President Biden has insisted that he’s running. He’s insisted that he will not withdraw. He’s insisted that he can beat Trump. And he’s daring his own party, anyone who would want his job, to do something about it.
“I am not going anywhere,” Mr. Biden told the donors.
The moves amounted to a show of defiance that the Biden operation hoped would earn him some deference, as uneasy Democratic lawmakers trickled back to Capitol Hill after a holiday break. At the same time, the Biden team was trying to reframe the pressure campaign to get him to step aside as one hatched by the elite party establishment rather than a genuine reflection of grass-roots voter fears about the 81-year-old commander in chief’s age and acuity.
As a matter of strategy, it’s generally wise to leave yourself a backdoor just in case bravado isn’t enough to prevail. Unless, of course, you’re prepared to fight to the death. Biden has been in politics longer than most people have been alive, and he surely knows this. He’s left himself no backdoor to gracefully exit the race, be remembered as the elder stateman, and enjoy a legacy of having beaten the barbarian. Biden made his choice.
In a rather stunning editorial, the New York Times has called upon the leaders of the Democratic Party, Senate majority leader Schumer and House minority leader Jeffries. to go public with a call for Biden to withdraw, since the private “come to Jesus” talk didn’t work.
For those at the helm of the Democratic Party — including the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; and even the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi — the time has arrived to speak forcefully to the president and the public about the need for a new candidate, before time runs out for other candidates to make their case to the party’s convention delegates.
These Democratic leaders know that the presidency is not a day job, and Mr. Biden needs to hear from them and others that the security of and stakes for America are too high to continue to move forward with Mr. Biden as the nominee.
The tacit implication here is that the Times values defeating the threat of a second Trump term more than offending, and potentially denigrating the legacy, of Joe Biden.
If their reticence up to now was partly a show of respect and partly a calculation that Mr. Biden would be more receptive to private counsel than to public criticism, it is increasingly clear that the president is unwilling to accept the reality of his situation. He is engaging in a staring contest with Democratic leaders, and he appears to be winning. The only way to persuade Mr. Biden to accept the need for new leadership is to demonstrate that the party is no longer following him.
The gloves are off, at least at the Times. And the assumption is that if the Dem honchos go public against Biden, it will force Biden to back off. Perhaps they will give him the backdoor he failed to give himself, or perhaps they will toss him out on his butt if they have to, but the Times wants him out. There’s no going back now.
Then again, will Biden acquiesce, even if Schumer, Jeffries, Pelosi and the New York Times are all on the same page? He can still follow the advice of Ivanka and Junior Jill and Hunter and make them pry the nomination out of his cold, dead fingers. What of the potential challangers, whom Biden is testing for loyalty by daring them to step forward and take him on if they think they can beat him.
As an aside, all this obviously inures to the benefit of Trump, if he can just not blow it by doing or saying something shockingly idiotic or dangerous. That, of course, may be too much to ask.
Has the time come to push Biden out since he refuses to leave voluntarily? Can it be done? If Biden simply refuses to play, what are the options left for the Democratic Party? And if Biden refuses to heed the New York Times editorial and persist in his defiance, what will the Times do about it?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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The personal considerations include pardoning Hunter. Because what father would leave his son to Trump’s DOJ and BOP?
The solution is easy enough. Bow out of the race and pardon Hunter after the election.
What about Ohio? As best I understand it, Biden was made the party nominee in order to get him on the ballot in Ohio, and any substitute nominee would not be able to be on the ballot.
Dewine called a special session and the leg passed HB 2 to resolve this issue. Dems have until the convention to get their candidate on the ballot. It isn’t specific to Biden.
The candidate, like the presidency, is a front for factional power within the party and a proxy for party entitlement to the office. Biden is their puppet, whose fading demogogic quest for power has been moving to the back seat. When he puts his foot down it’s with cue cards.
His candidacy has been a triumph of narrative role-playing over shady and distasteful reality. Gaslighting the public on his cognitive impairment will hemorrhage remaining belief in the larger charade. The campaign is heading inexorably into the ditch. Rehabilitating Harris is a safer strategy than rolling the dice with every public appearance. The media can do it. Biden himself is proof of concept.
The attempt to deflect to Trump will be doubling down on a bad strategy that fueled Trump’s revival. T-shirts are being sold now with Trump in sunglasses looking cool captioned “MORALS OF AN ALLEY CAT.” He’s the rock and roll figure who leans into to the persona thrown at him by the pearl-clutching televangelist who is banging his secretary.
PETA may sue Biden on behalf of wrongfully maligned alley cats. That could cost him votes.
OTOH, Biden has been hitting the tanning bed and may peel off some Trump voters who dig the whole orange man look.
It’s probably a wash.
Hell yes, it’s time to push!
Neither Trump nor Biden is fit to serve.
The Biden/ White House framing is bullshit. He didn’t have a “bad night”, he had an absolutely disastnrous night that conclusively confirmed long standing concerns over his cognitive decline.
He didn’t “get knocked down”, he slipped, fell, and couldn’t get up. Trump never laid a glove on him. Trump’s debate performance was patheitically inept, but Biden’s performance was worse. Much worse.
He “goodest” effort isn’t good enough.
The Dems must put forth a younger, more vigorous candidate who can decisively defeat Il Douche. NOT Kamala Harris. I read this AM that she has the lowest approval rating of any VP since they began polling (and that includes after Dick Cheney shot someone in the face).
ZERO credence/ credibility should be given to the argument that “It’s her turn!!”. This is not about who gets to go on the teeter-totter next. It’s not the time for virtue signalling, politically correct, aspirational rhetoric. The only concern should be finding the candidate most likely to defeat Trump.
Thus endeth the rant.
The Dems are being put to the test. If Trump is an existential threat to democracy, then beating him is far more important than demonstrating loyalty to Biden. But if they lack the will to push Biden out, then Trump must not be as much of a threat as they claim. You can’t have it both ways.
Faustian bargains, like the one the Democrats signed to beat Trump in 2020, are funny like that.
No, he should not be pushed out. Biden has the best chance to win out of all of the contenders, based on the Thirteen Keys to the White House. Changing nominees forfeits certain advantages, such as incumbency and party contest.
Here is a short paper Allan Lichtman wrote in December 2023, since it is Tuesday. Notably, back in December, Trump wasn’t a felon.
https://www.socialstudies.org/system/files/2024-02/se-8801006.pdf
Who are these contenders?
Back in December the debate hadn’t happened and NYT hadn’t called for Biden to step down. These are significant developments that can’t be ignored. In other words, the weights have changed for whatever framework you want to establish.
If Biden has the best chance to win, then I agree with you. I don’t think he does. The decisions his campaign are making in the wake of the debate are bafflingly stupid, unless he really isn’t all that lucid in which case that should be the end of the discussion.
“She can stay afloat with the first four compartments breached, but not five. Not five. As she goes down by the head, the water will spill over the tops of the bulkheads at E deck from one to the next. Back and back. There’s no stopping it. The pumps buy you time, but minutes only. From this moment, no matter what we do, Titanic will founder.”
It’s the people he has granted fiefdoms, who also want to keep them. None of the available replacements are adequately malleable puppets. So it’s a double-down. As for Biden himself, no big deal for him if he loses. Most days, he likely won’t even realize it happened.
The question should not be about the campaign, it should be about the presidency. The Biden we saw during the debate clearly does not have the ability to be president. Unless we are given a convincing medical explanation for why that was a fluke, he should resign today. If he doesn’t, the 25th Amendment needs to be used to kick him out.
We can worry about the campaign once we have a lucid president in office. The next six months would be scary with our adversaries knowing we have no one in charge.
Jill likes being First Lady. It is Jill who has to be convinced. She thinks that the bowing and scraping is real. She will be real disappointed when the day comes when all her “friends” and “admirers” stop returning her calls.
So, to summarize:
One party has been taken over/ mesmerized by a non- politician who more than half the country absolutely detests, because of his many serious moral failings, and because he threatens the entire political establishment, at every level of government, with serious harm to their political lives and pocketbooks.
The other party has grand aspirations to remake every part of society in ways that are abhorrent to more than half of society, and the only person they can offer as a candidate is showing serious signs of dementia. Any other candidate that they would be willing to propose would certainly lose the election .
Not a pleasant choice.
He’s not dropping out on his own, and they don’t have the balls to push him out. So old man Biden is banking on people hating Trump enough to elect someone who’s too old to do the job.
Either way, we will get the president we deserve. May god have mercy on our souls.
The thing that strikes me is all this didn’t happen in the primary campaign, where the Dems gave Biden a walk instead of testing him. This train wreck is a self inflicted crisis that should hopefully teach a painful lesson about the need for a competitive primary process.
Interesting, but…who’s going to push? Any idea who that is going to be?
Should leave it there, but the use of passive voice needs to end. No one that reads this blog has the slightest bit of leverage to push Biden to do anything, the same as no one has leverage over Trump–not since the primaries concluded. The voters have spoken for the parties, now they have to live with those choices. Unless one of the candidates steps down voluntarily or falls into a coma, these are your choices come November.
It just doesn’t matter, he doesn’t run the country. Prop up a dead body with AI to make a TV speech, get a near-enough body double to pretend he’s Biden, have him make excuses as to why no-one has seen him in two years…
..and America will run on just as it has with the same people behind the curtain in control. Nothing will change, nothing has changed in my lifetime, over 15 elections, new presidents, new backers, new bribers, new lobbyists and America is exactly the same as 1949. Loud, brash, the world’s biggest economy and high enough to look down on every other country.
Let him run, he’s the living embodiment of the country, and from what I read everywhere, he can’t be worse than Trump! Besides the popcorn is out and America is always entertaining!
Mr. Biden, through the primary and caucus process, won enough bound delegates to give him the nomination of his party. That is the system in place.
It seems that in order to save democracy, we must now overturn the legal result of 50+ elections. Or, perhaps is it only certain elections that have consequences?