FDR was paralyzed and despite the best efforts to mask it, the public realized he was seriously infirm by his third term. He was unable to finish his last term and had replaced VPs but never mid-race. That brings up another observation ----
When candidates at the top of the ticket are replaced, the party does poorly. When Eagleton was dropped, George McGovern suffered one of the worst defeats ever. When the Alabama Democratic Party removed Harry Lyons (admittedly a poor candidate) a squabble to replace him at the last minute resulted in Roy Moore returning to the SCOAL due to tepid support for the replacement.
It is more than likely that neither candidate will survive the next term and be replaced due to death or disability. I wonder if Mr. Trump will suffer a massive stroke or a complete Narcicistic Collapse before election day, but no one seems to be focused on his debate performance or fitness to the same degree as the President.
In my opinion. the Democratic Party needs to take a step back and approach the risks with managerial discipline to determine if the best strategy to either mitigate, avoid, or ignore it. Avoiding it by replacing the incumbent will show weakness while mitigating it by showcasing the VP picks of both parties is perhaps the most viable choice.
The party conventions will be very interesting and I predict, or fear that the fight, that will no doubt happen, will sink The President's chance of being reelected.
This is a well-reasoned take and I agree with nearly all of it.
I mainly differ on this bit: "Avoiding it by replacing the incumbent will show weakness while mitigating it by showcasing the VP picks of both parties is perhaps the most viable choice. The party conventions will be very interesting and I predict, or fear that the fight, that will no doubt happen, will sink The President's chance of being reelected."
In my opinion, replacing Biden would show STRENGTH not weakness. Knowing when to fold is a rare skill; even rarer for incumbents. If played well, Biden could have a George Washington-type moment, choosing to go out on his own terms (er...one term?), with integrity and dignity.
I do not believe that any amount of mitigation can improve the current narrative to the point that Biden will win reelection. This is more than just a media narrative, something that will fade with the next news cycle. This narrative has completely penetrated the cultural zeitgeist. Narratives win presidential races and Biden's narrative is very very bad. He might still be able to pull it off, but I think the country would be much better served with a clean "transition" from Biden-Harris to a candidate with visible vitality, such as the current governor of California.
See also my previous comment on this article regarding Biden's implied pledge to only run for 1 term. Keep your word, Joe! Show us that your love of country is greater than your love of self.
Great analysis as always Ed. It's a sad situation since I and many other Democrats continue to feel that Biden is not electable after the June debate, and the growing evidence that Biden is concealing a Parkinson's diagnosis makes the situation even worse than last week. Unfortunately I think Biden has decided he will not leave the ticket despite this or anything else, which is a misplaced show of hubris. I find it rather gobsmacking that Biden said he had not watched his debate performance to get a sense for why there is such a freakout over it. I think at this point Biden's hubris means that Democrats have to drop the idea that Biden will be replaced, as Ed is correct that there is no legal or ethical way to boot him if he won't withdraw voluntarily. I do think that if Democrats get freaked out enough, Dems might get behind a push to 25th Amendment him, which I think would force him off the ticket. But I doubt that will happen.
The overriding thing in my mind is why Trump is not being asked to step down for lying like an insane person. As for Biden who wouldn’t get tripped up having to respond to an incredible 90-lies a minute. My opinion is the tone of the corporate media is deliberately favoring Trump (I cite no fact checking by CNN).
Let's not forget either that Biden HEAVILY implied in 2020 that he would be a one-term candidate -- a "transition" of power from the Boomers to the Millennials. Hmm....
“Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term,” reported Ryan Lizza. “While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.”
Lizza would go on to quote “four people who regularly talk to Biden” who said “it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024.” One “prominent adviser to the campaign” said explicitly, “he won’t be running for reelection.” That same advisor said that by signaling this one-term run, it would make the candidate a “good transition figure.”
That “transition” line is important, because it’s one Biden himself used publicly and on the record. “I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden said at an online fundraiser in April 2020. In March of that year, at a rally where his eventual VP pick Kamala Harris was by his side, he used similar language: “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else.”
As we now know, that turned into a bridge to nowhere. By March 2021, Biden was saying something entirely different. “My plan is to run for reelection. That’s my expectation,” he said shortly after he was inaugurated.
So Biden never explicitly made a one-term promise during the campaign, but he certainly implied it with the language of “transition.” You don’t typically think of eight years in office as a “transition.” And he had surrogates talking to their pals in the press planting the seeds of a single term, for a Democratic electorate that never saw Biden as their first choice, just as an acceptable consensus pick to take out the hated incumbent.
BTW, I have Parkinson's sibling condition known as Essential Tremor and have been told at the Vanderbilt Neurology Clinic that neither condition is cognitively debilitating.
Chuck that may well be true, but I have had three close kin--father, sister, uncle--who suffered mightily from Parkinson's AND from cognitive decline (perhaps a common causal factor? I dunno).
My father had Parkinson's and the associated dementia. It was never as devastating as Alzheimer's but it was debilitating and he would not have been qualified to perform a job that presented complex challenges. The presidency of the United States is the hardest, most complex job in the world. It is a 24/7 job in which existential crises can come at any time. Some cognitive decline is natural. I do not have the instant accurate recall I had forty years ago. Elder statesmen are rightly revered, however. Winston Churchill was 65 when he became Prime Minister in 1940. Golda Meir was 70 when she became prime minister of Israel. The mild cognitive decline with healthy aging is clearly often overbalanced by the practical knowledge and judgment gained over a lifetime of experience. However, a pathological impairment is something entirely different. Biden needs to have a complete evaluation by a team of top, independent neurologists to determine if he has any neurological impairment. If he does, then he has a moral and patriotic duty to step aside.
I'm torn over this question for several reasons:
FDR was paralyzed and despite the best efforts to mask it, the public realized he was seriously infirm by his third term. He was unable to finish his last term and had replaced VPs but never mid-race. That brings up another observation ----
When candidates at the top of the ticket are replaced, the party does poorly. When Eagleton was dropped, George McGovern suffered one of the worst defeats ever. When the Alabama Democratic Party removed Harry Lyons (admittedly a poor candidate) a squabble to replace him at the last minute resulted in Roy Moore returning to the SCOAL due to tepid support for the replacement.
It is more than likely that neither candidate will survive the next term and be replaced due to death or disability. I wonder if Mr. Trump will suffer a massive stroke or a complete Narcicistic Collapse before election day, but no one seems to be focused on his debate performance or fitness to the same degree as the President.
In my opinion. the Democratic Party needs to take a step back and approach the risks with managerial discipline to determine if the best strategy to either mitigate, avoid, or ignore it. Avoiding it by replacing the incumbent will show weakness while mitigating it by showcasing the VP picks of both parties is perhaps the most viable choice.
The party conventions will be very interesting and I predict, or fear that the fight, that will no doubt happen, will sink The President's chance of being reelected.
This is a well-reasoned take and I agree with nearly all of it.
I mainly differ on this bit: "Avoiding it by replacing the incumbent will show weakness while mitigating it by showcasing the VP picks of both parties is perhaps the most viable choice. The party conventions will be very interesting and I predict, or fear that the fight, that will no doubt happen, will sink The President's chance of being reelected."
In my opinion, replacing Biden would show STRENGTH not weakness. Knowing when to fold is a rare skill; even rarer for incumbents. If played well, Biden could have a George Washington-type moment, choosing to go out on his own terms (er...one term?), with integrity and dignity.
I do not believe that any amount of mitigation can improve the current narrative to the point that Biden will win reelection. This is more than just a media narrative, something that will fade with the next news cycle. This narrative has completely penetrated the cultural zeitgeist. Narratives win presidential races and Biden's narrative is very very bad. He might still be able to pull it off, but I think the country would be much better served with a clean "transition" from Biden-Harris to a candidate with visible vitality, such as the current governor of California.
See also my previous comment on this article regarding Biden's implied pledge to only run for 1 term. Keep your word, Joe! Show us that your love of country is greater than your love of self.
Great analysis as always Ed. It's a sad situation since I and many other Democrats continue to feel that Biden is not electable after the June debate, and the growing evidence that Biden is concealing a Parkinson's diagnosis makes the situation even worse than last week. Unfortunately I think Biden has decided he will not leave the ticket despite this or anything else, which is a misplaced show of hubris. I find it rather gobsmacking that Biden said he had not watched his debate performance to get a sense for why there is such a freakout over it. I think at this point Biden's hubris means that Democrats have to drop the idea that Biden will be replaced, as Ed is correct that there is no legal or ethical way to boot him if he won't withdraw voluntarily. I do think that if Democrats get freaked out enough, Dems might get behind a push to 25th Amendment him, which I think would force him off the ticket. But I doubt that will happen.
The overriding thing in my mind is why Trump is not being asked to step down for lying like an insane person. As for Biden who wouldn’t get tripped up having to respond to an incredible 90-lies a minute. My opinion is the tone of the corporate media is deliberately favoring Trump (I cite no fact checking by CNN).
Let's not forget either that Biden HEAVILY implied in 2020 that he would be a one-term candidate -- a "transition" of power from the Boomers to the Millennials. Hmm....
From https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4718993-did-biden-break-his-one-term-pledge/:
“Biden’s top advisers and prominent Democrats outside the Biden campaign have recently revived a long-running debate whether Biden should publicly pledge to serve only one term, with Biden himself signaling to aides that he would serve only a single term,” reported Ryan Lizza. “While the option of making a public pledge remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.”
Lizza would go on to quote “four people who regularly talk to Biden” who said “it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024.” One “prominent adviser to the campaign” said explicitly, “he won’t be running for reelection.” That same advisor said that by signaling this one-term run, it would make the candidate a “good transition figure.”
That “transition” line is important, because it’s one Biden himself used publicly and on the record. “I view myself as a transition candidate,” Biden said at an online fundraiser in April 2020. In March of that year, at a rally where his eventual VP pick Kamala Harris was by his side, he used similar language: “I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else.”
As we now know, that turned into a bridge to nowhere. By March 2021, Biden was saying something entirely different. “My plan is to run for reelection. That’s my expectation,” he said shortly after he was inaugurated.
So Biden never explicitly made a one-term promise during the campaign, but he certainly implied it with the language of “transition.” You don’t typically think of eight years in office as a “transition.” And he had surrogates talking to their pals in the press planting the seeds of a single term, for a Democratic electorate that never saw Biden as their first choice, just as an acceptable consensus pick to take out the hated incumbent.
BTW, I have Parkinson's sibling condition known as Essential Tremor and have been told at the Vanderbilt Neurology Clinic that neither condition is cognitively debilitating.
Chuck that may well be true, but I have had three close kin--father, sister, uncle--who suffered mightily from Parkinson's AND from cognitive decline (perhaps a common causal factor? I dunno).
My father had Parkinson's and the associated dementia. It was never as devastating as Alzheimer's but it was debilitating and he would not have been qualified to perform a job that presented complex challenges. The presidency of the United States is the hardest, most complex job in the world. It is a 24/7 job in which existential crises can come at any time. Some cognitive decline is natural. I do not have the instant accurate recall I had forty years ago. Elder statesmen are rightly revered, however. Winston Churchill was 65 when he became Prime Minister in 1940. Golda Meir was 70 when she became prime minister of Israel. The mild cognitive decline with healthy aging is clearly often overbalanced by the practical knowledge and judgment gained over a lifetime of experience. However, a pathological impairment is something entirely different. Biden needs to have a complete evaluation by a team of top, independent neurologists to determine if he has any neurological impairment. If he does, then he has a moral and patriotic duty to step aside.