Abandoning Biden: worth the gamble?
The televised debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump on June 27 has deeply shaken the Democratic Party with a shocking display of its presidential candidate’s weaknesses. Subsequently, support for Biden’s candidacy has been sinking with no bottom in sight.
Was Biden’s debate performance bad enough to justify forsaking his campaign? There are enough contradictory assessments of the debate and Biden’s electoral chances to make one’s head spin. But the drift away from Biden since June 27 is very much in evidence.
The latest discouraging commentary from one of the Democratic Party’s foremost sages, David Axelrod, on Sunday July 7:
In two email posts on Saturday I summarized veteran political operative Stuart Stevens’s argument in favor of the Democrats staying the course with Biden as the nominee, versus historian Anne Applebaum’s radical proposal for delegates to be freed from their obligations to Biden, and for the nominating process to restart. Applebaum’s proposal is the gamble.
The headline of Applebaum’s commentary in The Atlantic was ‘Time to Roll the Dice.’
Which says it all. In a situation of maximum uncertainty, when there is no clear best path forward, gambling is warranted—as long as the status quo is untenable. The status quo here is Joe Biden’s candidacy. There’s a trendline among voters and increasingly among public statements by professional politicians, that Joe Biden is not up to the job, and even if he were up to it, he is not capable of winning the election.
Stevens says the gamble is “insane.” Applebaum says it’s imperative to save the republic.
It’s self-evident that not taking the gamble is itself a gamble. With such high stakes amid such uncertainty, there is no default position to fall back on safely.
Arguments in favor of staying with the status quo because there are insuperable structural impediments to change don’t hold water, according to Jerusalem Demsas in The Atlantic. Per Demsas, the only insuperable impediment to change is Joe Biden’s obstinacy.
Paradigm shift: American politics post-2015
The advice of Stuart Stevens for Biden and the Democratic Party to stay the course makes sense in terms of “normal” American politics, roughly from WWII to the economic crash of the Great Recession in the 2000-aughts. Normal politics began to fall apart starting with Newt Gingrich’s hyper-partisan take-no-prisoners strategy in the mid-1990s, fractured further with the Tea Party in 2010, and collapsed during the Trump presidency, when loyalty to a person replaced allegiance to party, country, or any set of consistent political or moral principles.
Politics of the kind that Stuart Stevens engaged in during decades past no longer exists.
What does exist, is a threat to the American republic itself, in the person of Donald Trump and a gang of thugs wearing vestments of varying degrees of outward respectability. To that gang now belong six members of the United States Supreme Court who have given Trump immunity from crimes committed while he was President, with the disingenuous provision that what common sense would call a crime is instead called an “official act.” The Supreme Court ruling gives the U.S. President many of the powers of a king, contrary to the principle that no person is above the law and contrary to the spirit of the American Revolution. Contrary, that is, to the foundations of the nation.
What looms before us is the high probability that Donald Trump will win the election if Joe Biden is the opponent— the unthinkable become grotesquely thinkable. You might be appalled that Donald Trump can get more than 40% of the popular vote, but even if Trump’s lead over Biden is half what the polls are showing, he’s still ahead.
A win by Trump, according to Applebaum, would plunge the country into authoritarianism of the kind she has described in numerous articles, the 2019 book Twilight of Democracy, and three histories of the Soviet Union, the last of which, Gulag, won the Pulitzer Prize.
Upsides to the gamble: a reinvigorated Party
1) Donald Trump’s platform totters. Trump’s platform, if you can call it that, stands on two legs: immigration is destroying the country, and Joe Biden is the worst president in all of American history. Remove Joe Biden, and it’s tottering on one leg: immigration is destroying the country. Nonsense, of course. A nimble, articulate replacement for Biden should be able to counter the immigration scare with the fact that immigration has always been good for this country. Tell the stories of immigrants who have created jobs for all Americans: put them before the camera with the candidate.
2) Absent Biden, the progressives’ hardest knock against Party leadership—Biden’s mishandling of the horrors of Gaza—goes quiet. Anthony Blinken might be freed from whatever pro-Netanyahu leash Biden has had him on.
3) Applebaum flips the Awfulness-of-a-Party-in-Disarray script on its head, saying a contested nomination race can generate excitement and enthusiasm a Party in the grip of the Old Guard cannot. I quote Applebaum at length at the end of this post putting a positive spin on just about every aspect of a sans-Biden race. Her proposal includes suggestions for dynamic candidates, and concludes, “He or she would emerge from the convention with energy, attention, hope, and money. The American republic, and the democratic world, might survive. Isn’t that worth the gamble?”
4) Catching the Republicans flat-footed in their upcoming nominating convention. With the foil of Joe Biden wiped from the table, they might be forced to talk about their less popular policies—tax cuts for billionaires, national abortion ban, cutting Social Security. . . .
5) Fun. Face it, whatever your age, you may well have tired of Joe Biden hanging around the leadership of the Democratic Party since forever. I love the guy, but I also love Robert DeNiro, and the latter’s days as a leading man are numbered. And, look, Joe may have said “look” just one too many times to get people to look. I’m looking forward to a candidate whom I can fall in love with all over again.
6) Relief. You may have been carrying around a burden of suspecting Joe Biden isn’t up to snuff, and feeling guilty for such disloyal thoughts. You may have been angry that he didn’t groom a successor as he was expected to when he called himself a “bridge” four years ago. You may have been angry at his presumption that he alone could take on Donald Trump for a second time, disrespecting younger and more energetic candidates. You may be angry that he thought saying umpteen times that he ‘had a bad night’ in the debate absolved him of responsibility for a monumental screw-up. If he withdraws his candidacy in a gracious manner, that negativity goes away, forgiveness takes its place, and you can thank him for his honorable service and for honorably passing the reins to a successor. A successor who can win.
=== Anne Applebaum on upsides to rolling the dice ===
(this is fun!)
The Democrats can hold a new round of primary debates, town halls, and public meetings from now until August 19, when the Democratic National Convention opens. Once a week, twice a week, three times a week—the television networks would compete to show them. Millions would watch. Politics would be interesting again. After a turbulent summer, whoever emerges victorious in a vote of delegates at the DNC can spend the autumn campaigning in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—and win the presidency. America and the democratic alliance would be saved.
There are risks. The Democrats could gamble and lose. But there are also clear benefits. The Republican convention, due to take place in less than two weeks, would be ruined. Trump and other Republicans wouldn’t know the name of their opponent. Instead of spending four days attacking Biden, they would have to talk about their policies, many of which—think corporate subsidies, tax cuts for the rich, the further transformation of the Supreme Court—aren’t popular. Their candidate spouts gibberish. He is also old, nearly as old as Biden, and this is his third presidential campaign. Everyone would switch channels in order to watch the exciting Democratic primary debates instead.
By contrast, the Democratic convention would be dramatic—very, very dramatic. Everyone would want to watch it, talk about it, be there on the ground. Tickets would be impossible to get; the national and international media would flock there in huge numbers. Yes, I know what happened in 1968, but that was more than half a century ago. History never repeats itself with precision. The world is a lot different now. There is more competition for attention. An open, exciting convention would command it.
Whoever wins—Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Vice President Harris, or anyone else—would be more coherent and more persuasive than Trump. He or she would emerge from the convention with energy, attention, hope, and money. The American republic, and the democratic world, might survive. Isn’t that worth the gamble?