Kyle Mazza/SOPA Images/Sipa USA via AP Images
President Joe Biden gestures to the crowd as he delivers remarks at a campaign rally at Sherman Middle School in Madison, Wisconsin, July 5, 2024.
The movement to persuade Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race is failing, and it’s failing in a very predictable way. Though polling has consistently registered massive public concern with Biden’s age and his ability to withstand the rigors of a high-stakes campaign, let alone another term in office until he turns 86 years old, the loudest voices trying to force him out of the race are elites: major media columnists and wealthy donors. They lack democratic legitimacy and the public’s respect, even as they are expressing the popular will. And they have given Biden the opportunity to parry their attacks simply by employing the politics of resentment.
“I’m getting so frustrated by the elites—I’m not talking about you guys—the elites in the party who … oh, they know so much more,” Biden told Morning Joe in a Monday morning phone interview. A letter from Biden to congressional Democrats expressed contempt for the idea that these elites would throw out the votes of 14 million primary voters. (The idea that there was anything approaching a real primary, of course, is questionable.) “I feel a deep obligation to the faith and the trust the voters of the Democratic Party have placed in me to run this year. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned.”
This is Biden tapping into his familiar underdog persona, someone who has always been looked down upon in Washington, counted out, seen as a joke. The man has been at the pinnacle of the party for over 50 years, so this whole concept seems absurd, but I have no doubt he believes it. And when pitted against the donor class, regardless of his advanced age, he looks better.
Americans generally don’t like it when money is used as a weapon to squeeze someone into making a decision. That’s especially true when those in control of the money cannon seem to have terrible ideas. The co-founder of a new PAC that would provide seed money for a replacement candidate is a crypto billionaire. Donors have frantically called JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to see if he would agree to run. One of the craziest proposals maybe in political history, co-authored by a venture capitalist donor, calls for a “blitz primary” that includes weekly candidate forums where Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Tim McGraw, and Stephen Curry would moderate, with associated “content” produced by Jeffrey Katzenberg. It’s almost unbelievable that, in trying to prod an 81-year-old who had trouble maintaining a consistent thought a couple of weeks ago, these elites are the ones who look painfully out of touch with the American voter.
Meanwhile, nobody from the Congressional Black Caucus has called on Biden to end his re-election pursuit, and the chair, Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV), endorsed him. The Democratic leadership is behind the president. Unions have been mute. Biden has fallen backwards into promoting himself as a beer-track candidate as a means of political survival.
This process is playing out as an internecine battle among elites, where the public isn’t really at the table.
The problem here, as Hamilton Nolan perceptively points out, is that this process is playing out as an internecine battle among elites, where the public isn’t really at the table. The Democratic Party now functions through foundation-funded advocacy organizations, and without the kind of self-funded mass membership groups that had a genuine voice with real power when the labor and civil rights movements were strong. If you read the polls, the interests of the public and the donor class are actually aligned in favor of Biden’s withdrawal. But given who’s making that case, it sure doesn’t feel that way, nor does it feel particularly small-d democratic. That makes it easy for Biden to fall back on the will of “the people” who voted in Democratic Potemkin primaries, because outside of that, the people are voiceless.
There is one group trying to change this. A very new organization (it literally started last Friday afternoon) founded by a handful of Democratic organizers called Pass the Torch is trying to motivate ordinary Democrats to speak out about the need for a stronger ticket to defeat Donald Trump. They have a petition at their website making the case for Biden to enable a transition to a new set of leaders, and pledging to unite behind that new nominee and contribute to their success with money and volunteer hours.
The effort is mostly targeted at Democratic leaders who have the most authority to persuade Biden to leave the race. According to Pass the Torch’s numbers, 11 members of Congress have explicitly asked Biden to exit, and another 25 “have expressed grave concerns.” House Democrats are holding a members-only meeting about the matter in Washington today. The group has also had conversations with convention delegates, who will have the ultimate task of choosing a replacement nominee if it comes to that.
But an effort like Pass the Torch will really only derive legitimacy from having a large number of rank-and-file voices behind it. I talked to one of the organizers behind it, who told me that, without much publicity or money as of yet, Pass the Torch has generated several thousand signatures on its petition.
The group is not identifying one successor to Biden or any process to make that choice. Their focus is really to bring it back to what Democratic voters actually want to see. “Fifty million people saw the debate,” the organizer said. “There is vast grassroots energy for this call. We’re grassroots organizers, and we want to make sure they have a voice in this process.”
One such voice managed to get on stage at last Friday’s Biden event in Wisconsin, holding a “Pass the torch, Joe” sign. Organizers were coy about whether they had anything to do with that.
I don’t know if Pass the Torch will be able to succeed, especially given the timing. If Biden makes it through this week, next week is the Republican convention and it starts to feel like he can run out the clock. But if there is to be a change, it’s a hell of a lot better to do it this way, through the expressed desire of a large number of card-carrying Democrats, not a scattered group of billionaires who presume themselves to be political marketing geniuses.
