From the op-eds: www.nytimes.com/… www.nytimes.com/… We’re not Krugman cheerleaders here—we’ve even criticized the tone deafness on some of his inflation columns—but he and Kristof and the progressive NYT commenters are saying important things. As is Tom Friedman, a personal friend to Biden. Until last night, we were among the voices who resisted talk about how President Biden should step down as the Dem nominee at the top of the ticket in November 2024, given his achievements and incumbency advantages. He was a strong campaigner and debater in 2020 and made a brilliant SOTU speech. (We wrote a Diary specifically on that). We call things as we see them. But things changed with the debate disaster on Thursday night. First to be clear, Joe Biden has had an incredibly productive and successful Presidency and we’d of course vote for and support him whole-hearted, and work tirelessly for him against Trump but the question here is not whether we on Daily Kos would support him, or whether it’s fair that optics should matter so much or how shitty Tapper and CNN were with moderation—that’s the kind of echo chamber talk we need to avoid. What matters is whether the millions of undecided voters and Independents will vote for Biden and save US democracy in November, and Biden’s struggles last night were just a disaster, and left that painfully in doubt. We’d love to be proven wrong. But this is too important to just ignore.
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We know this sort of Diary isn’t going to be music to DKos ears here, but the reality is that the calls to step aside aren’t being made out of knee jerk reactions, they’re the result of calm reflections on what happened last night, what we’re up against and the importance of this election. And also because we are actually well positioned on the calendar to get this process going. It looks like some of the comments and Diaries that seem to be trying to ignore how terrible the debate last night was for us—and demanding we fall in line and stop pointing out the need for action--presume that Biden is already presumptive and we’d have no other choices. That just isn’t true. Obviously if it were then yes, we’d also be calling for others to fall in line behind our only option. But in fact, we’re far away from the convention and historically, the parties in general haven’t chosen candidates until well into the convention. Plus, most democracies have a much shorter season to pick candidates and campaign, just around one or two months, and the parties have wide latitude to pick their candidates. So there’s ample opportunity for us to pick our best candidate to take down Trump for good, and it’s actually fortunate we’d had the debate this early.
Why is this so important, and why are Krugman, Kristof, Friedman and others right to bring up the need to discuss having another Democrat at the top of our ticket? This is a reality-based community and we need to be honest about what we saw, actually saw—too many of the cheerleading comments and even a Diary admitted they hadn’t watched the debate, that’s a problem because what was on the screen was disastrous. You can be sure millions of Americans saw it or will, direct or through clips and ads. Yes, Trump was again disgusting and hard to watch, short tempered and putting out one lie after another, not answering questions, offensive and disorganized and not good a debater at all, giving Biden many opportunities to hit back when he kept spittling out his stupidity. But Biden unfortunately performed dismally, not only in counter-punching at those easy opportunities, but even in basic communication and staying coherent. That’s just the reality and it’s what people saw, including the undecideds and Independents who do choose the next President, and no amount of whining about how voters should be deeper and look past the optics, or fact-check Trump’s lies, would change that.
We’re not preaching to our own choir here. Biden of course is far better on policy than Trump and a far better leader, but the way our system works, you have to be elected to get that power, and the debate optics do matter for that. Biden not only got lost in his thoughts and couldn’t complete sentences, he totally whiffed the easy gimme to hit Trump hard on Trump’s idiotic abortion stance (wasn’t even clear what he was saying), got lost and stumbled all over in talking about COVID (that infamous “we defeated Medicare” line), was hard to hear, kept looking down and then of all things, got into a dumb exchange with Trump about golfing and golf clubs, which made both look like fools. He couldn’t even make a good closing summary. The Atlantic was blunt about how awful this was for Biden, as are other generally liberal and Trump-hating sources, and this was far worse than Obama’s setback in the 2012 1st debate (or 2004 for George W. Bush for that matter)—it showed a basic lack of coherence and communication skills.
This, in being clear is not because Biden is “too old”, we don’t buy that and still don’t because there’s so much variation, esp now with modern medical care and technology. We’ve seen it ourselves, professionals and experts in their 90’s or even over 100, lawyers, engineers, doctors, carpenters, nurses all much sharper, faster and more competent than younger ones in their 20’s and 30’s. It varies a lot, but Biden has unfortunately shown here that he’s not one of the fast and sharp ones right now, and most likely he’s just been exhausted by dealing with the incredible demands of such a difficult office and taking on mass cleanup of the mess that Trump left when he was booted out. It’s just the reality we’re facing, and while it became clear last night, there strong signs of this earlier too, for example in Biden’s trip to Normandy and before.
You can’t look at this feeble and hobbled performance and hope for a good result in an election where optics and media appearances matter so much, and with the danger Trump poses we need our best in there. We can’t have another disaster like Dianne Feinstein or Ruth Bader Ginsburg—RBG undid a lot of her work by her stubborn failure to step aside when it clearly was best for her and all Americans to do so, and Biden’s best way to protect and build more on his strong Presidency is to hand over the battle to the reinforcements, and another general at the top of the ticket. Biden could even make history again by stepping down in the lame duck months after the election, to make Kamala Harris our first woman President even if for only a few months. But from the poor results both candidates have been having and Biden’s terrible performance last night, it’s most important to have another name in there as our Presidential candidate, and one of Biden’s best and most historically important moves will be to make it happen.
Biden truly has been a great President, and he’ll go down in history as having one of the best terms in at least a century with what he’s accomplished, and what he was up against. But to secure his accomplishments, it’s best for him to step down now, while it’s still early and we can rally around another leader for us. Sure, the question then becomes “who” and that’s not easy, but we have a stronger bench than often talked about, including Dem governors and Senators from Red or leaning-Red Purple States. Obviously this has been getting discussed a lot—Andy Beshear has been brilliant as a Democrat who can win even in Deep Red counties and regions and puts Kentucky in play, Raphael Warnock has some of that Obama magic and helps deliver Georgia and other Swing States. Michelle Obama, with great appeal and national stature. Mark Kelly, military hero, helps cement Arizona as a Blue State and broad appeal. We’ve had a lot more questions on Gavin Newsom as he gets discussed more (California’s budget crisis doesn’t make his candidacy look good) but his name comes up. Pete Buttigieg is articulate and great on policy, already a national figure. Or even JB Pritzker or Roy Cooper, who’ve expressed interest and (especially with Cooper) can help to win the South and key Swing States. A lot of other Dems have indicated no interest in running but would also be great, especially in a crisis: Chris Murphy, Gretchen Whitmer, Mark Warner, Jon Tester, Hakeem Jeffries. (Though we’d argue it’s more important for Tester to help us maintain our Senate majority)
We have a lot of options, and we’re lucky that we’ve been presented with this so early in the campaign, and have such a powerful bench to draw from. There’s never been a more important time in US history to take advantage of it.
