Booting Biden Would Create an Even Bigger Crisis for Democrats

Bullying Biden out of the race would also be a slap at the millions of Democrats who voted for him in the primaries—and at consistently higher percentages than the de facto GOP incumbent, Trump, got in his nominating contests this year. Yes, a change in circumstances might warrant undoing the primary results—death, severe disability, or (in an era gone by) being convicted of 34 felonies. But the polling since the disastrous debate has been relatively stable, indicating that actual voters don’t share the media’s and political operatives’ hysteria. And grassroots fundraising (individual donations, not part of an organized fundraiser), the Biden campaign told me, hit a record in the hour after the debate. July has had the best start of any month in the entire cycle, in terms of grassroots fundraising, according to the campaign. Further, over 40 percent of grassroots donors this month gave for the first time, indicating Biden is attracting new, paying supporters even in the wake of his dismal debate and the subsequent freakout. And in the 24 hours following the debate, volunteers signed up at more than triple the clip of an average day, the campaign said.

Biden has even smartly taken a page out of the Trump playbook, calling in to MSNBC’s Morning Joe to make his case and dismissing media elites as out of touch with what rank-and-file voters want and think.

“It’s like a 2016 moment for these guys,” Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican consultant and author, told me. “They’re so far removed from where the Democratic base voter is, they can’t understand it; they can’t comprehend it. They’re like the Republicans in 2016” who didn’t understand Trump’s appeal. “The voters don’t take cues from elites anymore. It’s a transformational moment. There’s a massive gulf between elites now in the media and the chattering class, and the voter base,” Madrid added.