Time to Fight for Biden - Losing to Trump Is Not an Option

As the debate showed, at times Biden is no longer able to communicate his positions effectively. Instead of bailing on him, those who care about preventing the disaster of Trump have to up our game.

I know that President Biden demonstrated during the debate on Thursday that age has affected his abilities to effectively articulate his ideas spontaneously and quickly think on his feet. Yes, age has caught up with him on this score and it is shame. I worked for him over 25 years ago when he was as good as it gets when it came to making mincemeat out of the policy positions put forward by his opponents. 

Erosion of his skills means that Thursday night was a missed opportunity to demonstrate to the American people what the contrasts are between his positive vision for America’s future and Donald Trump’s view that America is a failed state in need of rescue by an authoritarian strongman. It also ratified the concerns of many in the electorate that Biden is simply too old to continue serving as president.

There is nothing that can be done about the missed opportunity, but I disagree that Biden can’t do the job. You don’t need to be a great spontaneous debater to be a great president. Biden’s debates in the 2019-20 primaries and the general election pretty much stunk. Yet, he has been a fine president. And if he wins, he will continue to be surrounded by the highly skilled public servants that have effectively executed his first term. He will still have the same values that are driving his policies today – policies that have improved the economy, bolstered the middle class, brought the stock market to record highs, promoted equality, stood up for democracy at home and abroad, deepened our international alliances, and respected women’s right to bodily autonomy. I do wish that Democrats would spend more time talking about what could be accomplished in a second Biden term instead of the president’s diminished capacities.   

Here is a list of things we can be sure Biden will not do in his second term:

** Give up the Ukraine to Vladimir Putin

** Reverse everything being done to decarbonize our economy and cripple the international efforts to combat climate change

** Use governmental power to attack his political enemies

** Undermine faith in our electoral system

** Cater to right-wing demands to criminalize abortion nationwide and bar access to medical abortion

** Give huge government payouts to his supporters, sycophants, and those who aggrandize his private businesses

**  Send law-abiding undocumented immigrants that have lived in this country for decades to deportation camps

** Punish media outlets that publish unfavorable coverage of him

You get my drift. 

I am fine with a second Biden Administration led by an aging and somewhat diminished leader. If the job becomes too taxing for him, then he can turn the reins over to Vice President Harris. And then there will be primaries and another election in 2028.

Is this ideal?  No. But there is no comparison between this scenario and the damage a second Trump Administration would do to America and the world. 

The only question for me, then, is how to win this election. The kinds of skills that are eroding for Biden are not essential for governing, but they are important for campaigning. The panic that set in for Democrats while they watched debates is not that Biden can’t govern, but the fear that he can’t win the race. I am worried about that too.

One of my first posts in Perilous Times was entitled “Time to End the Gerontocracy.” I explicitly called on Biden, Trump, Pelosi, and McConnell to step aside for younger leaders. Only some of them heeded this call. I certainly would have preferred that Biden put his ego aside and let the Democratic Party pick a younger candidate to go against Trump. Had we done so, I believe the Democratic candidate would be the odds-on favorite to win in November. 

But that didn’t happen.  

So here we stand. After an admittedly disastrous debate performance, we are 159 days away from the general election with much of the punditocracy and chunks of the Democratic establishment calling for Biden to abandon the race and for a new candidate be chosen in an open Democratic convention on August 19-22 in Chicago. If I thought this plan substantially increased the odds of defeating Trump, I’d be all for it. But I have noticed over the past two days that those who are calling for Biden to pack it in are by and large people who have never run a political campaign or really know much about how elections are actually decided, like columnists for the New York Times. Most people who have run and know how to win campaigns have not. Presidents Obama and Clinton, who are darn good politicians, quickly rallied to Biden’s support. When asked about discussions of Biden stepping down, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “I’m not doing it and I don’t know anyone who’s doing it.” David Axelrod advocated last year that Biden should not run, but said this discussion is “largely irrelevant” today. Democratic operative Simon Rosenberg, who accurately predicted the Democrats holding their own in the 2020 midterm, has noted that “early data suggests that the debate did not hurt Biden.”  

All of this has been occurring against a backdrop of a pretty good four months for the Biden campaign. Whereas Biden was significantly behind in both the national polls and the swing states this winter, he is now essentially tied in the 538 polling averages in the national contest (Biden -0.5) and in the swing states he needs to win – Michigan (Biden -0.5%), Pennsylvania (Biden -1%), and Wisconsin (tied). In terms of issues, inflation has cooled substantially and was flat last month, the stock market keeps hitting records, and unemployment has been below 3.5% for over a year, something that has not occurred since the mid-seventies. Biden has closed the border, abortion restrictions continue to rile the public, and Trump has unpopular positions on health care, guns, and taxes. Trump’s uneven performances, slippage in his abilities, and the Christian nationalist radicalism of MAGA will continue to be a drag on the GOP. The rise in prices during Biden’s term and concerns about immigration are big challenges for the Democrats, but by and large we are playing on favorable territory. This is still a very winnable election.

Meanwhile, the idea that replacing Biden on the ticket will improve Democrats’ chance of victory is full of holes.

The assumption is that the Democratic party will quickly rally around a consensus candidate like VP Harris, Governors Newsome, Whitmer, Shapiro, or Pritzer, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, or someone else. This younger candidate will spring into the lead in the race because a new younger candidate is what the electorate has been pining for when it expresses dissatisfaction with both candidates. This new Democratic nominee would also benefit from being bereft of some issue baggage that has hindered Biden, like inflation, immigration, and the Gaza War. And, of course, it is assumed that this younger, more mentally agile candidate will devastate Donald Trump in the single debate remaining on the schedule.  

I don’t believe any of the predictions in this scenario are correct.

Going from Biden to someone else will be a messy, controversial process. This process will consume the Democratic Party for the next six weeks and put the campaign against Trump into hibernation. Divisions in the Democratic coalition will surely emerge – progressives vs. moderates, pro-Israel vs. pro-Palestinian, those who want a woman or person of color candidate leading the ticket vs. those who do not. The convention may turn out to be must-see TV, but this is not necessarily a good thing for Democrats. The media will be salivating to cover this event, and you can be sure that every elected official or interested party with an issue or political grievance will get airtime. This bedlam will undermine Democrats’ core argument that we are the responsible party that governs effectively compared to the chaos of Trump (whose convention will be a cult-like love fest with North Korea-style message discipline).

A candidate will eventually emerge as the nominee, but many in the party may feel disappointed or aggrieved that their chosen candidate did not get selected or feel that they were unfairly treated. Indeed, the unity necessary to run an effective general campaign may well be fractured by this open convention. While we are fighting against each other to choose a candidate, the chance to have an uninterrupted three-day opportunity to make the case against Trump will be lost. When the convention ends, there will be 75 days until election day. 

At that point, unless the choice is Kamala Harris, whose job approval ratings are only slightly better than Biden’s and who cannot escape problematic aspects of Biden record, the Democrats will have nominated someone for president that barely any of the country knows. Republicans will be primed to dump hundreds of millions of dollars of negative ads on that candidate and, no matter how hard Democrats rebut them, they will help to drive the narrative for the rest of the campaign and put the new nominee on the defensive (you remember the Swift Boat ads against John Kerry?). Again, unless it is Kamala Harris, this new younger candidate will have zero experience running on the national stage, will not have participated in any presidential primary or general election debates, and will not have had their personal background or record vetted at the presidential level. Be prepared for surprises and setbacks for this nominee, because that is what happens when someone is on the presidential stage for the first time. Popular governor, Ron DeSantis, was presumed to be a fantastic candidate for president until he wasn’t.

The idea that the new Democratic nominee will not be burdened with Biden’s problems with immigration and inflation is a chimera. Trump isn’t going to stop criticizing Democrats on these issues and will label the new candidate as the new Biden. Moreover, the new nominee will have the same constraints as Biden did in developing a popular immigration policy because of Democratic constituency group politics. 

We assume that the new Democratic nominee will be able to damage Trump during the debate in September, but Hillary Clinton did very well in the debates in 2016 and it had barely any effect on Trump’s popularity. I fear that the Democrats chomping at the bit to have a strong debater go after Trump may end up being sorely disappointed given how difficult it will be to land punches against Trump as he continues to lie, distort his record, and essentially say whatever he wants to a national audience. Indeed, democracy scholar Ruth Ben Ghiat has questioned whether debates even serve any purpose when Trump is empowered to use them as an authoritarian misinformation operation.

In light of all this, I think those who are committed to defeating Trump and Trumpism should focus all of our attention and energy on this task rather than continuing to pine for a different candidate. We need to give and raise money for Biden and our candidates for Congress, governorships and state legislatures. We need to volunteer to help the campaigns. We need to flood social media with material showing the ugliness of MAGA and the Trump agenda. There are millions of people committed to preserving our democracy that have been engaged in these activities for months. We should redouble these efforts over this summer and fall.

I know it is possible that Biden will tank in the polls and the elected officials running campaigns lower down the ticket will convince him that his candidacy is dragging the Democratic Party into an electoral Armageddon. To my mind, this possibility is the only thing that would convince a proud and stubborn Biden to voluntarily relinquish the nomination and allow the open convention to proceed. If this happens, then I will fight like hell for whomever the new nominee is to save our country from Trump.

But until then, I am going to do what I can to support Joe Biden even though he no longer has the agility to spontaneously launch pithy one-liners against his opponent on the campaign trail. Trump is still grotesque, and the anti-Trump vote is still large enough to defeat him. Biden is our nominee and despite our disappointments with him, he is all that stands between us and Trump. I think it makes far more sense right now to rally behind him instead of careening down a risky strategy of putting forward an unproven and untested new nominee at the 11^th hour.