"One of the strongest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice,"
When Hunter is telling you to do something you should probably do the opposite.
I have been very aggressively staying out of the news cycle since Thursday night, in a pre-emptive posture, on the theory that I actually *do not* need to give a crap about each and every hiccup as a voter. The responsibility of the news-media industrial complex is to give me the jist of all of this stupid noise.
If Biden drops out and releases his delegates, I don't see why an open Democratic convention has to end up nominating Harris. If she loses at the convention to another candidate, I don't think the result will necessarily lead to resentment among Black voters, who didn't seem to have been particularly partial to her during the 2020 primary campaign. It's messy but it would be better for Democrats and better for the country for Biden to step aside. I don't how see anyone can think that Biden is up to being president for four more years.
I think what would be a bad look for Dems is just the perception that they shoved Harris aside. If they find some way to run an open process and she loses, as you say that is different.
But, honestly, at this point I'd be fine with Harris. I don't think this is a complex campaign anymore. We need a candidate who can energetically call Trump out on his lies, advocate for abortion rights. and get the Biden Administrations's good talking points out: murder spiked under Trump in 2020 and is on its way to its lowest level in a decade under Biden/Harris in 2024. The US is producing and exporting more energy now, under Biden/Harris, than ever before. Things like that, that Biden could not get out of his mouth on Thursday night.
I doubt that anyone but highly engaged Democrats that have a bias towards caring about race/gender over other concerns would think about it for longer than 5 minutes.
My biggest concern all along with Biden as the nominee is that he is no longer capable of articulating the case against Trump or defending his own record. There is such a strong case to be made both ways. An articulate candidate could have absolutely mopped the floor with Trump Thursday night and put this election away in June, but Biden couldn’t do it.
I can’t find any fault in this post, even coming as a political outsider. It’s correct on all fronts from my amateur view of political strategy, right down to the footnotes. Way too many online lefty people are of the mindset that it doesn’t matter if Biden can’t do the job and won’t be able to do the job until 2029, continuity of Democratic control is all that matters. Well, that’s a great mindset if you are already firmly locked into voting for Joe Biden no matter what. But people of that mindset aren’t going to decide the election. Low engagement voters are in fact going to care whether Biden can make it through the next term.
Changing candidates is risky. But staying with Biden is also risky. It’s not like Biden is on an obviously winning trajectory right now and this is the only hiccup. He is probably losing and he will probably be losing by more once the post-debate picture starts to clarify.
And you are also correct on publicly circling the wagons until the private inner circle conversations happen. Theoretically a mass call for Biden to step aside could have an impact, but huge collective action problem. No big name democrats who want to have a future in the party are going to stick their neck out to start publicly calling for Biden to step down without cover. It’s the Democrats version of the Trump problem the GOP has had.
Addendum* I also agree that there isn’t an obvious answer. If there were an easy answer to “yes Biden should step aside” or “no, Biden should stay the course”, people wouldn’t be agonizing so much over it so much. I’m already tired of people treating one or the other as the obvious answer and claiming the other side is crazy. This is a difficult question to answer because there are big risks and lots of unknowns on both courses of action.
On performance with black voters: The LG in PA,WI, and MI are all black and elected on a ticket with the governor. Shapiro, Whitmer, (and Evers) have been doing careful ticket balancing. Not clear to me if this affects "dream ticket" composition, but it is notable.
As a state Democratic party member who helped choose New Mexico’s delegation just last weekend, I have some visibility into the process. The DNC delegates who are not elected officials did have to pledge that they’ll vote for Biden, and they had to be vetted by the campaign (not sure how, honestly), but I wouldn’t describe them as “ultra loyalists” to Biden. I suspect many of them would at least be open to considering other options for the good of the party, because what everyone is truly focused on is the necessity of defeating Donald Trump.
This was a thorough analysis of one of the most difficult questions we've ever faced in the Democratic Party. After the headlines this weekend and the CBS poll this morning, Biden has become unelectable. Hopefully, Biden's ego will lead him in the right direction, and we will carry on as best we can. I don't see this leading to a drawn out convention. Consensus will form around one or two candidates before the convention. On the positive side of an otherwise negative situation, the polls have consistently shown that the electorate does not want either Trump or Biden. If Biden drops out, the GOP is stuck with Trump.
No matter how this shakes out in the end, it was flat out irresponsible on part of Biden and his inner circle to run for reelection. If an average voter like me could tell at least a year ago that he was not fit to serve another 4 years, smart people like MattY and Josh should have as well. This train wreck happened because too many people in the Democratic Party were too polite to say the obvious. The other explanation is that they were so busy fighting off the lunatic left that they forgot to address the issues with the moderate wing.
My first reaction to the debate was "Biden's gotta go". But after further thought, I'm not so sure. Let's theorize that the debate was an absolutely terrible environment for Biden. If he's still quite mentally competent but his CPU runs at a slower speed than when he was younger, dealing with someone who spews bullshit with a fire-hose is understandably overwhelming. Plus Biden clearly loathes Trump and it probably makes him extremely disturbed and anxious to even be on the same stage with him. The stress he was under on that stage was almost unimaginable. And if he was ill, that would have made it even worse. And yes, a president needs to withstand terrible stress, but not necessarily THAT kind of stress. Even dealing with someone like Putin, he would be facing someone who is controlled and logical. BIden's debate preparers clearly tried to fill Biden's mind with facts and figures and didn't prepare him for Trump's brazenness. For example, in the many cases where Trump just flat out refused to answer a question and went off on some tangent, Biden could have responded "Did you notice that he totally ducked that question? And that's because he can't answer it! And here's why....".
So maybe Biden's better than he looked that night. What I would really like to see, and what I think would establish his clarity of thought (or not), and Trump's lack thereof, would be for each of them to be subjected separately to a really tough interview (by the same interviewer, ideally), in which each candidate would be asked probing and detailed questions, with followups, and not allowed to get away with not answering the questions. Someone could relentlessly question Trump on his claim that the 2020 election was stolen, with fact-checking of all the details. Also pin him down on the specifics of how he plans to deport millions of immigrants. Also why we should trust him and not John Kelly and others who heard him denigrate fallen members of the military. For Biden, get him to discuss in detail how he trades off support for Israel with the interests of the Palestinians, and how he envisions a resolution of the war and the status of Gaza going forward. My hope is that Biden will answer the questions in a way that shows clear thinking and experience. And if he can't do that, then so be it! We'll have a much better idea of his mental acuity than we got from that ghastly debacle of a debate.
It wouldn't be necessary to pair the Biden interview with a Trump interview or do a Trump interview at all because the main goal is to allow people to see Biden alert and engaged and making good sense. The idea is to erase as much as possible of the impression given by the debate, and do it soon so it doesn't continue to be the main story of the election. Trump's outrageous actions and statements need to be the main story, along with a refutation of all the lies about how the country is a hellscape thanks of Biden.
Excellent assessment except I prefer Whitmer/Warnock or Whitmer/Booker. Part of what made Biden an effective VP was having relationships on The Hill and knowing how to get things done.
Yes. I live in GA and if Warnock won the Vice Presidency then Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, would appoint a replacement, which would of course be a Republican. Control of the Senate could come down to one seat. Democrats don’t need to lose Warnock’s seat.
I feel like this is also very unlikely to happen, and is by no means a silver bullet even if it did, but if Harris could be persuaded to drop off the ticket "for personal reasons" to be replaced by Whitmer, Dems wouldn't have to blow up the whole thing either by replacing both Biden and Harris or running with Harris in the top spot. Make voters feel better about the line of succession.
The other issue here- as Josh has also noted- is there should now be a full court press to get Sotomayor to retire while Biden can still replace her with someone younger. I think everyone has to acknowledge that the probability of the Democrats winning this election has just dropped- it’s now even more important to secure that seat.
Also, the big time donors need to be pouring all the money they can into trying to hold the Senate and/or win the House for Democrats. In that case, if Trump wins his legislative agenda would be DOA, which could really help limit the damage he can cause.
“…making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the Covid, excuse me, with, um, dealing with everything we have to do with, uh, look, if…we finally beat Medicare.”
Unfortunately, at present my sisters and I are dealing with parents who, though still living at their home, “have bad days and good days”, and are biding their time…
Listening to this sentence again, just hearing Biden’s brain at work— this is a brain of a senior person having a bad day. Not a 45-year-old overstressed from decision fatigue or whatever.
This distinction is all the importance in the American world.
We, as in this country, cannot have a President who has “good days and bad days”. When it happened to Reagan, it was at the end of eight years and the R’s were focused on next election and the power hungry were kept in check.
It can only help if Josh doesn’t wait on polling and adds his credible voice to those calling for a change. The more time we have the better.
As for Harris, Whitner, Harris et al., the actual next candidate— having to face that incredibly thorny issue is no reason to deny its inevitability.
It’s a vicious moment: Biden may stay even in the polls, he may come across in public appearances as “strong” as he sorta did in his appearance on the day after the debate, Dems stay the course… And some random Tuesday in September he has another “bad day”: there’s zero chance he wins and zero chance he can be replaced.
It won’t be because irredeemable Trump is suddenly a worthy candidate. It will be because indifferent, low information, double hating voters won’t be able to bring themselves to vote for someone with impaired cognition.
Very good point abt Kamala’s main vulnerability: she’s the VP of an unpopular admin. And i find your explanation of the money issue reassuring. But like are we sure Gretchen Whitmer would even run if pushed to? Why would she? She’d likely lose and her position for 2028 is strong right now (almost esp if Trump wins this year). Maybe Gavin wld, but he’d also prob lose
I think it is possible that Harris could be a more effective advocate for the good the Admin has done than Biden.
Cheap insulin, historic investment in climate, codification of marrigage equality, infrastructure and R&D investments, KBJ, full employment, producing more energy than the US ever has, the breaking of the crime wave that began under Trump in 2020.
“And for him to seek re-election in a situation where much of his party’s leadership has publicly repudiated him would be even worse than one where he limps out of the debate with his party’s full support.” I’m not sure there’s much benefit to Biden losing less badly because D party elites supported him. It seems increasingly like Biden is just going to lose, period, and the party’s only chance is pulling out all the stops to get him to step aside. If that means a public falling out, then so be it.
If circling the wagons is actually a 3D chess move to force him out, that’s of course a different story.
"One of the strongest voices imploring Mr. Biden to resist pressure to drop out was his son Hunter Biden, whom the president has long leaned on for advice,"
When Hunter is telling you to do something you should probably do the opposite.
I have been very aggressively staying out of the news cycle since Thursday night, in a pre-emptive posture, on the theory that I actually *do not* need to give a crap about each and every hiccup as a voter. The responsibility of the news-media industrial complex is to give me the jist of all of this stupid noise.
This article is good. 10/10.
If Biden drops out and releases his delegates, I don't see why an open Democratic convention has to end up nominating Harris. If she loses at the convention to another candidate, I don't think the result will necessarily lead to resentment among Black voters, who didn't seem to have been particularly partial to her during the 2020 primary campaign. It's messy but it would be better for Democrats and better for the country for Biden to step aside. I don't how see anyone can think that Biden is up to being president for four more years.
I think what would be a bad look for Dems is just the perception that they shoved Harris aside. If they find some way to run an open process and she loses, as you say that is different.
But, honestly, at this point I'd be fine with Harris. I don't think this is a complex campaign anymore. We need a candidate who can energetically call Trump out on his lies, advocate for abortion rights. and get the Biden Administrations's good talking points out: murder spiked under Trump in 2020 and is on its way to its lowest level in a decade under Biden/Harris in 2024. The US is producing and exporting more energy now, under Biden/Harris, than ever before. Things like that, that Biden could not get out of his mouth on Thursday night.
I doubt that anyone but highly engaged Democrats that have a bias towards caring about race/gender over other concerns would think about it for longer than 5 minutes.
My biggest concern all along with Biden as the nominee is that he is no longer capable of articulating the case against Trump or defending his own record. There is such a strong case to be made both ways. An articulate candidate could have absolutely mopped the floor with Trump Thursday night and put this election away in June, but Biden couldn’t do it.
You know why, "It's her turn." Something I distinctly remember hearing about oh... eight years ago.
Once again, loads of good sense from Josh. And he’s been on the Biden train forever.
I can’t find any fault in this post, even coming as a political outsider. It’s correct on all fronts from my amateur view of political strategy, right down to the footnotes. Way too many online lefty people are of the mindset that it doesn’t matter if Biden can’t do the job and won’t be able to do the job until 2029, continuity of Democratic control is all that matters. Well, that’s a great mindset if you are already firmly locked into voting for Joe Biden no matter what. But people of that mindset aren’t going to decide the election. Low engagement voters are in fact going to care whether Biden can make it through the next term.
Changing candidates is risky. But staying with Biden is also risky. It’s not like Biden is on an obviously winning trajectory right now and this is the only hiccup. He is probably losing and he will probably be losing by more once the post-debate picture starts to clarify.
And you are also correct on publicly circling the wagons until the private inner circle conversations happen. Theoretically a mass call for Biden to step aside could have an impact, but huge collective action problem. No big name democrats who want to have a future in the party are going to stick their neck out to start publicly calling for Biden to step down without cover. It’s the Democrats version of the Trump problem the GOP has had.
Addendum* I also agree that there isn’t an obvious answer. If there were an easy answer to “yes Biden should step aside” or “no, Biden should stay the course”, people wouldn’t be agonizing so much over it so much. I’m already tired of people treating one or the other as the obvious answer and claiming the other side is crazy. This is a difficult question to answer because there are big risks and lots of unknowns on both courses of action.
On performance with black voters: The LG in PA,WI, and MI are all black and elected on a ticket with the governor. Shapiro, Whitmer, (and Evers) have been doing careful ticket balancing. Not clear to me if this affects "dream ticket" composition, but it is notable.
As a state Democratic party member who helped choose New Mexico’s delegation just last weekend, I have some visibility into the process. The DNC delegates who are not elected officials did have to pledge that they’ll vote for Biden, and they had to be vetted by the campaign (not sure how, honestly), but I wouldn’t describe them as “ultra loyalists” to Biden. I suspect many of them would at least be open to considering other options for the good of the party, because what everyone is truly focused on is the necessity of defeating Donald Trump.
This was a thorough analysis of one of the most difficult questions we've ever faced in the Democratic Party. After the headlines this weekend and the CBS poll this morning, Biden has become unelectable. Hopefully, Biden's ego will lead him in the right direction, and we will carry on as best we can. I don't see this leading to a drawn out convention. Consensus will form around one or two candidates before the convention. On the positive side of an otherwise negative situation, the polls have consistently shown that the electorate does not want either Trump or Biden. If Biden drops out, the GOP is stuck with Trump.
No matter how this shakes out in the end, it was flat out irresponsible on part of Biden and his inner circle to run for reelection. If an average voter like me could tell at least a year ago that he was not fit to serve another 4 years, smart people like MattY and Josh should have as well. This train wreck happened because too many people in the Democratic Party were too polite to say the obvious. The other explanation is that they were so busy fighting off the lunatic left that they forgot to address the issues with the moderate wing.
My first reaction to the debate was "Biden's gotta go". But after further thought, I'm not so sure. Let's theorize that the debate was an absolutely terrible environment for Biden. If he's still quite mentally competent but his CPU runs at a slower speed than when he was younger, dealing with someone who spews bullshit with a fire-hose is understandably overwhelming. Plus Biden clearly loathes Trump and it probably makes him extremely disturbed and anxious to even be on the same stage with him. The stress he was under on that stage was almost unimaginable. And if he was ill, that would have made it even worse. And yes, a president needs to withstand terrible stress, but not necessarily THAT kind of stress. Even dealing with someone like Putin, he would be facing someone who is controlled and logical. BIden's debate preparers clearly tried to fill Biden's mind with facts and figures and didn't prepare him for Trump's brazenness. For example, in the many cases where Trump just flat out refused to answer a question and went off on some tangent, Biden could have responded "Did you notice that he totally ducked that question? And that's because he can't answer it! And here's why....".
So maybe Biden's better than he looked that night. What I would really like to see, and what I think would establish his clarity of thought (or not), and Trump's lack thereof, would be for each of them to be subjected separately to a really tough interview (by the same interviewer, ideally), in which each candidate would be asked probing and detailed questions, with followups, and not allowed to get away with not answering the questions. Someone could relentlessly question Trump on his claim that the 2020 election was stolen, with fact-checking of all the details. Also pin him down on the specifics of how he plans to deport millions of immigrants. Also why we should trust him and not John Kelly and others who heard him denigrate fallen members of the military. For Biden, get him to discuss in detail how he trades off support for Israel with the interests of the Palestinians, and how he envisions a resolution of the war and the status of Gaza going forward. My hope is that Biden will answer the questions in a way that shows clear thinking and experience. And if he can't do that, then so be it! We'll have a much better idea of his mental acuity than we got from that ghastly debacle of a debate.
It wouldn't be necessary to pair the Biden interview with a Trump interview or do a Trump interview at all because the main goal is to allow people to see Biden alert and engaged and making good sense. The idea is to erase as much as possible of the impression given by the debate, and do it soon so it doesn't continue to be the main story of the election. Trump's outrageous actions and statements need to be the main story, along with a refutation of all the lies about how the country is a hellscape thanks of Biden.
Excellent assessment except I prefer Whitmer/Warnock or Whitmer/Booker. Part of what made Biden an effective VP was having relationships on The Hill and knowing how to get things done.
If so then it has to be the latter. Warnock is needed in the senate.
Yes. I live in GA and if Warnock won the Vice Presidency then Brian Kemp, the Republican governor, would appoint a replacement, which would of course be a Republican. Control of the Senate could come down to one seat. Democrats don’t need to lose Warnock’s seat.
I feel like this is also very unlikely to happen, and is by no means a silver bullet even if it did, but if Harris could be persuaded to drop off the ticket "for personal reasons" to be replaced by Whitmer, Dems wouldn't have to blow up the whole thing either by replacing both Biden and Harris or running with Harris in the top spot. Make voters feel better about the line of succession.
The other issue here- as Josh has also noted- is there should now be a full court press to get Sotomayor to retire while Biden can still replace her with someone younger. I think everyone has to acknowledge that the probability of the Democrats winning this election has just dropped- it’s now even more important to secure that seat.
Also, the big time donors need to be pouring all the money they can into trying to hold the Senate and/or win the House for Democrats. In that case, if Trump wins his legislative agenda would be DOA, which could really help limit the damage he can cause.
“…making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the with the Covid, excuse me, with, um, dealing with everything we have to do with, uh, look, if…we finally beat Medicare.”
Unfortunately, at present my sisters and I are dealing with parents who, though still living at their home, “have bad days and good days”, and are biding their time…
Listening to this sentence again, just hearing Biden’s brain at work— this is a brain of a senior person having a bad day. Not a 45-year-old overstressed from decision fatigue or whatever.
This distinction is all the importance in the American world.
We, as in this country, cannot have a President who has “good days and bad days”. When it happened to Reagan, it was at the end of eight years and the R’s were focused on next election and the power hungry were kept in check.
It can only help if Josh doesn’t wait on polling and adds his credible voice to those calling for a change. The more time we have the better.
As for Harris, Whitner, Harris et al., the actual next candidate— having to face that incredibly thorny issue is no reason to deny its inevitability.
It’s a vicious moment: Biden may stay even in the polls, he may come across in public appearances as “strong” as he sorta did in his appearance on the day after the debate, Dems stay the course… And some random Tuesday in September he has another “bad day”: there’s zero chance he wins and zero chance he can be replaced.
It won’t be because irredeemable Trump is suddenly a worthy candidate. It will be because indifferent, low information, double hating voters won’t be able to bring themselves to vote for someone with impaired cognition.
Very good point abt Kamala’s main vulnerability: she’s the VP of an unpopular admin. And i find your explanation of the money issue reassuring. But like are we sure Gretchen Whitmer would even run if pushed to? Why would she? She’d likely lose and her position for 2028 is strong right now (almost esp if Trump wins this year). Maybe Gavin wld, but he’d also prob lose
I think it is possible that Harris could be a more effective advocate for the good the Admin has done than Biden.
Cheap insulin, historic investment in climate, codification of marrigage equality, infrastructure and R&D investments, KBJ, full employment, producing more energy than the US ever has, the breaking of the crime wave that began under Trump in 2020.
“And for him to seek re-election in a situation where much of his party’s leadership has publicly repudiated him would be even worse than one where he limps out of the debate with his party’s full support.” I’m not sure there’s much benefit to Biden losing less badly because D party elites supported him. It seems increasingly like Biden is just going to lose, period, and the party’s only chance is pulling out all the stops to get him to step aside. If that means a public falling out, then so be it.
If circling the wagons is actually a 3D chess move to force him out, that’s of course a different story.