Do Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden?
Ezra Klein makes a compelling case.
In the episode of his eponymous podcast that dropped this morning, Ezra Klein forcefully argues, “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden.” Uncharacteristically, the show is a 25-minute monologue rather than an interview.
Given the thesis, it’s a bit surprising that Klein leads with perhaps the best argument I’ve seen that Biden has been an excellent President.
My heart breaks a bit for Joe Biden. This is a man who has been running for president since he was young. He wins the presidency, finally, unexpectedly, when he’s old. And that age brought him wisdom. It brought an openness that hadn’t always been there in him. He’s governed as a throwback to a time before “I alone can fix it,” a time when presidents were party leaders, coalition builders.
Biden has held together a Democratic Party that could easily have splintered. Think back to the 2020 campaign, when he beat Bernie Sanders, when he beat Elizabeth Warren, when his victory was seen as, was in reality, the moderate wing triumphing over the progressive wing, the establishment over the insurgents.
But instead of making them bend the knee, instead of acting as a victor, Biden acted as a leader. He partnered with Bernie Sanders. He built the unity task forces. He integrated Warren’s and Sanders’s ideas and staff into not just his campaign but also his administration.
I had a conversation recently with Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the House progressive caucus, and I asked her why the Democratic Party hadn’t ruptured the way Republicans did. She pointed me back to that moment. Biden, she said, made this “huge attempt to pull the Democratic Party back together before the 2020 election in a way I’ve really never seen before.”
And it worked. Democrats had 50 votes in the Senate. Fifty votes that stretched from Bernie Sanders on the left all the way to Joe Manchin on the right. Biden and Chuck Schumer, they often could not lose even one of those votes, and at crucial moments, they didn’t.
With that almost-impossible-to-hold-together coalition, the Biden administration and congressional Democrats passed a series of bills — the bipartisan infrastructure deal, the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act — that will make this a decade of infrastructure and invention. A decade of building, of decarbonizing, of researching. They expanded the Affordable Care Act, and it worked — more than 21 million people signed up for the A.C.A. last year, a record. They did what Democrats have promised to do forever and took at least the first steps toward letting Medicare negotiate drug prices.
And the Biden team, they said they were going to run the economy hot, that at long last, they were going to prioritize full employment, and they did. And then inflation shot up. Not just here but in Europe, in Canada, pretty much everywhere. The pandemic had twisted global supply chains and then the economy had reopened, and people desperate to live again took their pandemic savings and spent. And the Biden team, in partnership with Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, got the rate of inflation back down, and we are still beneath 4 percent unemployment.
And I don’t want to just skip over that accomplishment. Most economists said that could not be done. The overwhelming consensus was we were headed for a recession, that the so-called soft landing was a fantasy. It got mocked as “immaculate disinflation.” But that is what happened. We didn’t have a recession. We are still seeing strong wage gains for the poorest Americans. Inequality is down. Growth is quick. America is far stronger economically right now than Europe, than Canada, than China. You want to be us.
That’s tightly written and yet more powerful in Klein’s voice. He genuinely likes Biden.
He follows this with a recap of the charges that Biden is too old, the consensus opinion of those—including those not in the Biden camp—who have met with him privately that he continues to be extremely well-engaged and up to the job. Klein fully believes this to be true.
So, what’s the problem, then?
This is the question Democrats keep wanting to answer, the question the Biden administration keeps pretending only to hear: Can Biden do the job of president? But that is not the question of the 2024 campaign. The insistence that Biden is capable of being president is being used to shut down discussion of whether he’s capable of running for president.
I’ve had my own journey on this. I’ve written a number of columns about how Biden keeps proving pundits wrong, about how he’s proved me wrong. He won in 2020 despite plenty of naysayers. The Democrats won in 2022, defying predictions. I had, in 2022, been planning to write a column after the midterms saying there should be a primary because Democrats need to see how strong of a campaigner Biden still was. The test needed to be run. But when they overperformed, that drained all interest among the major possible candidates in running. That test wasn’t going to happen. But still, I thought, Biden might surprise again. I’d grown wary of underestimating him.
We had to wait till this year — till now, really — to see Biden even begin to show what he’d be like on the campaign trail. And what I think we’re seeing is that he is not up for this. He is not the campaigner he was, even five years ago. That’s not insider reporting on my part. Go watch a speech he gave in Pennsylvania, kicking off his campaign in 2019. And then go watch the speech he gave last month, in Valley Forge, kicking off his election campaign. No comparison here. Both speeches are on YouTube, and you can see it. The way he moves, the energy in his voice. The Democrats denying decline are only fooling themselves.
Again, this is more powerful when read than it is on the page. And the audio includes clips of the two Biden speeches. There’s simply no denying that Biden was off-the-charts more energetic in the 2019 speech.
Klein argues that his campaign team clearly recognizes this and is doing all they can to hide Biden. That they declined the invitation for an interview during the Super Bowl is the biggest indicator yet that they don’t see the candidate as an asset.
Biden has done fewer interviews than any recent president, and it’s not close. By this point in their presidencies, Barack Obama had given more than 400 interviews and Trump had given more than 300. Biden has given fewer than 100. And a bunch of them are softball interviews — he’ll go on Conan O’Brien’s podcast, or Jay Shetty’s mindfulness podcast. The Biden team says this is a strategy, that they need apolitical voters, the ones who are not listening to political media. But one, this strategy isn’t working — Biden is down, not up. And two, no one really buys this argument. I don’t buy this argument. This isn’t a strategy chosen from a full universe of options. This is a strategic adaptation to Biden’s perceived limits as a candidate. And what’s worse, it may be a wise one.
I want to say this clearly: I like Biden. I think he’s been a good president. I think he is a good president. I don’t like having this conversation. And I know a lot of liberals, a lot of Democrats are going to be furious at me for this show.
But to say this is a media invention, that people are worried about Biden’s age because the media keeps telling them to be worried about Biden’s age? If you have really convinced yourself of that, in your heart of hearts, I almost don’t know what to tell you. In poll after poll, 70 percent to 80 percent of voters are worried about his age. This is not a thing people need the media to see. It is right in front of them, and it is also shaping how Biden and his campaign are acting.
Democrats keep telling themselves, when they look at the polls, that voters will come back to Biden when the campaign starts in earnest and they begin seeing more of Trump, when they have to take what he is and what it would mean for him to return seriously.
But that is going to go both ways. When the campaign begins in earnest, they will also see much more of Joe Biden. People who barely pay attention to him now, they will be watching his speeches. They will see him on the news constantly. Will they actually like what they see? Will it comfort them?
That was why that news conference mattered. That news conference had a point. It had a purpose. The purpose was to reassure voters of Biden’s cognitive fitness, particularly his memory. And Biden couldn’t do that, not for one night, not for fewer than 15 minutes. And these kinds of gaffes have become commonplace for him. He recently said he’d been speaking to the former French president Francois Mitterrand when he meant Emmanuel Macron. He said he’d been talking to the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl when he meant Angela Merkel.
None of these matter much on their own. The human mind just does this. But it does it more as you get older. And they do matter collectively. Voters believe Biden is too old for the job he seeks. He needs to persuade them otherwise, and he is failing at that task — arguably the central task of his re-election campaign.
And that can become a self-fulfilling cycle. His staff knows that news conference was a disaster. So how will they respond? What will they do now? They will hold him back from aggressive campaigning even more, from unscripted situations. They will try to make doubly sure that it doesn’t happen again. But they need a candidate — Democrats need a candidate — who can aggressively campaign, because again — and I cannot emphasize this enough — they are currently losing.
Klein continues:
The presidency is a performance. You are not just making decisions, you are also acting out the things people want to believe about their president — that the president is in command, strong, energetic, compassionate, thoughtful, that they don’t need to worry about all that is happening in the world, because the president has it all under control.
Whether it is true that Biden has it all under control, it is not true that he seems like he does. Some political strategists I know think that’s why his poll numbers are low. That even when good things happen, people don’t really think he did them. One was telling me that what worries him most about Biden is how stable his approval rating is — it doesn’t really go up or down. Inflation has gone down a lot in recent months. People feel a lot better about the economy. You can see that in consumer sentiment data. But Biden’s approval rating, it has not gone up. His performance on Ukraine did not make it go up. The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS Act did not make it go up. To this strategist, it looked like a lot of Americans just don’t give Biden credit for things even when he deserves them. And Biden isn’t now a capable or aggressive enough campaigner to win that credit for himself.
Crucially, Klein dismisses pretty much every argument for why Biden will win re-election despite all this:
The arguments I see even some smart Democrats making so they don’t have to look at this directly are self-defeating. The one I hear most often is that Trump is also old. He’s 77. He also mixes up names — he recently called Nancy Pelosi Nikki Haley. He sometimes speaks in gibberish. And it’s all true. But that is a reason to nominate a candidate who can exploit the fact that Trump is old and confused. The point is not to give Trump an even match. The point is to beat Trump.
Another argument I see is that this is ageism. This is an unfair thing to point out about Biden. It is age discrimination and, I have actually seen people make this argument, age discrimination is illegal in the workplace. But it is not illegal in the electorate. If the voters are ageist and Biden loses because of it, there is no recourse. You cannot sue the voters for age discrimination.
And then there’s the argument you’ve heard on my podcast. An argument I’ve made before. Biden doesn’t look like a strong candidate, but Democrats keep on winning. Biden won in 2020. Democrats won in 2022. They’ve been winning special elections in 2023. They just won George Santos’s seat in New York. There’s an anti-MAGA majority in this country and they will come out to stop Trump. And I think that might be true. I still think Biden might win against Trump, even with all I’ve said. It’s just that there’s a very good chance he might lose. Maybe even better than even odds. And Trump is dangerous. I want better odds than that.
I think one reason Democrats react so defensively to critiques of Biden is they’ve come to a kind of fatalism. They believe it is too late to do anything else. And if it is too late to do anything else, then to talk about Biden’s age is to contribute to Donald Trump’s victory.
Klein calls this last notion “absurd.” He notes that it’s only February and that, if Biden can be persuaded to decline a run for a second term, there’s plenty of time to find an alternative that provides a stronger contrast to Trump. More on that in a bit.
He eventually circles back to more counterarguments:
Yes, the Democratic Party has been winning elections recently. But it is winning those elections in part because it takes candidate recruitment seriously. That was true in 2020. Biden wasn’t the candidate that set the base’s heart aflutter, but he seemed like the candidate with the best shot at winning. So Democrats did the strategic thing and picked him. And they won. In 2022, Democrats carefully chose candidates who fit their districts, who fit their states while Republicans chose MAGA-soaked extremists. And that is why those Democrats won.
The lesson here is not that Democrats don’t need to think hard about who they run in elections. It’s that they do need to think hard about who they run in elections. And they have been. They need to be strategic, not sentimental. And they have been. Because the alternative is Donald Trump. And Donald Trump is dangerous. And right now, Donald Trump is ahead.
I have this nightmare that Trump wins in 2024. And then in 2025 and 2026, out come the campaign tell-all books, and they’re full of emails and WhatsApp messages between Biden staffers and Democratic leaders, where they’re all saying to each other, this is a disaster, he’s not going to win this, I can’t bear to watch this speech, we’re going to lose. But they didn’t say any of it publicly, they didn’t do anything, because it was too dangerous for their careers, or too uncomfortable given their loyalty to Biden.
As powerful as I find all of that, I find his solution underwhelming. He calls for an open convention in which the delegates, released from their pledge to support Biden, choose from among those who present themselves as alternatives.
If Harris cannot convince delegates that she has the best shot at victory, she should not and probably would not be chosen. And I don’t think that would rip the party apart. There is a ton of talent in the Democratic Party right now: Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Jared Polis, Gavin Newsom, Raphael Warnock, Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Ro Khanna, Pete Buttigieg, Gina Raimondo, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Murphy, Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker — the list goes on.
Some of them would make a run at the nomination. They would give speeches at the convention, and people would actually pay attention. The whole country would be watching the Democratic convention, and probably quite a bit happening in the run-up to it, and seeing what this murderer’s row of political talent could actually do. And then some ticket would be chosen based on how those people did.
Could it go badly? Sure. But that doesn’t mean it will go badly. It could make the Democrats into the most exciting political show on earth. And over there on the other side will be Trump getting nominated and a who’s who of MAGA types slavering over his leadership. The best of the Democratic Party against the worst of the Republican Party. A party that actually listened to the voters against a party that denies the outcome of the elections. A party that did something different over a party that has again nominated a threat to democracy who has never — not once — won the popular vote in a general election.
Klein admits this overview is thin and promises to devote a whole future show to the topic. He rightly notes that, until 1968, this was how American political parties chose their candidates. But that was more than half a century ago. I’m not sure that would fly with the electorate.
Nor do I think many of the names on the list would increase Democrats’ chances of beating Trump.
Still, Klein crystallizes the problem better than I have seen elsewhere: the issue isn’t whether Biden is up to another four years as President but whether he’s capable of energizing voters to give him that opportunity. The evidence is mounting that he is not.
Well, I’m convinced =3
@James, in case Stormy’s remark doesn’t make it apparent, there’s no blogpost here :).
I can’t see a link to a story.
Not sure why it posted prematurely!
Of course there’s an alternative to Biden.
I nominate Johnny Unbeatable, and will hold my breath until someone else walks through Madden’s Create-A-Political-Candidate feature to finish constructing him.
Until this happens, Biden didn’t even try!
While I could be persuaded to go back to conventions as a system, doing it now (mid-stream by only one of the parties) has a far higher probability of being an utter disaster than it does it producing a winning alternative.
I agree with Klein about Biden’s campaign energy potential. I am concerned that it will be a detriment, but I am also less convinced of the power of campaign events than Klein’s thesis would suggest (but I say that I am open to contrary evidence on that count).
If Biden has a real health crisis, a pivot in this direction may well work (and it is actually something that could always happen, it is just that the odds are higher now).
BTW, I agree with him that the age issue is not a media creation. But I will note that I think he is downplaying the degree to which it is being emphasized and underscored by the media on a daily basis.
No. Do Democrats have any option other than Biden, better or worse? No.
Kathy’s First Law: There is always someone better.
Not to be confused with Kathy’s First Law: There is always something better.
And the mess of the 1968 Democratic convention was the impetus that led to the system being changed to its present form.
Really think it is too late and party is committed to Biden. This would have only worked if he voluntarily stepped down. Will only be acceptable now if there were a major health issue.
Steve
To some extent I feel the same way about this discussion as I feel about responding to the various trumpers on this forum: it’s not just a waste of time, it actually works against us. Is Biden old? Sure. Has he taken actions as President that indicates he is slipping? No. Quite the opposite. He has done a f*cking stellar job. By playing into the hands of bad actors and yammering constantly amongst ourselves and in public that the potential or the perception is the problem is yet another descent into the swift-boat-but-her-emails self destruction. The best tactical answer to some horse-race source-based “reporter” asking the age question is “Nonsense. Biden has been doing a f*cking incredible job. And Trump is a f*cking disaster of a drama queen. Do you have a question about something else? Because if not you’re just wasting everyone’s time in your pursuit of clicks.”
Most people l know can’t wait to vote against the yam. I would be more worried about Biden’s age if Trump wasn’t the monstrous dumpster fire he is.
I am one of those voters who always vote for the “lesser of two evils”. Actually , it’s more like voting for the Dudley Doright Party as opposed to the Snidely Whiplash Party.
Women’s rights, strengthening public education, environmental protection and universal healthcare have always been my top priorities. Obviously, my wishes have never been fulfilled by any of the presidents in my lifetime, but at least democrats don’t want to tie Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks like republicans.
I saw the headline for Klein’s podcast yesterday and chose not to listen, do Dems have a better candidate than Biden, yes, does that matter, no. The only person that will displace Biden is Biden himself.
That conservative monster Maureen Dowd wrote last weekend-
@becca: Also, what markedman said. All the coulda-shoulda-woulda bs is helpful only to Trump at this point. I quit reading Klein years ago because I thought he was egotistical and therefore pliable. The names Klein dropped as alternatives to Biden only reinforced my feeling he is just gumming up the works for his own personal gain.
I don‘t see why Biden needs to step aside in order for the Democrats to make this play. The Dem party is strong and on the right side of the issues that matter to most voters, while the GOP is a dumpster fire. That’s the story of the 2024 election whether Biden is the head of the party or not. If the American electorate can’t make that distinction, they deserve the end of democracy that would come.
@Bill Jempty: Dowd is what happens if you took the superficiality of SNL, made it consistently unfunny, and placed it inside someone who sees herself as a modern Mencken.
In a word: Yawn.
Biden is running for re-election and the only reason to keep talking about who should replace him is the desperate need clicks.
At this point you’re debating whether or not America should have embraced the metric system back when Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act in 1975. Strong arguments to be made on both sides, but entirely useless except to waste time. We didn’t adopt the metric system and there’s nothing left to talk about.
Move on.
I don’t find an argument marred by deliberate inaccuracies as persuasive as it might have been otherwise.
Wrong. They don’t see this media environment as an asset, because outlets like the paper Klein works for are incapable of admitting and correcting their editorial failures that abet fascist creep: their mendacious bothsidesm, fear of Republican criticism, corporate biases, normalization of Trump’s moral and cognitive failures, lack of diversity in leadership, etc.
As with Hillary in 2016, the press is determined to portray Democrats in the most negative light possible — while letting Trump skate for raping a woman, inciting a terror attack on the nation’s Capitol, and other transgressions far worse than being old, as both candidates are.
Ezra Klein is writing long thinkpieces about Biden’s age instead of about Trump saying he’d encourage Putin to wage war on Europe. This is the media deficiency Biden’s team is also avoiding. That Klein is blind to this, pouting only to the candidate’s flaws, illustrate the point.
Why would Biden cater to journalists who refuse to tell the truth about Democrats? To claim Democrats think age concerns are just an “invention” of the media is dishonest. To insinuate Democratic election wins have nothing to do with Biden is dishonest, and desperate.
The same out-of-touch pundifry that told us Gavin Newsom was in trouble of being recalled, that voters cared far more about inflation/crime than about Trump’s attacks on democracy, and that Democrats were going to lose 30-50 House seats in the Big 2022 Red Wave are now swearing it’s unlikely voters will be energized pick Biden over Trump. Where is “mounting evidence” that they won’t be wrong yet again? The polling firms that had them telling us five days ago that the NY-3 special was going to be a super duper close squeaker?
The pundit class needs to get out of its wealthy white male bubble. Really. They don’t understand the Democratic electorate and don’t have a clue why Democrats keep winning elections.
When the whole Special Counsel kerfuffle came up earlier this week, I had this deja vu feeling about the early round of Comey and Clinton’s emails, which appeared to have been fully tamped down by September. But then the last minute re-opening was announced and I could just feel the air come out of the ball.
Here, the Counsel’s report came out now and can be managed, but if Biden has a Mitch McConnell moment at the end of October, it would have an even stronger negative impact.
The Dem’s have an off ramp until the convention, as Klein describes. But once Harris is solidified as the VP, there is no getting around her if Biden trips (perhaps literally). And, while I think she would be a competent president and orders of magnitude better than Trump, she is not a vote-getter and frankly people don’t really see past the actual candidate in an election.
I think the Dems will stick with Biden. I am ok with that, but if you see me holding my breath till November, bring oxygen.
You know, I could be persuaded that an Open Convention would be anergizing and spectacular for Democrats. Plus, it might upend some of the pre-planned talking points that Republicans have set up for Biden, catch them off balance for a moment. Ezra enumerates a few possibilities, 60% of which can be easily written off.
Kamala Harris … Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Jared Polis, Gavin Newsom, Raphael Warnock, Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Ro Khanna, Pete Buttigieg, Gina Raimondo, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Murphy, Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker
Why not a Whitmer/Booker, or Whitmer/Shapiro ticket? Shore up the Michigan and Pennsylvania purple state situations?
It’s early and it’s fun to speculate. In reality, the Convention is not that far off now. But who knows what the news cycle will bring us in the coming 16 weeks, or even in the coming 16 hours.?
Buckle up.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Klein knows this, he’s a very smart guy. That he chose to misrepresent the position anyway to portray Biden supporters as naïve exemplifies why Democrats and Biden’s team are increasingly hostile to the media on this and other issues.
It’s a tradition for pundits to hope for a contested convention every election season, and I will grudgingly applaud Klein for managing to do the punditry tradition despite an uncontested primary.
Next week, I expect “is Biden switching VPs?” — if Trump is switching VPs, surely Biden should consider it! Maybe a unity ticket to oppose Trumpism. Biden/Pence 2024!
@Gustopher: Sorkinism. Remember the contested convention in The West Wing?
That’s the bottom line, isn’t it, and should be the end of all this. Incumbency is a huge advantage, and you go to war with the incumbent you have.
Biden is going to enter the convention with about 90% of the primary vote and essentially all the delegates. I have a high opinion of Klein. But all he’s done here is hand the GOPs, “Even the liberal Ezra Klein thinks Biden’s too old.”
When you’ve lost Ezra Klein…
Biden’s age is a political problem that can’t be solved by anyone but Biden. His campaign’s idea is to try to manage his public appearances to minimize senior moments. Advocates like many in the comments here and elsewhere want to try to bury the issue via distraction (he’s doing a great job, nothing to see here), bullying (talking about it is helping Trump, is ageist, etc.). Others want to scream at clouds, aka complain that the media is covering it or covering it “too much” (as if there is an objective amount).
What I think most of the partisan Democrat regulars here need to understand is that none of these will work with the marginal, disengaged, swing voters in the battleground states that Biden needs to win. And the numbers that Klein (and Ruy Teixeira) cite don’t lie – they are bad. Biden is in a very bad position considering his accomplishments, the improving economy, and the new normal as people grow accustomed to the higher prices of inflation. They should be improving and they aren’t. His negatives remain as bad as Trump’s were. He’s underwater by significant margins in most of the swing states which, let me remind you, he won by very small margins in 2020.
The only way I see out of this is for Biden to stop playing it safe, get aggressive, and get out there. He’s the only one who can turn this around. All the people who keep claiming that Biden is fine, that he is sharp, that he doesn’t have any serious issues – including the people in this comment section – should be strongly pushing for him to get out there and prove it. That many of you are not and are instead using those other rhetorical arguments speaks volumes.
If you are right, and the narrative about Biden’s age is wrong, then he can prove it, recover, and beat Trump. If you are wrong, however, and he’s really too old and can’t hack it on the campaign trail and has a Howard Dean-esque senior moment that implodes his campaign, well, then maybe that will finally convince people that a plan B is necessary.
Either way, the sooner we all find out which is true, the better.
I don’t particularly begrudge Klein for suggesting an alternative. But look at those names! The general public might know two of them, tops. Heck, I read the NYT Briefing every morning and follow this blog, and couldn’t tell you much of anything about half those people. And of the ones that the national electorate has heard of (Newsom and Osacio-Cortez, _maybe_), do they have a remotely positive view of them right now?
I was told at an early age that a large amount of people vote based on name recognition. It just doesn’t seem like a great idea to drop a surprise unknown just a few months before the election. Yeah, sure, Ro Khanna for president. Honestly don’t know if that’s a man or woman, much less if they have an ounce of experience relevant for the “toughest” job on Earth. When people who don’t pay attention to politics walk into that booth, and that’s a huge percentage of people, they’re not voting for Khanna, for God’s sake.
@Andy:
What do you think happened with Howard Dean? I know that we have very different mindsets and media habits, so I’m genuinely curious.
I think Dean was speaking to the crowd, the microphone picked it up oddly, and Fox replayed the clip hundreds of times saying it was proof Dean was crazy, pushing it into the real media and then destroying an antiwar campaign during an unpopular war. I see it as media creating a narrative out of nearly nothing, no longer reporting but putting a massive finger on the scale. A plan repeated with Clinton’s emails.
I see it as akin to yellow journalism just making shit up like the late 1800s and early 1900s, but a bit more sophisticated and using modern tool and techniques, with a very slight basis in something that looks like reality.
But I’m really curious as to what you think about him and what happened.
It’s also why I think that Democrats need to run George Clooney — policies and character are irrelevant, we need someone who is charming at all times and can’t turn it off.
Yes, because nothing says privilege like white male journalists and pundits loosing their $h!t over the incumbent President deliberately chosen by the DNCs most committed and reliable demographic. FDR died in office. Spare me the age concern.
The bottom line is Biden was never the 1st choice of the white male left or right center punditry. And, but for the coloreds propelling him to the nomination, he would have never been President and, frankly, Trump probably wins reelection.
So yes, flush the candidate picked by the most loyal DNC voters and see where that gets you. The time to build a stable of candidates was 7 years ago…not today. Rolling with Biden IS the smart play…he got 80 million votes and has dominated two primaries. Voters concern for his age is not translating into fewer lever pulls for him. Shorter: They don’t care.
And Further, I cosign any President making a deliberate attempt to be less in the limelight. National Tragedies, SuperBowls, Championship Team invites. WTF are we doing here?. POTUS is not an entertainer…despite how much voters and media want them to be.
I wouldn’t do a SuperBowl interview either. To discuss more of the same fodder on Cable news? It’s a joke and POTUS is a serious job. I’m a little tired of the self important media implying they are the gateway to speak to the people. They aren’t. Less is more.
Voters know Biden is old and have factored it into their calculus. Find something else to educate us on.
Why not discuss an alternative to Kamala Harris?
@Andy: “All the people who keep claiming that Biden is fine, that he is sharp, that he doesn’t have any serious issues – including the people in this comment section – should be strongly pushing for him to get out there and prove it. That many of you are not and are instead using those other rhetorical arguments speaks volumes.”
Wait — you’re reading volumes into the fact that I, for instance, am not strongly pushing for him to get out there and prove it?
Before you get eyestrain from all that close reading, may I ask exactly how I am supposed to be strongly pushing the president of the United States to do anything? I write television and teach writing. My sole political donation ever was ten bucks to Howard Dean. I not only don’t have 110K to give his campaign, I don’t really even have $1.10.
So given all that, when it comes to pushing, do you think I should call Biden directly, or just shoot him a quick text? Maybe download Tiktok and do a quick video — I think he’s on there now.
This is a comment board filled with people interested in politics who have no access to people in power. Given what you’ve said about your past, I’d say you have a much clearer path to a heart-to-heart with Biden than I do.
So maybe climb down off the high horse. People here have opinions — even opinions that are different from yours. The fact that we can’t actually manifest our desires into reality doesn’t mean we don’t really mean what we say.
@Jim Brown 32: Thank you.
@Gustopher:
I think you’re reading too much into me bringing Dean up. I thought the whole thing was weird, personally. But politics ain’t beanbag, and you can’t control the media. How I view what happened to Dean doesn’t matter to my point, regardless of the interpretation of that kerfuffle.
My point is that Biden has to take risks to change the now-established view among the vast majority of Americans that he’s too old to serve another term. The risk in doing that, as I said, is that Biden is actually too old or will falter on the campaign and prove he is too old in the eyes of Americans. That could manifest in any number of ways including something weird like the Dean scream. Again, politics ain’t beanbag and you can’t control the media. What’s the alternative, more of the current strategy?
@Kingdaddy: Because Harris’ electoral role is to ensure Black turnout, for which see @Jim Brown 32:. Who adds,
To the disgust of the supposedly liberal MSM punditry.
@Kingdaddy:
This is the old “assume a can opener” joke.
@wr:
I spoke generally and honestly did not have you in my mind when I wrote my comment, based mostly on the gist of convos going back many threads on this topic. I guess I should have spelled that out.
To spell it out for you, I mean in whatever way works for you, but in terms of this specific forum, primarily in the form of what people write and advocate for. I have no idea what actions you all are taking in the real world, but I can read what you write here and see when people make arguments that Biden is fine but not take the next logical step to have him get out more to prove it.
I’m not here to tell you what to do. You’re mistaken in thinking that the point of my comment was a call to action to get you to do something. I will say what I’ve always said which is actions speak much louder than words.
Nonsense, you have access to people in power, among other means to have influence, even if it is tiny in the grand scheme of things. All of us who spend time here could be spending that time on political advocacy of various kinds or good works and deeds in the real world, and we choose not to for our own reasons. Do not lie to yourself and suggest you haven’t made a choice.
Well, people here have strident opinions and I freely admit that I am one of those people. You certainly do not shy away from throwing sharp elbows and you are, frankly, one of the people here who is among the first to accuse me of bad intentions on a frequent basis, so it’s amusing to have you now chide me for being on a high horse.
Here, I am merely making my argument for what I think Biden should do and explaining why I think most of the arguments made by others here about Biden’s age are wrong. I’ll concede that me calling out “many of you” was a bit of a dick move and, in hindsight, weakened what I was trying to say.
@Andy: Well, we agree on what Biden should do. That’s really the bottom line. And I’ve probably accused you of bad faith when there was none, so if you have finally succumbed to it here then I guess we’re even. Further deponent sayeth not.
I don’t understand how one can go from “There is a better option than Biden” and then end with:
Well, OK if no one increases our odds of winning, what’s the point?
@Jim Brown 32:
Especially when they have proven they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’d be willing to listen to these guys were they often correct. Why should Democrats listen to them when their instincts keep proving to be trash?
Ruy Teixeira, for example, swore Democrats were dooooooooomed in 2022. Didn’t happen. He swore Democrats were losing black and Latino voters. Didn’t happen. He insists Democrats are toxic, yet Democrats keep winning elections.
Bewildered at that, these media bros twist themselves into knots explaining away their opinion demerits. Anything to avoid admitting what’s actually happening: they live in a groupthink bubble of men who look alike — a demographic hostile to Democrats — so they are hopelessly out-of-touch with the Democratic electorate and clueless as to what’s motivating them.
And oh how the goalposts move. First it was Democrats are only winning because of low turnout. In normal times, Republican voters’ reluctance to show up and vote for a party led by Donald Trump would signal Trump is toxic and Democrats are ready to rally. But not for people who have to spin everything against Democrats.
Now they’re alternating between desperate claims that Democrats are not actually winning at all a la Klein (all these elections must just be a wag the dog psy op) to delusional insistence Democratic wins say absolutely nothing about Biden’s chances.
If Democrats were losing these elections, there is zero chance Ezra Klein, Maureen Dowd, and Ruy Teixiera would not be shouting that said results were all about Joe Biden. But when votes won’t play along with your lazy punditry, just pick up the goalpost, move it, and hope no one notices.
Clownery. Biden’s team is handling the media’s clownery the way Hillary should have in 2015-2016. Good for them.
@Franklin:
A lot of people probably get Ro Khanna (a guy, btw) mixed up with Rihanna.
@wr:
Awesome! Glad we agree on something! Hope you (and everyone else) has a good weekend!
Biden remains old.
Trump is old, demented, a business failure, and my objective analysis isn’t yet halfway complete but is enough.
In short, Ezra Klein, suck it.
@DK:
This caught my eye. I don’t follow the trends closely, but I have heard the opposite of what you say. Not trusting myself, I did a quick search and found this recent Gallup report.
Democrats Lose Ground With Black and Hispanic Adults
To be clear, I’m not trying to pick a fight or do a gotcha or anything like that. You know way more about this stuff than I do. So I’m wondering if you were referring to something different or making a different point.
@Bill Jempty: Hillary vs Trump is nowhere comparable to Biden vs Trump. Hillary went into the race after decades of right wingers slandering her and her husband. On top of that Hillary had the audacity to be female and that turned off a whole slew of voters. Meanwhile Trump went into the election with the myth that he was an incredibly successful rich business man. A self made pulled himself up by his boot straps man. I know people who voted against Hillary just because of the decades of right wing talking points. Also the one dude I stopped talking to years ago who refused to vote for a female because they are “too emotional”. Of the people I know who voted Trump because they bought into the bullshit and/or because they were voting against Hillary ALL of them refuse to vote for Trump again. After getting a taste for what Trump really is they couldn’t keep their eyes closed any longer. The rest of the Trump voters I know are full on part of the cult of personality and don’t care.
So yeah it’s not really comparable beyond the fact that some people voted against Hillary because she’s a Clinton and/or she’s female. A few women I know have been rooting for Nikki because they are convinced we’ll see a gay president before we see a female president…
@Andy:
Oh you mean corporate media manufactured bullshittery then. Well they are trying hard at that hence the “he’s old” shit while the other candidate is nearly as old but also keeps calling people the wrong name and getting basic shit wrong. Then there’s the OMG INFLATION PRICES INFLATION stuff they keep pushing..
You know maybe part of the problem is kind of obvious now? The democratic party could nominate Jesus and the corporate media would be pulling the same shit and his numbers would be underwater quickly…
@Mimai:
No worries.
Yes. As usual, I’m referring to the difference between punditry and polling vs what’s happening when voters actually vote.
After all the durm and strang in 2022 about Democrats losing ground with Hispanic voters, and LatinX, and Republicans alleged emerging multicultural working class coalition, when you counted the actual votes when you counted the actual votes Democrats won about 2/3 of the Hispanic vote. Per usual.
Did any of the pundits then come back and say, “Whoops we wrong, and we should stop making loud, overly-stark declarations about Democrats and Hispanic/black voters based on small margin-of-error movement in polling months and months before the actual vote?”
Nope. Biased and having learned nothing — and because much of the media is arrogant and incapable of self-reflection — here they are nine months before the 2024 with the same lazy, overheated headlines based on cherry-picked polls. If pundits spend as much time questioning their own cognitive deficiencies as they do Trump’s and Biden’s, they might actually improve their crappy analysis.
@DK:
Now I can say “gotcha”….but in a way that feels positive. Thanks for clarifying.
@Matt:
She. Had. An. Email. Server.
@Matt:
Oh but claiming polls show Democrats are in trouble and NY-3 is gonna be a squeaker because Biden and border is much sexier than including the nuanced whole truth: early vote totals + polling margin-of-error spreads pointed to the possibility of a comfortable Democratic win.
And, of course, an 8-point swing district win in a presidential election year says absolutely nothing good for Biden’s party in November, unlike a 0.01% loss, which would have proven Democrats are dooooooomed and Biden is a too-old albatross. Duh.
@Matt:
Boy, howdy that took a hit this afternoon.
@DK:
What’s lazy punditry is simply extrapolating from Democratic strength in 2022 and a handful of special elections, ignoring polling and Biden’s popularity numbers, and assuming that good Democratic performance in those earlier contests will magically carry over to Biden.
2024 will be decided by a handful of states thanks to the EC – Most likely PA, WI, MI, GA, NV, and AZ. Shifts in national voting patterns among demographic groups don’t matter much unless they are seen in those states and perhaps a couple of others.
Biden came within about 50k votes total of losing in 2020 in a few of those key states. He is in a much weaker position this time around in those same states. And he is already starting at net -4 electoral votes compared to 2020, thanks to redistricting – that’s equivalent to 2/3 of Nevada’s total EV’s.
The lessons of 2022, whatever one thinks they are, have limited utility for predicting the outcome of a Presidential contest in 2024. Different elections, different electorates, different stakes, different candidates.
I’m not going to pretend to know how things will shake out, especially once the race really gets going, but there is genuine cause for serious concern. People are not making this up. Biden is currently losing and is doing badly by pretty much every metric we have available, and it would be foolish to simply assume that is all BS and it will reverse because some people’s predictions in 2022 were wrong.
Biden will run.
Biden will win.
Biden will retire one year into his presidency.
Kamala Harris will be our first Indian/Jamaican/Black/Woman president.
Liz Cheney will be her V.P.
MAGA heads will explode.
I look forward to this.
@Andy:
Trump lost the election in 2020 and is in a much weaker position in 2024 — starting with their inability to fundraiser and turn out voters.
Says who? You don’t know this. Democratic ability to turnout their voters well turn out to have a lot of predictive utility.
This is also all motivated reasoning and strawman argument. Democrats are not saying concerns about the candidates’ ages are “all made up” and “all BS.” I can only assume that people like you and Ezra kind keep pushing this fake strawman argument because you have no rejoinder to the arguments actually being made.
Biden is losing to Trump by pretty much every metric, really? Name every single one of those metrics. I’ll wait, because the race looks like an unpredictable toss up to me.
Are Trump and Republicans raising more money than Biden and Democrats? No. Are there zero polls showing Biden with a lead? No. Are Democratic voters less energized than Republican voters? No.
Biden is currently losing according to the metrics that you and Ruy Teiziera to cherry pick to reinforce your biases. Metrics that contradict what you prefer to believe, like Democratic overperformance in dozens and dozens of special elections that you dishonestly wave away as a mere “handful.” Punditry doesn’t get lazier than that.
Your extrapolating from “a handful” of polls, ignoring actual election results, and assuming neck-and-neck polls from months and months and months before the vote magically doom Biden but not Trump is not less foolish than anyone else’s prognostication, given that none of us can predict the future.
Just because people look at the same metrics you look at and reach different conclusions does not mean that you are rational and unbiased, while everyone else is a fool. The intimation otherwise smells like egomania.
@Andy: “Get Biden Out There!” may be a great idea, but (he says in entire unknowing conjecture) maybe we are going to save this aging candidate for his “moments.” I would rest this athlete until (a) convention week and (b) October. I have seen countless runners burn up out of the gate, marathoners hitting the wall in the 18th mile (cough, cough, looks at other people), underdogs dominating the top seed in the first quarter of a game the underdogs ultimately lose by 20 or more.
No one will remember Biden dominating the month of April, but if you can float him till July, trot him out for proof at the convention and bench him till October. Running a smart game, playing rope-a-dope with the guy who will chase every jab and run intermediate laps around the canvas just for the applause, Biden only has to be a closer. Letting Trump wear out his welcome for months could be a winning strategy.
@Andy: a Howard Dean-esque senior moment that implodes his campaign
@Gustopher: I think Dean was speaking to the crowd, the microphone picked it up oddly
Funny story. The microphone worked perfectly. According to people who were there, you could hardly hear Dean over the noise of the crowd, even when he was yelling as loud as he could.
Dean was using a new generation unidirectional microphone that largely eliminated the side noise from the crowd. This was then to be mixed by the sound engineer to create the final product with a balance between the voice and the background noise. However, by only listening to Dean’s microphone, what you would hear would be just his screaming over the crowd but with very little background noise.
Send that into the modern media environment, and you have the Dean Scream.
@anjin-san: Yeah she should of never allowed her email server to kill every American in benghazi!!
Or are you actually being serious?