Is It Time for Joe Biden to Step Aside?

Monday, 1 July 2024

So, should Biden step aside?—Opinions from Ed and Many, Many Others

My own take is that several things—including some that partially or wholly contradict others—are true:

1. Joe Biden has done a good job, in often trying times, as President of the United States and should not be punished for a single bad performance night. He deserves to be re-elected and would probably continue to be good at the job, in my opinion, for years to come.

2. Donald Trump must be defeated at almost any cost.

3. Joe Biden needed to do one thing above all else last Thursday evening: demonstrate that he has enough vigor and steady sure-footedness to dispel concerns about his advanced age in carrying out the job of President, now and for four years starting in 2025. He failed badly.

4. No Democrat can possibly defeat Trump in November unless s/he has a unified party strongly backing him/her.

5. Joe Biden has officially won far more than enough delegates to nominate him as the Democratic candidate at the convention in Chicago on 19-22 August. Millions of people have donated to the campaign to re-elect Biden. There is almost certainly no legal or ethical way to stop him from being the nominee unless he agrees.

If I were a Biden advisor, one he’d accept advice from, I’d suggest that he convene—soon (by mid-July at the latest)—a White House meeting, announced in advance but without press or staff (except a few of his own) invited. He should invite Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi, Ralph Warnock, Josh Shapiro, Ro Khanna, Amy Klobuchar, Jamie Raskin, Bill Clinton, Sherrod Brown, Jennifer Granholm, Bennie Thompson, Hillary Clinton, Gavin Newsome, Gretchen Whitmer, Jim Clyburn, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Antony Blinken, Bernie Sanders, Gina Raimondo, Al Gore, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke, David Axlerod, and any other prominent Democrat he trusts—and Liz Cheney.

And he should say something like this to them—

I’m the President and I deserve to be. I deserve to get re-elected in November, and I’m confident I can do the job well for another four years. (Jocularly—“You may now cheer lustily.”) But I blew it big in the debate on Thursday, the 28th of June. Donald Trump is no ordinary loyal opposition candidate—he’s a real danger to our nation and he must be stopped. I think I can beat him—but I certainly can’t be objective about that or at all sure—and it matters immensely. Clips from that debate will be aired repeatedly by the Trump campaign. I am happy to have reassurances from any and all of you about my being a good President and deserving re-election—but that’s not why I’ve asked you here. We—and you need to help me—must decide how best to keep Donald Trump from regaining the presidency.

I invite any of you to speak who want to, and then I’m going to pass out a confidential, secret ballot and ask you— 1. do you think I can still win; —2. if this group votes that I probably cannot, are there Democrats who you think can? (please name your top two or three—including yourself if you wish); and —3. if this group unites behind a single person, will you support him or her vigorously? My own preference, after myself, is Vice President Kamala Harris. But I pledge, here and now—and I’ll reiterate this in public—that I’ll back anyone who the people gathered here unite behind, including releasing all Biden-pledged delegates to the convention in Chicago in August to vote their conscience.

I want to be re-elected and to serve the American people for four more years. But I cannot bear the thought of Donald Trump winning in November—so vote honestly.

Anyone?

My own bleak opinion is that Biden will not withdraw and that the Democrats will get hammered, up and down the ticket. (I will vote and will vote Democratic.)

—Ed Buckner

---

From Kevin R. McNamara—

Ironic, perhaps that Ford's gaaffe cost him an election and trump's blatant lies do bupkis?

As for the Repubs, they have the border on him by remembering Trump's bluster about "The Wall" not what he actually accomplished -- especially not family separation --and eliding that they've refused to pass essentially their own bill because Trump wants a mess on the border.

As for inflation, bad compared to what? Not the early or late 70s. Inflation for 21-23 was 7%, 6.5%, 3.4% and I'm still waiting for the guaranteed recession.

68-82 inflation, by year:  4.7, 6.2, 5.6, 3.3, 3.4, 8.7, 12.3, 6.9, 4.9, 6.7, 9.0, 13.3, 12.5, 8.9, 3.8.   1987-91 saw 4.4, 4.4, 4.6, 6.1, 3.1 that 3.1 thanks to a recession.

I'm not arguing that the debate won't hurt him, only that if we had a more intelligent electorate and a more responsible press it wouldn't be such an issue.

From Keith Parsons—

I am waffling. Biden's performance in the "debate" was an unmitigated disaster. Above all he needed not to look like a doddering old man, and that is exactly how he came across. I doubt that he is electable now. On the other hand, who else have the Dems got that would have a better chance of beating Trump? If the Dem convention is chaos, that would be another disaster. 

. . .

It is plausible that Ford's gaffe about Poland may have cost him the election. His main selling point was that he had expertise in foreign policy and Carter did not. Saying that Poland was not dominated by the Soviet Union in 1976 seemed detached from reality. Biden is a decent man and has been a good president. About all the Republicans have on him is inflation, the border, and his supposed incapacity. Biden was ineffective on the first two, and appeared to demonstrate the third. 

. . .

And the Dems have GOT to get those facts out and into the voters' minds. Dems are always reactive rather than proactive, conceding the initiative to the Republicans. 

. . .

No, reacting to the debate was not pearl-clutching or bed-wetting. Yes, Biden will be the candidate. There just is no other choice.

---

Scott Dworkin has a different, very positive (from a Democratic view) take—

Biden is and Will Be the Nominee

---

R.T. Rybak—

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/30/ex-dnc-chair-biden-2024-elections-00165940

---

George Will—

https://wapo.st/4eLmG1K

---

The New York Times editorial board has urged Biden to step aside—as has that of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

---

A variety of opinions, many on this topic, from NYTimes staff and columnists like Nicholas Kristof and Paul Krugman and Bret Stephens and Jonathan Alter and others, as well as bits on other topics—

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/06/25/opinion/thepoint?unlocked_article_code=1.3k0.bYZd.vaQ583wtt0Xo&smid=url-share

---

From: The Atlantic Daily <newsletters@theatlantic.com>
Subject: The end of the Biden era

Friday, June 28, 2024

Tom Nichols

Staff writer

Joe Biden didn’t just have a bad night. American democracy is now more in danger than ever.

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

• The Biden-replacement operation

About Last Night

(Win McNamee / Getty)

View in browser

I have been harshly critical of calls for President Joe Biden to step down. I have argued with people across the political spectrum about this, including friends and colleagues. I think Biden has had a successful first term and that his age has been no barrier to his effectiveness as a leader. I still believe that. And if the choice this fall is between Biden and a man who I believe is a mentally unstable menace to American democracy, I won’t think twice about my vote.

But Donald Trump must be defeated, and after last night’s debate, I am no longer sure that Biden is electable. Politics can be a miserable business that too often turns on perceptions, and for the president, the debate was a full-blown, Hindenburg-level disaster. Biden’s performance was unnervingly bad, and it has led to a chorus of calls, including in this magazine, for Biden to step down.

I have promised to always be honest with The Daily’s readers, and although part of me stubbornly wants to argue that Democrats and the prodemocracy coalition they lead should stay the course with Biden—a good man and a good president—the political realist in me recognizes the danger of such obstinacy.

I know that, for Biden loyalists, the gathering consensus around last night’s debate must feel like a betrayal: Friends and coalition partners now seem to be lining up with knives behind the back of the man who saved America from Trump in 2020. Political loyalty, although often useful and sometimes admirable, should not override practicality. Blind support of one man, after all, is the hallmark of Trump’s cult; the prodemocracy coalition is larger, and should be more resilient, than any single person in it.

Before we think about next steps, it’s important not to wave away what happened last night, and it’s especially important not to engage in random blame-storming. Biden had one job—don’t look old and befuddled—and he failed. Biden supporters are raging away on social media about how the CNN moderators should have intervened with more fact-checking (read: debating Trump themselves and saving Biden), but Jake Tapper and Dana Bash did a reasonable job of keeping the debate moving and giving Biden multiple chances to unload any number of haymakers on Trump had he wanted to do so.

Biden, however, was simply not present. Opportunity after opportunity to call out Trump passed him by as he garbled a basket of statistics and talking points. The president’s staff clearly overprepared their candidate, stuffing his head with factoids about Pell Grants and climate targets and tax rates and other things that are completely irrelevant in a debate with a deranged bully. If this was the work of the White House prep team, then they are guilty of egregious political malpractice—but in the end, the candidate is always responsible for what happens in the campaign.

I now accept that the Biden we saw last night is as good as we’ll get in the election, and that Americans—unfortunately—are likely to decide that an entertaining autocrat is less of a risk than a decent old man. If Biden should step down, how does that happen, and who replaces him?

This is where I freeze. Every option, whether Biden stays or goes, seems to lead to electoral disaster and a Trump victory. But it’s time to think about the unthinkable.

Replacing Biden is going to be almost literally impossible unless he willingly steps down. Biden controls nearly all of the pledged Democratic delegates; to reopen the nomination process, he would have to end his candidacy and then release them. But release them to whom? And here, we run into the Kamala Harris problem.

Harris has been an unexceptional vice president, but I do not intend to debate her record, because in the general election her record wouldn’t matter. She, even more than Biden, has serious electability problems. Her approval numbers are lower than Biden’s and among the lowest of recent vice presidents’. You can cavil that this is all the product of bias and racism and misogyny, but none of that matters on Election Day: If she can’t win, she can’t win. Worse, Biden abdicating in favor of Harris would convince many people—not all of them Trump supporters—that this was the plan all along, a way of giving the Democratic nomination, and perhaps the White House, to a woman (seen by some as a radical leftist) who ran a poor campaign in 2020 and could never have been nominated in her own right.

But it is also impossible to imagine Biden quitting without anointing Harris with his endorsement, unless he—supported by the party’s elders—declares that the Democrats are truly the party of democracy, and that the convention in Chicago should be open to all comers. Harris, for her part, would have to welcome such a challenge and vow to support the nominee no matter who takes the prize in August. Party elders, led by Barack Obama and assisted by others such as Nancy Pelosi and Jim Clyburn, could then convene a war council and talk to almost every interested candidate. (Almost. Maybe, for once, Bernie Sanders—who is older than Biden—could sit this one out.) The Democrats are not known to be cigar lovers, but this time, they need a smoke-filled room.

I am deep into wishcasting here, a coping mechanism that I have warned about repeatedly, and I continue to doubt Democrats’ ability to replace Biden with any kind of orderly or sensible process; they’re not that kind of party. As my colleague Ronald Brownstein wrote today:

Most Democrats who want to replace Biden also remain extremely dubious that his incumbent running mate, Kamala Harris, could beat Trump—but if she sought the nomination, then denying that prize to the first woman of color who has served as vice president could tear apart the party. The fear that such a fight could practically ensure defeat in November is one reason Democrats who are uneasy about renominating Biden have held their tongue for so long.

That’s a hell of a dilemma. Nevertheless, I agree with Ron that “the prospect of the party simply marching forward with Biden as if nothing happened last night seems difficult to imagine.”

Shaken as I am by Biden’s debate performance, I have few doubts that he can still handle the presidency; no commander in chief does the job alone. But even Biden’s supporters are botching the very simple argument that Biden would continue to be a competent president. Congressman Ro Khanna, a Biden campaign surrogate, said today: “We have a great team of people that will help govern. That is what I’m going to continue to make the case for.”

That is not a great case. In fact, it’s Trump’s 2016 argument about how he’d be inexperienced but bring “the best people” with him. And after the president’s stumbles and lapses last night, such arguments are like running on a Weekend at Bernie’s platform, as one of my friends put it, in which voters should somehow be reassured by the presence of good staff and the ultimate backstop of the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

Today, in North Carolina, Biden was full of energy, self-deprecating humor, and fury. I suspect that this is Biden in a kind of late–Ronald Reagan phase, in which he is able to give a barn burner of a speech but not capable of heavier lifting; even during the North Carolina event, he looked vacant and slack-jawed while he watched others speak. He was animated at the podium—but that’s likely not going to be enough to win an election in which so many undecided voters think Biden is too old to be president.

Time is running out. The operatives out there trying to soothe nerves by invoking Reagan’s first disastrous debate in 1984 forget that Reagan was ahead in the polls at the time, with plenty of electoral cushion under him. Biden has no such margin. My friend Greg Sargent at The New Republic has argued that Joe and Jill Biden need to assure America that last night was the exception, not the rule. But I suspect that Biden has, at most, about a week to either make up his mind not to run or reassure America that he can take on Donald Trump and win. At this point, it’s very hard to imagine that such reassurance is possible.

I hope that I am wrong, but a Rose Garden strategy of running out the clock to August and then sprinting to November no longer seems like a realistic option.

Related:

• Mark Leibovich: Time to go, Joe.

• Brian Klaas: Calls for Biden’s withdrawal are a sign of a healthy Democratic party.

---

Note: Anyone may copy and publish what I or my guests write, provided proper credit is given, that it’s not done for commercial purposes, that I am notified of the copying (you can just leave a comment saying where the copy is being published), and provided that what we write is not quoted out of context or distorted.

---

Thanks again for reading Letters … . Subscribe for free (always) to receive new posts and support my work.