Enough With the Biden Psychodrama
This isn’t about you, Joe.
JOE BIDEN AND A SMALL GROUP of his protectors want to make this all about them.
They want Biden to be able to exit in a “dignified” way. They are annoyed at the “elites” who underestimated or sidelined him in the past and, as Biden himself said, “think they know so much more.” They are mad that he’s being “railroaded” by aides to Barack Obama—and maybe Obama himself. They “DETEST” the fact that people are downtalking him to the media.
It’s a bunch of self-indulgent malarkey.
All of this stuff might make vaguely interesting fodder for a lightly watched limited Netflix series about the Bidens in 2027 (assuming Obama doesn’t undermine that one, too). But it is completely irrelevant to the responsibility with which they have been charged.
This campaign is not about Joe Biden, the man. It is not about Joe Biden’s feelings. And it sure as shit is not about Joe Biden’s legacy, something nobody in this country gives more than two minutes’ thought to besides people with the last name Biden, a coterie of pop historians whose opinion the president cares about, Sam Stein, and a handful of social media influencers that the campaign has paid to care. (And, either way, his legacy is consumed by this humiliating defeat if he doesn’t change course.)
This campaign is about whether Biden and his team are able to successfully take on Donald Trump. The ability to do that is what got Biden the presidency. And the inability to do it again is why two-thirds of the Democratic party want him to drop out.
I want the Biden team to understand something.
Every minute that goes by that is spent fretting over Joe Biden’s emotional state rather than how to move forward with a candidate who is able to defeat Donald Trump is a betrayal of everyone who came together in 2020 to make his presidency happen.
The vast majority of the 81 million people who turned out to support their candidate in 2020 did so not because they had some special affinity for his narrative arc but because they wanted to cast a ballot for someone, anyone, who was able to build a large enough coalition to give an Aussie-style booting to the most noxious and polarizing person in all of American public life.
And at the end of a contentious primary practical, earnest Democrats determined that Joe Biden was the big-ass boot they needed. No more, no less.
THOSE OF US WHO SUPPORTED Biden in 2020 had hoped that that booting would be the last one required—that we wouldn’t have Donald Trump to kick around anymore. Unfortunately that did not turn out to be the case.
The bitch is back.
As such, the 2024 election is once again about galvanizing a coalition to beat Donald Trump. And since it comes after the horrors of January 6th—and with the Supreme Court codifying broad immunity for whoever occupies the Oval Office—that task is even more serious this time. It’s about the protection of American democracy. It’s about whether we are able to beat back an aspiring strongman who has already instigated an assault on our Capitol in an attempt to stay in power against the will of the people.
But more than that, the 2024 election is about choosing a president who cares about the people he serves rather than his desire to keep himself out of jail.
It’s not about Joe Biden’s feelings.
Before the debate, the Biden high command demonstrated it understood all this.
Biden’s team made the preservation of democracy central to this election. His closest adviser, Mike Donilon, said as much in an interview with the New Yorker earlier this year.
They also were aware that a huge swath of the country is skeptical that Biden is up to the task. After all, the Biden campaign proposed the earliest televised presidential debate in American history precisely to demonstrate that. They wanted to use it to turn the focus of this election onto Trump’s lies and his unfitness.
It was the biggest tactical catastrophe in modern campaign history.
They did not merely fail at their stated objective, but the candidate’s complete inability to deliver coherent arguments meant that this gambit boomeranged back on them. After such a performance it became impossible for the Biden campaign to focus on the stakes or threat of Trump because the entire country was now consumed with questions about Joe Biden.
IN THE FALLOUT FROM THAT disaster, Biden has done nothing to alleviate those concerns. He has stumbled in interviews and failed to enunciate a compelling anti-Trump contrast message unless it’s written into the teleprompter. Surveys asking Americans about his fitness for office continue to get worse and Trump’s lead in the head-to-head continues to expand.
When Lester Holt asked Biden if he would accept another opportunity to debate Trump to demonstrate that the first night had been a fluke, he declined, clearly demonstrating a lack of confidence in his abilities to prosecute the case.
As this slow-motion calamity has unfolded, Biden and those around him have let their egos and their desire to protect the boss’s image disorient their own stated mission. They have obsessed over the affronts that he suffered in 1987 and 2016 and 2020, repeating partially deluded narratives about this political history as if that is at all relevant to his current struggles.
As a result, they have completely lost the plot that they had drafted for this campaign.
At one point, the Biden team said that they wanted to run a campaign that contrasted “a candidate who cares about you and a candidate who cares about himself. . . . All roads lead back to that core framing.”
What happened to that?!
Lately, they have been nearly Trumpian in making themselves rather than the country the center of attention. Instead of focusing on the country’s problems, they have become consumed with the psychodrama surrounding their boss. They have engaged in a vigorous battle not against their opponent but against allies who they believe aren’t giving him the respect to which he is entitled.
It’s wrong. It’s misguided. It’s enraging.
The American presidency is not an honorary position passed down to the successor in a bloodline. It is not the rightful reward of a Great Man. It is not granted to a person chosen in communion with God. It is not, as Tucker Carlson suggested at the Republican convention, a position that is earned by the nation’s “bravest man.”
It is a powerful job that We the People entrust to one of our fellow citizens—with the expectation that that person will carry out their duties honorably, judiciously, and in accordance with the promises made to us.
We have no obligation to blow up the country to give someone who’s “earned it” one last run around the track. It is not the Oscars lifetime achievement award. It is not a farewell tour for an aging athlete who shared their talents with a city and deserves some flowers from adoring fans.
We have no obligation to give a president a valedictory moment. That individual’s personal journey is irrelevant to the concerns of voters.
We do not owe the president anything. But the president owes their best to us.
Joe Biden accomplished an immensely important, historic task. He beat Donald Trump. He gave us four years without that cancer in the Oval Office and with significant legislative accomplishments as well. But it is clear now he is no longer capable of giving us anything close to his best.
It is well past time for all this to end. The melodrama has gone on far too long.
President Biden should pass the torch, do everything in his power to help his successor finish the job, and worry about his legacy next January when he hands the keys to the White House to a younger successor.
Anyone not dedicating all of his or her efforts to that end is doing a disservice to all of us.