Democrats: “He Was Better Than the Debate” Is Not Remotely Good Enough
Joe Biden had many lucid moments at his Thursday evening
press conference, but the idea that we’re going to judge Biden day by day on
the latest speech or press conference is terrifying, for two reasons. First, it
sets a ludicrously low bar that is bound to favor standing pat with Biden as
the nominee. This is because every one of these appearances is going to be
judged on whether he was better than he was at the June 27 debate, and every
time, the answer to that question is almost certain to be yes, because he can
hardly be worse. But is “He was better than the debate” really the right
standard here?
Second, this clock is ticking. It’s five weeks until the
Democratic convention, which opens Monday, August 19. That’s time enough to
act. Biden did open the door just a crack Thursday night to not being the
nominee, but mainly he sounded very dug in, and if that’s the case, he can run
out that clock by doing just enough interviews and speeches to be able to say
he didn’t go into hiding, but without genuinely exposing himself to a risky
public situation. One can predict the news cycles: three days of sensing that
the dam may be about to burst and the Democrats are ready to take collective
action, then Biden makes an appearance, does OK but only OK, but the momentum
for replacing him is killed.
So if that’s how we’re going to spend these next five weeks,
Biden will be the nominee. Is there a chance he can win? There is. Lots of
Americans really don’t like Donald Trump. In 10 long weeks between the end of
the convention and Election Day, maybe the Democrats can succeed in making the
race about Trump, and Biden can eke out a win. A poll came out Friday morning showing Biden ahead by two points.
But the odds are growing that Biden will lead his party to a
defeat that will extend to both chambers of Congress. That means that Trump,
armed with the radical proposals of Project 2025, a self-declared “Secretary of Retribution” who has a list of some 350 people
who may be arrested in a new Trump term, and a fresh Supreme Court ruling that
makes all this presumably legal, will return to the Oval Office with Republican
majorities in the Senate and House, the latter of which Democrats had been
confident of recapturing before the debate but where they now fear they could lose 20 seats.
More House Democrats, and one senator, have come out this
week calling on Biden to step aside. Three, led by Connecticut’s Jim Himes,
made their announcements after Biden’s press conference, meaning that it did
not staunch the bleeding. And we’ve all been reading and hearing this week that
privately, the percentage of Hill Democrats who want to see Biden step aside is
in the neighborhood of 80 percent.
In Trump world, meanwhile, they’re salivating at the thought
of running against this weakened Biden and this divided Democratic Party. The
Atlantic’s Tim Alberta wrote a much-discussed article this week headlined, “Trump Is
Planning for a Landslide Win.” The landslide is predicated on one fact: that
the opponent is Biden. Alberta: “Biden quitting the
race would necessitate a dramatic reset—not just for the Democratic Party, but
for Trump’s campaign. [Trump aides Susie] Wiles and [Chris] LaCivita told me
that any Democratic replacement would inherit the president’s deficiencies; that
whether it’s Vice President Kamala Harris or California Governor Gavin Newsom
or anyone else, Trump’s blueprint for victory would remain essentially
unchanged. But they know that’s not true. They know their campaign has been
engineered in every way—from the voters they target to the viral memes they
create—to defeat Biden. And privately, they are all but praying that he remains
their opponent.”
Even assuming that there is some spin there, there is no
doubt that Trump himself has spent four years thinking about running against
Biden and that the Trump campaign is planning on spending millions to attack
Biden on his age and capacities.
Democrats can no longer ignore this. So next week, Chuck
Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, and other senior Democrats who are
friends of Biden’s (ex-senator Chris Dodd has been mentioned) need to go him
and have the talk with him. They need to get him to withdraw.
And, I suppose, to release his delegates to Kamala Harris.
I’d rather see an open process. It would be more democratic (for the party
that’s supposedly fighting to save democracy). It wouldn’t have to be chaotic.
It could be galvanizing. A handful of candidates would step forward. They’d
campaign for a month. They’d give convention speeches. The delegates would
vote, and the party would have a candidate, who would then have 10 weeks to
campaign against Trump. If most voters pay no attention until Labor Day anyway,
that’s time enough. The money and logistical questions are serious, but people
who really want to figure those things out can do so.
But a Harris scenario seems more likely. Fine. Just choose a
scenario, and go to Biden and explain to him the stakes of his staying in the
race, for him personally and for his legacy. If he bows out soon, he goes down
in history as the guy who saved the country from a second Trump term, had a
surprisingly successful term as president, and graciously gave up power like
none other than George Washington for the sake of his party and his country.
If he resists that, he risks dragging the Democratic
Party into its biggest crisis in a century. A decisive loss that many people
anticipated and feared to the hated Trump, with all the authoritarian
ramifications thereof, could lead the party into a period of vicious recriminations
and weakness. Is that really what Biden wants? We’re about to find out.
