群商界领袖呼吁拜登总统下台，为民主党总统候选人的继任者让路。《纽约时报》记者肯尼斯·P·沃格尔（Kenneth P. Vogel）对此作了下述报道。
“领导力现在计划”是一个由 400 名政治活跃的现任和退休高管组成的联盟，他们大多但并非完全倾向于左翼，该联盟于周三发表声明，敦促拜登“将今年总统提名的火炬传递给下一代能力很强的民主党人。”
该声明尚未签署，但该组织的创始人兼首席执行官 Daniella Ballou-Aares 表示，该声明得到了“领导力现在计划”的绝大多数成员的支持。
会员包括 Jeni’s Famous Ice Cream 创始人 Jeni Britton Bauer、鞋类制造商 Weyco Group 首席执行官 Thomas W. Florsheim Jr.、投资公司 D.E. Shaw & Co. 董事总经理 Eddie Fishman、宝洁前首席执行官 John Pepper 和 NFL 前总裁 Paul Tagliabue。
民主党主要捐赠者越来越多地认为，在拜登上周与唐纳德·特朗普的总统辩论中表现不佳后，民主党更有机会通过其他候选人入主白宫。但大多数捐赠者和左翼大财团出于担心引起强烈反对而没有公开表态。
据称，拜登的失误越来越普遍，令人担忧
“领导力现在计划”在声明中称特朗普连任的前景“对美国民主的生存威胁”，并表示在辩论中拜登“未能有效地对特朗普提出指控，我们现在担心 11 月大选可能惨败”。
声明还说，“我们听到许多人和我们一样对目前的进程深感担忧，但不敢大声疾呼”，并最后恳求其他人“加入我们，发出这一紧急呼吁”。
在接受采访时，曾在奥巴马政府期间担任国务院高级顾问的企业高管 Ballou-Aares 表示，最近几天白宫和其他拜登支持者发出的信息让她感到不安。
“这种感觉就像这是一个小团体家庭决定，这对民主不利，”她说，并称这“与人们观看辩论后的想法非常不一致”。
她的组织由非营利部门和政治行动委员会组成，支持两党候选人，最近在其年度会议上邀请了反特朗普共和党前众议员亚当·金辛格和密歇根州州长格雷琴·惠特默，后者是一名民主党人，被认为可能接替拜登。
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：6 月 27 日，在拜登参加 2024 年大选的首场总统辩论后，拜登总统和吉尔·拜登在佐治亚州玛丽埃塔的一家华夫饼店买了东西。MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
附原英文报道：
Business leaders call on Biden to step aside
By Kenneth P. Vogel New York Times,Updated July 3, 2024
A group of business leaders is calling on President Biden to step aside and make way for a replacement atop the Democratic Party’s presidential ticket.
Leadership Now Project, a coalition of 400 politically active current and retired executives who mostly but not entirely lean left, issued a statement on Wednesday urging Biden to “pass the torch of this year’s presidential nomination to the next generation of highly capable Democrats.”
The statement is unsigned, but Daniella Ballou-Aares, the group’s founder and CEO, said that it was supported by an overwhelming majority of the members of Leadership Now Project.
The membership includes Jeni Britton Bauer, founder of Jeni’s Famous Ice Cream; Thomas W. Florsheim Jr., CEO of the footwear maker Weyco Group; Eddie Fishman, managing director of the investment firm D.E. Shaw & Co.; John Pepper, former CEO of Procter & Gamble; and Paul Tagliabue, former commissioner of the NFL.
The statement comes as major Democratic donors are increasingly concluding that the party would stand a better chance of holding the White House with a different nominee in the wake of Biden’s weak performance in last week’s presidential debate with Donald Trump. But most donors and big money groups on the left have refrained from going public out of concern about generating a backlash.
Biden’s lapses are said to be increasingly common and worrisome
In its statement, Leadership Now Project called the prospect of a second Trump term “an existential threat to American democracy” and said that at the debate Biden “failed to effectively make the case against Trump, and we now fear the risk of a devastating loss in November.”
The statement added that “we have heard from many individuals who share our deep concerns about the present course but fear speaking out” and concluded by imploring others “to join us in making this urgent call.”
In an interview, Ballou-Aares, a business executive who was a senior State Department adviser during the Obama administration, said she had been disturbed by the messaging from the White House and other Biden supporters in recent days.
“This sense that this is a small group family decision is not good for democracy,” she said, calling it “really inconsistent with where people were after watching the debate.”
Her group, which consists of nonprofit arms and a political action committee, has endorsed candidates from both parties, and recently hosted at its annual meeting former Representative Adam Kinzinger, an anti-Trump Republican, and Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat mentioned as a possible replacement for Biden.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
