Evan Vucci/AP Photo
The president and his wife board Marine One on Saturday.
Thursday’s night debate has plunged the Democrats into two unhappy camps: the Biden-Must-Go-ers and the Biden-Must-Stay-ers. The Stay-ers’ case against going envisions a Bidenless scenario much like the plot of Shakespeare’s Lear: an aged king abdicates his throne and bestows his kingdom on his daughters, two of whom proceed to turn it into a bloody hell. The abrupt resignation of the sovereign opens a box of conflict, disorder and chaos best left closed.
Then again, speaking as a Go-er, Shakespeare could just as well have written a tragedy in which Lear continued to rule. As early as Act I, Scene 1, the old king is clearly addled and his judgment impaired. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be signing over portions of his kingdom to his daughters based on their protestations of love for him, however feigned they might be. One can easily imagine that by Act III in this version of Lear, the king would still be howling on the moors, only this time with state power.
So let’s unpack this “chaos” so feared by those who say Biden must stay. Until the 1950s, conventions frequently required more than one ballot to decide upon the party’s nominee. Both Lincoln and FDR won their nominations on the third ballot. Conventional wisdom has it that the great audience watching on television wouldn’t abide the prolongation of the process. Then again, conventional wisdom also has it that the convention-watching audience has shrunk precipitously, because the conventions’ outcomes are now entirely predetermined by the preceding primaries and caucuses. Conventional wisdom has further led the television networks to run innumerable contest shows in which the best singer or dancer or athlete isn’t determined until the final episode.
So much for conventional wisdom.
In the BT (Before Television) days, conventions were frequently dramatic affairs, riveting the nation’s attention. Today, of course, Republicans and right-wing media would gloatingly show scenes of Democrats disagreeing or perhaps even fighting with one another over who should succeed Biden. But at a time when the clear majority of Americans would happily welcome an alternative to Trump or Biden, I’m not sure that the public’s reaction to a contest producing a different nominee would be negative. On the contrary, I suspect it would likely be positive, particularly if those seeking the presidency audition in speeches before the delegates and an unusually attentive public.
Getting Biden to agree to decline the nomination, however, will require three types of pressure. The first is the public opinion of the Democratic rank-and-file, on which pollsters will now surely take soundings. (A Morning Consult poll from the morning after the debate showed that a plurality of Democrats and a majority of independents thought Biden should abandon his bid, though the same poll also gave Biden a 1 percentage point lead over Trump.) There are precious few organizations of rank-and-file Democrats in this post-party (though not post-partisan) age, but if they’re out there, they’d have to start making noise, much as chapters of the Young Democrats and the California Democratic club movement did when they started opposing Lyndon Johnson’s renomination as early as 1966.
Longtime Obama consigliere David Axelrod argued in the debate’s aftermath that 2024 isn’t the1960s, and there certainly isn’t a presidential policy like the Vietnam War, so repulsive to so many Democrats that the prospect of Johnson’s renomination split the party. Narrowly speaking, Axelrod is right. But as of Thursday night, there actually is a presidential policy so terrifying that it’s split the party: Biden’s determination to stay on the ticket, which clearly runs the risk of handing the nation over to Donald Trump.
At a time when the clear majority of Americans would happily welcome an alternative to Trump or Biden, I’m not sure that the public’s reaction to a contest producing a different nominee would be negative.
But it’s not just the Democratic base that has to be heard from; it’s also Democratic politicians. Virtually every pre-debate poll showed swing-state Democratic senators and House members running ahead of Biden by anywhere from five to ten percentage points. But if Biden’s polling goes further south in the wake of the debate, those pols will have reason to think their own margins may not be enough to save them. That should put their leaders—Chuck Schumer in the Senate, Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi in the House—in an awkward position if and when their members come to them fretting that they can’t win with Biden atop the ticket.
So far, the Stay-ers are holding firm. A decent speech in North Carolina on Friday was passed around by Biden’s handlers as the stirrings of a comeback. The party’s eminences grises—Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jim Clyburn, Steny Hoyer, and Pelosi herself—told reporters and the public on Friday that Biden should remain in place. If they don’t move, younger rank-and-file Dems will have less confidence to call for a change atop the ticket. A movement for change will have to come from those in danger of losing their seats and political careers; from the bottom up, in other words.
There are also the leaders of non-party organizations that actually do much of the work, like getting out the vote, that parties used to do: unions, Planned Parenthood and the like. My guess is those leaders won’t make any pro-replacement statements unless a host of leading Democratic officeholders ask them to, and even then, that would be an iffy proposition. But if their own members believe that Biden should step down—and surely, there are local unions and pro-choice chapters where that’s now a widely-held belief—they should certainly make themselves heard.
Finally, there’s Biden’s own circle; at its narrowest, Ted Kauffman, Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, and above all, his wife Jill. The first three, at least, will doubtless hear plenty from party leaders. But the crucial factor for them all will be their assessment of Biden’s legacy. The only blot on Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s stellar reputation is that she stayed so long on the Supreme Court that she was succeeded by a Trump nominee. That blot would pale, of course, alongside that of staying so long that you’re succeeded by Trump himself, and this time, a Trump determined to pull down Lord knows how many pillars of American democracy. Polls of the Democrats and interventions by party and major organizational leaders matter, but it’s hard to imagine Biden will even consider stepping down unless those closest to him make the case that staying will be such a negative that it will eclipse his remarkable successes as president.
Will calls for Biden to step down, and a scramble to anoint his successor, be fraught with electoral dangers? Of course they will. Will Biden staying at the top of the ticket be fraught with electoral dangers? Of course it will. My sense is that his staying is more dangerous than his going.
