Chapter One: Change Is New
If a major party in a parliamentary democracy like ours is in trouble, a few months out from the election, they change. Simon Bridges, the supposed next leader of the country one day, is gone the next. And all the MPs who just booted him are fronting up on the morning media to smile and say that they’re all united behind Todd Muller, who, a week before, would have denied any interest in leadership. Fifty three days later, they could do the exact same thing all over again.
The level of doublethink is disconcerting, and the results devastated the party, but they also illustrated a point vividly: we have no restrictions, even as the election looms, on second thoughts. Labour can, in a stroke, go from lying that they believe in Andrew Little to telling the truth that Jacinda Ardern could be Prime Minister. If a party realises they aren’t sending their best, they can change all that.
The Presidency is different.
All Muller needed was twenty eight MPs, in a caucus where everybody knew somebody. Four weeks from now, four thousand, two hundred and fifty one delegates representing fifty states will gather from across the country in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They will vote on who will bear the Democratic nomination for the presidency, just as their Republican counterparts do every four years.
To sway any sizable number of those delegates was a mountainous challenge even when that task belonged to party elites in smoke filled rooms. Since 1972, instead, those delegates vote to reflect the will of their state’s voters, expressed in a series of “primary” elections over months. Primaries are vibrant, competitive affairs, but once a presumptive nominee becomes clear as a candidate takes an insurmountable lead in the delegate race, the rest will make themselves scarce and insist they now back the nominee, whatever past criticisms they reserved for them, come hell or high water.
The United States of America is partisan central. Beating the other side is the most important thing, and your own are the Good Guys. Nobody wants to be caught out criticising their own side and suggesting their nominee is fundamentally unable - or unfit - to win. Never mind the backlash you risk by claiming you’d be better than them. That’s fodder for the other side. The pressure to lock in and whip the enemy is why sitting presidents are so rarely primaried in the first place: from the moment they win one election, they’re assumed to be their party’s nominee for the next.
The American nominating system is calcified. The parties are as inflexible as a giraffe with arthritis. Nominees as terrible as Trump make it all the way to Election Night.
Why will Joseph R. Biden, the oldest of the forty six men to ever occupy the Presidency, be the first to take, then lose, the presumptive nomination?
Chapter Two: The Ones Who Walk Away From The White House
A search of presidential history identifies five criteria that endanger nominees.
Timing - for somebody to qualify as a nominee, the consensus perception must have solidified around them that they will bear their party’s nomination. There must be time left to change, time to change ads and messaging and ballot papers. Parties who know they’ll lose the election tomorrow don’t swap candidates with one day to go.
Fitness - if the people who actually do the business of government look at a nominee and see somebody who they cannot work with, they are likely to have second thoughts. Through leaks and outright critiques, plus the nominee’s own performances, that unfitness can filter out through the media to the public.
Electability - The voters share their judgement of the candidates through the polls. A party must trust their nominee will be safely ahead in the polls on Election Day to trust that they can win. If the polls, and surrounding information, are bad enough that the odds are low of an Election Day lead, a nominee is struggling to justify their own candidacy.
Tipping Point - Replacing a nominee comes at a cost. The process of change at a short notice is risky, and comes with no guarantee that your replacement of choice will be an improvement. On the other hand, if a nominee’s chances look downright awful, then that risk becomes worthwhile to run. The party must become convinced that staying is more dangerous than going.
The Alternative - A party with no clear alternative will not risk change lurching into the unknown. A party with a few clear alternatives can become frozen with gridlock, unable to adjudicate between them. There must be one person who represents the party and is available to step up and take over the campaign. All without being bedeviled by questions of, why them and not anybody else?
American modern history reveals half a dozen would-be nominees who meet some of these criteria.
President Harry S. Truman | Dropped Out 29 March, 1952
Truman would have been seeking out an unusually long period in office. He was personally exempted from the post-FDR constitutional amendment prohibiting a third term. Nonetheless, to follow up FDR’s 12 years with another 12 for Truman made a hard ask. Also, his net approval (approval minus disapproval) sat at, um, -41.6%.
Yeah.
Granted, polling was not nearly as frequent then, so I’m sure he was doing marginally better, but little wonder that he recognised the obvious and bowed to the two-term precedent. He wasn’t electable and the party knew it. Maybe he could have bent the party bosses to his will, but there was no guarantee of that. Truman’s troubles owed to a few issues like the corruption exposed by his rival, Senator Estes Kefauver, but the big one was the grinding stalemate in Korea. That example isn’t relevant to our current times - not since 2008 has an ongoing war had a significant impact on an American election - but who that is relevant to is…
President Lyndon B. Johnson | Dropped out 31 March, 1968
Who was suffering at -12.4% when he announced he’d be passing up on a shot and a second proper term in office to focus on negotiating an end to the Vietnam War. If not for the war’s deleterious effect on his electability, dividing the party and in particular driving Robert F. Kennedy into the primaries as an alternative, Johnson may well have been on track for reelection. As much as history remembers Vice-President Humphrey’s nomination as a mess of riots and the end of the smoke-filled rooms, he ably fought Nixon to within a single point on Election Day, vindicating the change from one boss-anointed candidate to another.
Senator Thomas Eagleton | Dropped out 1 August, 1972
This is a bit of an asterisk because Eagleton wasn’t actually the presidential nominee. However, he was Senator McGovern’s vice-presidential nominee, making him the best data we have on what impact a mid-campaign change has. Eagleton was driven out because the media discovered that he suffered from depression (and sought electroshock treatment). On the one hand, replacing him with Kennedy relative Sargent Shriver went smoothly, and Shriver created no problems for the ticket. On the other, the incident harmed McGovern by making him look indecisive, particularly for standing by Eagleton “1000%” days before his removal.
President James E. Carter | Passed the point of no return on 14 August, 1980
Carter was the first postwar president to come into an election year as the heavy underdog and remain the party’s nominee. Though stagflation and global instability dragged down his electability, his clumsy governance was not confused for being mentally unfit for the job. Importantly, the party's dissatisfaction with him found a release valve: Edward Kennedy ran as the expected, left-wing alternative in the primaries, and lost. No matter how much despair Democrats endured in 1980, even after the Iranian hostage rescue failed, there was no question that Carter was staying as the nominee. The same logic applies to President George H.W. Bush, who, on August 20, 1992, received his party’s nomination despite a right-flank revolt by Pat Buchanan. Once again, hashing out differences in the primaries stabilised losing campaigns as Election Day closed in.
President Ronald W. Reagan | Passed the point of no return on 21 October, 1984
Okay, was the party going to replace Reagan that late? No, not really; he was well in the lead and Republicans were happy with the horse they had. However, one could paint an alternate reality where a disastrously Alzheimerish performance leads to a desperate freakout by the party to investigate if they could before concluding if they could not. After all, on 7 October, Reagan had looked so confused, addled and exhausted in the first presidential debate as to lose 7 points off of his lead. Instead, at the second debate, his zinger (peep the 2024 US election trailer in the blog header) personified his recovery, nullifying the issue for good.
Playboy Donald J. Trump | Passed the point of no return on 9 October, 2016
Trump was already stumbling into election season as the weakest major party nominee of the postwar era. Clinton was more unpopular, but had only a couple of stumbles to her name, and nothing could size up to the Access Hollywood tape, which revealed on the 7th of October a nominee describing how he molested the women he molested. For a couple of days, his candidacy teetered, as party elites seriously considered casting aside a man who their party’s delegates had voted for.
Why did they fail to oust him? Trump dug in against the thought of being replaced, threatening mutually assured destruction that would torpedo a successor’s chances, and downballot Republicans with him. To the party, the tipping point had not been passed - better to gamble on a chance at beating Hillary Clinton, or at least Congressional control, than suffer the annihilation of having to openly confront their own demon. This was clearest of all to Mike Pence, by far the most plausible replacement for Trump as the Convention’s ratified to-be vice-president, who decided to stand by his running mate.
Most of all, the Access Hollywood producer had their memory jogged at the worst time. Not only did the news come so close to the election, news that surely could have sunk Trump had the party enjoyed more time to react, but just two days later, Trump took the debate stage against Clinton. Trump fought back, hard. He apologised for "locker room talk", which magically is mutually compatible with describing terrible things, but lashed out at the Clintons for Bill's predatory behaviour, exploiting the former president's victims to save his own political skin. He dredged up Hillary's emails, and, most memorable, he crowed that if he were in office, "you'd be in jail". Trump won the debate in none of the subsequent polls…but a passable performance was enough for the party. And for Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennslyvania.
Let’s evaluate Biden by these criteria.
Chapter Three: President Joseph R. Biden | before June 27, 2024
Fitness
Biden’s expertise came from chairing the Foreign Policy Committee…but his big call as President was the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. He was known as a charismatic jokester, but also a gaffe-prone stutterer. There is nothing wrong with mixing up your words or having a stutter, but there is a valid concern for a president being a forgetful rambler who can’t always communicate to others or stay focused himself. His “gaffes” frequently took the form of antagonism or condescension on issues like race. During the 2020 primary he almost felt Trumpian in some ways, in the Teflon sense that whatever foot he laid wrong, criticism just bounced right off of him.
Electability
Biden comes from the safe blue state of Delaware, where he hadn’t fought a competitive race since 1972. He dropped out of the 1988 primary before he won a single vote. He won 1% of the vote in Iowa, then he dropped out of the 2008 primary. He steamrolled the 2020 primary…after a point. He posted shockers in the first few states and looked on the verge of dropping out. 13.7% in Iowa, 8.4% in New Hampshire, 18.9% in Nevada - Biden wasn’t winning over most white and particularly highly-educated Democrats.
What he became, instead, was the only viable alternative to Bernie Sanders. Obama, Clyburn and company organised a mass dropout-and-endorse strategy to bolster Biden as the centrist in the race. There’s no denying Biden’s pull with many black Democrats, but overall his primary campaign, on its own merits, grades as a fail. Biden did not inspire or encourage most Democrats when weighed up against the party bench. New Hampshire placed Amy Klobuchar ahead of him, for goodness sake - how much Amy 2028 chatter do you hear?
Biden came into Election Day 2020 with an 8.4% lead in the polls. In the end, that closed to just 4.5% on the day, comparable to 2012. Most strikingly, in the swing states, just 20,000 voters changing their minds would have delivered Trump his dreaded second term. Biden anecdotally generated low personal enthusiasm, and while you might argue turnout soared, Biden’s added 16 million stood alongside Trump’s added 12 million. One would struggle to argue that Trump is a good candidate. Biden, therefore, comes out at the end of this looking somewhat like Keir Starmer: people are willing to come home to normalcy and decency, but there’s no depth of personal enthusiasm to withstand setbacks and hardships.
Tipping Point
We can’t judge Biden’s tipping point before this year, but we can still assess the party’s pros/cons sheet on whether he’s worth running over alternatives. He’s a genuinely anti-trickle down guy, but at the height of trickle-down in 1988, he wasn’t the best messenger for the voters to hear that from. Nothing epitomises that more than him plagiarising a hardscrabble background from Neil Kinnock. The foreign policy guy who judged the Iraq War as a good call was, needless to say, not the man to lead the Democratic Party into 2008; he instead became a personal totem for Obama to represent that he wasn’t another McGovern.
On the other hand, Trump’s victory goaded him into the 2020 campaign against a President who repulsed him. Biden was able to enter into dialogue with Trump’s candidacy in a way that Clinton never good; compared to her technocratic, multiethnic coalition, Biden laser-focused on Midwestern moderate white working class voters for the general election. Pairing that with his name recognition and extending a hand to the defeated Sanders, he united the party as an anti-Trump coalition, much as the Republicans are defined today as a pro-Trump tent.
And so long as Biden has made himself the avatar for defeating Trump, nobody on the young Democrat bench wants to destroy their future prospects by challenging Biden, weakening him, losing, and suffering the blame for his defeat. Which means that…
The Alternative
Has been suppressed. Many exciting Democratic prospects can be easily dismissed simply because they suffer from low name recognition and have not undergone the scrutiny of a prolonged national campaign. Biden successfully suppressed any serious primary challengers, as most sitting presidents do. Given that, the alternative to Biden has been kept as a question for another day, and that sense is exacerbated by the Harris problem. The Vice-President is usually the heir in waiting, but Harris is unpopular - she's at -12% on net, compared to Biden's -16% going into the debate and Trump's -12%.
As we saw in the 2020 primary, the Democrat electability frenzy predisposes them against nominating people of colour and women for President, because they fear other Americans are too racist or misogynistic while they say they’re not. Biden paid lip service to the value of diversity and representation by selecting her, but in practice, him and his team have kept her in the dark and shovelled her shit. She has had few opportunities to prove herself and her highest-profile assignment was on the intractable, credibility-sapping issue of the Southern border. I mean, frankly, they were ratfucking her to ensure Biden couldn't have a viable fallback. It's grossly irresponsible.
If not for Dobbs, Harris would have had nothing to make hay over. She has been largely dismissed as a viable alternative because she is an unexceptional politician running even with the incumbent crowd of Presidents, and the pundits would rather speculate about who might maybe prove intriguing in the future. All of that has played to Biden’s strengths, as he’s swept the primaries, scooped up his delegates, and looked ahead to a showdown with Trump.
The President of the United States confronted the worst candidate of the postwar era on the 27th of June.
Chapter Four: Whoever Booked A Presidential Debate For Three Months Earlier Than Usual Is Either A Machiavellian Genius Or Veep Level Jobhunting
Alright, let’s do this one last time.
Fitness
Over the span of ninety minutes, Biden’s debate improved from a 2/10 to a 4/10. For the first time, millions tuned into an election event and many millions more read the headlines. Voter concern about Biden's age - which, it’s important to note, was already a big problem for Biden! - was vindicated and some. The abstract idea that an 81 year old shouldn’t be President founders on paper against Trump’s 78, but seeing Trump’s vigorous, determined rambling against Biden’s exhausted, aimless rambling made for a striking contrast.
His advantage as the experienced president restoring normalcy vanishes because he looks like he could lose his train of thought or fail to comprehend the issue during a time of crisis. His claims to be an effective dealmaker legislating for the people are nullified by his total lack of energy. How can this guy go late into the day to pass a budget and end government shutdown, never mind man the red phone at 3 AM?
His strength versus Trump is gone. Just as Hillary Clinton could not press Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump on age, especially after a mid-campaign literal collapse, so too can Joe Biden not take Trump to task on his age and being out of touch with America without his attacks immediately bouncing back on himself. He can’t communicate to the public and lead his party at the point at which he gets a question about abortion, perhaps the single most important issue for a Democrat to push, and starts sharing how immigrants murder American women. He can’t castigate Republican cost-cutting plans when he gaffes out “We finally beat Medicare”. This was his biggest, best chance to explain Project 2025 and defend American democracy, and he didn’t even once!
And as anybody who stutters or freezes knows, the more pressure and criticism people place on you for your mind going blank or mouth going mealy, the likelier you are to suffer double, and the spiral keeps getting worse and worse, fed by staff criticising each other for overpreparing Biden and stuffing new ideas into him. Biden can yap all he likes about being an underdog energised by being underestimated, but the fact is his attempts to step up to the plate are inconsistent: for every vigorous State of the Union, there’s a stumbling, mediocre NATO press conference, where if you forget about the high-profile gaffes, you still have the President of the United States being asked about if he’s seeing a neurologist and answering by way of explaining how he’d like to see Japan and Korea reunite.
Yeah, that happened. You didn’t know?
If the media have so much verbal stumble content that they’re omitting juicy morsels like that, you know you’re neck deep in the big muddy.
Electability
Biden is 2.1% behind in the polls. Don’t trust this sample size of two, but in both presidential elections, Trump has overperformed relative to his Democratic opponent, by 1.5% in 2016 and a startling 3.9% in 2020. And, in the swing states, Trump ran ahead of his national average by ~4% in 2016 and 3% in 2020. Add that all up and, at its worst, that could be as much as a 10 point lead the Democrats need to cut down. Basically, the party needs to run a candidate who can maintain a comfortable lead to really feel confident going into Election Day; letting things come down to the line against Trump is not good enough, let alone this dismus.
Biden now faces a Catch-22 on the age issue. The issue was already bad; the debate has made it worse; and solutions don't work. He can book every possible public interview, hold constant rallies, and get out there and be himself. Knowing Biden's current state, he'll fall flat on his face, exhausting himself and showing signs of serious mental deterioration. We know the media bias towards bad over good, and Biden’s a stormy sea of inconsistency. He makes gaffes and he loses his train of thought, and the press will always focus on those troughs over any high points. Trump is mid, but always mid, with his low moments coming in content rather than style and thus requiring a higher level of scrutiny not met as often.
This explains the other path taken: why Biden’s appearances have been kept to a minimum over the past few years. (That’s also why you’ve heard way less of Biden saying random offensive things than in 2019-2020.) Here’s a great article by the dreaded Nate Silver on that subject. Remaining at a minimum vindicates public fears that Biden - and his inner circle, with whom the well is now well and truly poisoned - are hiding serious ageing issues from scrutiny. Indeed, the attempts to dismiss voter concerns rings of the aloof condescension that Hillary Clinton was accused of in 2016. Have lessons bought at a steep price really been forgotten so soon?
When Democrat hopes had been pinned on the Biden versus Trump contrast looking better for Biden than the status quo, the revelation that Biden is not ready to fight Trump as promised makes Biden’s family and advisors look like liars. This, in turn, invites questions of self-interest from staff putting protecting their jobs ahead of the country - especially glaring in the case of Hunter Biden, convicted felon and son of the Great Pardoner in the Sky.
This sense of a warped inner circle keeping an egotistical man in a bubble is heightened by the surge of retroactive leaks, from the White House, Capitol Hill, and even from abroad. These suggest a trend that the media have not yet picked up on: that Biden keeps persistently showing up to events significantly late or not at all. This is something with little practical impact, but if we get enough data to see more fire than smoke, it’d suggest one of two things. Either he is running on seriously depleted levels of energy that need recharging at all times, or he experiences prolonged periods of mental vacancy and unfocusedness that he cannot easily snap out of. That is dire.
Especially alarming is the theory that Biden, clearly still an energetic and capable man as recently as the 2020 election for all his faults, underwent a sharp decline in the past six to twelve months. Above all, the age issue is nightmarish because you can’t unage. People can be old and also very competent, healthy, and intelligent. Trump's age hasn't yet suppressed his constant determination to talk on and on and take the fight to his enemies. But at some point, different for each person, everybody experiences an age-related decline where the gradual gradient steepens - not necessarily as the end nears, but simply as biology flips a coin and deterioration increases exponentially.
Biden is “too old”, not in the sense of age on a page - Democrats will happily vote in Biden and let him die so long as he makes it to January 21st - but in the sense that his aging means he has lost his fitness for office that he possessed in 2020, and now the public knows it. He cannot fix his age in any way other than surrendering the nomination. The party cannot fix Biden’s age in any way other than wrestling the nomination from his old, unsteady hands.
Tipping Point
Other Democrats prove daily on television that they can coherently make the case against Trump and for a Democratic agenda, and they are younger than Joe Biden. There is still time before the Convention, and no alternatives come with massive baggage the way a Ted Kennedy or a Hillary Clinton ‘08 did. Biden, on the other hand, holds the love of no wing of the Democratic Party, except perhaps labour - I always struggle to keep my finger on the pulse of unions. Put another way, no chunk of the Democratic Party would consider Biden’s replacement to be an unacceptable cost. He isn’t near and dear to the heart of any ideology or demographic the way that somebody like Sanders or Jackson (J) was.
Obama was famously tepid on Biden’s presidential bid, and is manoeuvring behind the scenes alongside Nancy Pelosi to smooth the path for Biden’s growing critics. That’s one way traffic - nobody is being reassured by Biden. Especially notable is that Obama didn’t forestall Clooney’s letter when he was given the opportunity. Before, all the general public heard were politicians bickering; now a well-liked American has personally verified the narrative that Biden is incoherent in person. All Biden has as a wall to put his back up against is the truth: that he won his nomination thanks principally to being the preferred choice of black voters (and elites). But…
The Alternative
…when you accuse your party of speaking over black voices by demanding you, an old white man, be replaced by Kamala Harris, who could become the first female, woman of colour, and Asian-American President…
That dog won’t hunt.
Just as Biden’s crisis has greased the wheels of his would-be replacement - what would be an awkward, fumbling dance towards conjuring up some solution at the Convention has become a concerted push with a clear message - so too has it done remarkable things for Harris. Though the RNC speakers are planning to target her, until now she has escaped scrutiny; she has only popped up in headlines saying a) she’s unpopular, but what does that matter when Biden’s so unpopular and the only popular Democrat is Michelle Obama?, and b) various Democrat elites insist that, if Biden goes, Kamala is the only viable alternative.
Before, commentary on Harris came almost exclusively from pundits idly musing about the future, who were at their leisure to contrast her with long shot alternatives. Politicians couldn’t talk about her future without undermining the Biden-Harris status quo. Now, they’re weighing in, and making the truth heard loud and clear: not only would passing over the woman of colour be such a clear snub to the base, but in practical terms, she has the name recognition and is the only one who can easily inherit Biden’s campaign infrastructure and donor pool.
Kamala Harris can unite the party from Day One: she represents the party’s intersectional ethos, she’s a California liberal who can inherit Biden’s rapprochement with the left, and she’s a former prosecutor, with her team no doubt having kept a keen eye on Keir Starmer’s success in the UK. And frankly, there’s something that needs to be said about her that, in my opinion, would be said if not for racial bias placing her identity ahead of a normative assessment. She is the generic Democrat. She is!
She’s unpopular by association with the administration and due to a bit of bias against the laughing lightweight - notice how differently Harris versus Biden are treated when both’s defining traits as vice-president is smiling and laughing? - but what else do people know about her? Not much! She’s the sort of person whose basic facts of the biography you’d craft for a TV show, and when you get into more about her life, that can only help her. “That little girl with me” was powerful for a reason! I say all this as a Harris doubter through the 2020 primary! For all Clinton’s failures, there were a lot of Democratic women so excited to see the first women president, and you better believe the chequebooks are opening up - and the press is covering it all - the day the party announces Biden’s withdrawing, endorsing his Vice-President, and his delegates are expected to vote for her at the Convention.
Best of all is that the curiously reductive nature of Democrat ticketbuilding works to her political favour here. Race and gender are seen as building blocks in a LEGO White House pairing. Accordingly, as the moment of Biden’s withdrawal nears and news of Harris mobilising leaks out, the press will construct coverage of Harris’s frontrunning around the following premise: she is a black and Asian woman. Ergo, she needs balance on the ticket.
Which white man will be her veep? Josh Shapiro? Andy Beshear? Pete Buttigieg? Is there a chance for Gretchen Whitmer to sneak in? (Just kidding. Like two women can coexist at the same time.) J.B Pritzker? (How does this guy keep sneaking onto shortlists?) Democrats can have their cake and eat it too: they can speculate on the future of their bench and create their exciting Convention drama, centred not on a highly dangerous contest for the nomination itself, but the sideshow of the Vice-Presidency.
Timing
If Democrats make their move now - pressure Biden, get your hostage statement from him, start corralling delegates and setting up the Harris campaign - they can not only be ready well in time for their Convention, but overshadow the GOP Convention and contrast a Democrat return to common sense with Republican absurdity. If they remain with Biden, there will be no opportunities for him to reach enough voters to compensate for the impact of the debate; everything since then is a tenth of the scope. Except for the second debate, which will serve as the absolute death knell if Biden flubs that too. The party have given a lot of ground to inertia, but surely they can’t resign themselves to a two month wait for that day of judgement to count down to. So they won’t: they’ll replace him.
Chapter Five: What Can Be, Unburdened By What Has Been
Kamala Harris is fit for the job. She’s in her mid-fifties, experienced, and for all her 2020 campaign was mismanaged, as an individual she’s razor-sharp and didn’t earn the moniker of the female Obama for nothing. (Let’s not kid ourselves here, she’s not Obama level, but who is?) She is electable. She’s more popular than Biden, competitive with Trump, and, critically, is a far better messenger than the awkward and half-hearted Biden on one issue: abortion. He doesn’t want to lie through his teeth that he’s keen on abortion when he’s just not. She’s genuinely passionate about women’s freedom and has been getting high grades on that issue since 2022. Compare that to Biden’s doomed attempts to sell the economy as good. A Harris Democracy-Abortion-Prosecutor vs. Crook campaign sounds good to me!
The party are past the Tipping Point - better to take the variance inherent to an alternative over such a likely defeat at the moment, when there’s so little to suggest Biden can recover. They are ready to unite around her as the clear replacement, with the Democratic field happy to support her now and look ahead to 2028 in the still-likely event that a Democrat doesn’t triumph this year.
Timing-wise, all there is to say is that the longer the Democrats delay, and particularly if they let the RNC get in the first word, the question will become “Why are Democrats so reluctant to move on to Kamala Harris?” They must relinquish the passive drift that has served them so poorly and take the initiative in a bold political coup to turn the world upside down, a northern hemisphere Jacindamania. We’re counting on her. I want her to be President.
And, critically, and it's astonishing how little this is being discussed, Kamala Harris can actually be the President for the next four years. Democrats are in danger if Biden wins reelection. Biden beats Trump is better than Trump beats Biden, but a rapidly deteriorating Biden will be a nightmare for the 2026 and 2028 elections and just to actually lead the government in times of crisis. We can't credibly demolish Trump for his terrible response to COVID, then turn around and say we can risk a President who won't be able to respond to a crisis as White House staffers reenact The Death of Stalin around him. Kamala Harris can be a solid Democratic President for the future - better she get there directly than when Biden dies in '27.
Honestly, I'm a bit mad at Biden. Nothing like the disgust I feel for Trump, but - how dare Biden show up and say he could be President, and keep insisting on that day after day with such little self-reflection and so much ego evident in that NATO press conference, and put his country and the world in this position? Americans don't owe him a thing. He has given them a lifetime in public service, and for his mistakes, he owes them a whole lot more to make up for his errors.
Joe Biden has never been a good candidate. He fluked into the presidency, coming within just days of an embarrassing third and final run for the office. He has gotten some really good things done for people and the world, and whatever that America’s left can harshly scorch American presidents and the entire apparatus for, it’s remarkable how much the almost pathetic Biden of the 2020 campaign has evolved into a forceful advocate for government action. I don’t agree with him on everything, like many of his manufacturing policies, but, unbelievably, he’s grabbed the changing climate by the horns. Also! People forget this because the way it happened was so awful! But Trump had four years to leave Afghanistan and he chose to stay! Biden got out in a year! It sounds silly to say “he ended the war” because the bad guys won, but you* can walk safely from one end of the country to the other now!
*I mean, presumably not you. I’m guessing they keep an eye out for interloping Westerners. It’s probably not a tourist hub. But an Afghan family could.
Biden’s age issue has become unbeatable. Which means, by proxy, Trump is unbeatable, so long as Biden is the Democratic candidate. He’s metaphorically just praying for a miracle. Probably also literally, which puts Francis in an awkward position as the go-between here. Joe Biden will lose the USA a must-win election, for their democracy and the world.
The Democrats can champion their achievements - which another president could manage, and the Democratic candidate this November needs to do well for the sake of controlling the House and Senate. But if the Democrats have a singular, great virtue besides their hodgepodge of policy that isn’t yet landing with the public, it is being the anti-Trump party. That’s a popular position and the correct one, with huge practical implications that from Day One around half of America have fought the normalisation of his tendencies, both his anti-democratic and his racist sides, both dangerous.
Biden must reconnect with his original purpose as president: as the anti-Trump, the uniter, the bridge to a new generation, the safe pair of hands. He can only remain all of those things by making himself a lame duck and anointing Harris. The Democratic Party can only live up to the virtues that they offer today by deposing Biden. It is surreal that we are talking about such an unprecedented move just months from an election, not least because his opponent is the candidate who should have dropped out and didn’t. But, in a way…isn’t the fact that pro-democracy forces can, and most likely will, pull off a palace coup against the most powerful man in the world the beautiful thing about democracy?
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