The Lesson Biden Didn’t Learn From 2020
Bowing out of a race to increase your odds of beating Donald Trump can work. The president, of all people, should know.
It’s NATO Week here in Washington, and the gang’s all here. Jens Stoltenberg threw out the first pitch at Nats Park yesterday. Some new faces, a lot of familiar ones, yet another crucial dimension for Biden to navigate, having quelled, for now, the potential for an intra-party revolt on Capitol Hill. Happy Tuesday.
Biden, a Beneficiary of the Party Elites, Now Bashes Them
Four years ago, at a crucial moment in the Democratic presidential primary, several candidates made a strategic decision to drop out and endorse Joe Biden. They did so because they figured, correctly, that he would give the party its best chance to defeat Donald Trump.
Now it’s Biden’s turn to reciprocate. Having aged and diminished, he’s no longer the strongest candidate to put up against Trump. He should withdraw from the race and yield to a better nominee. But he’s refusing to do so.
This is hypocritical and selfish. Let’s remind Biden of what others in his party did for him.
In February 2020, Biden’s candidacy was all but dead. He finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. Bernie Sanders tied for first in Iowa, won New Hampshire and Nevada, and was on his way to the nomination.
Then, in South Carolina, Biden thumped Sanders. Biden still trailed in the delegate count, but his win gave Democrats hope that in a one-on-one race, he could outrun his leftist counterpart, capture the nomination, and beat Trump.
So on March 2, just before Super Tuesday, two candidates who had done well in Iowa and New Hampshire—Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar—threw their support to Biden. They said they were doing it for the team.
Buttigieg said the goal of his campaign—“rallying the country together to defeat Donald Trump”—was “much bigger than me becoming president. And it is in the name of that very same goal that I’m delighted to endorse and support Joe Biden for president.”
Klobuchar praised Biden as a good soul who appreciated and would model this spirit of altruism. She said he would be “a president that understands that service is not about self-interest. It is about sacrifice.”
Two days later, a third candidate, Michael Bloomberg, bowed out and joined the Biden bandwagon. “I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it,” said Bloomberg.
Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg were right. By yielding to Biden, they helped their party take down Trump.
Four years later, the situation has reversed. Biden is the one who should yield. Instead, he’s digging in.
On Monday, in a phone call to Morning Joe, Biden insisted, “All the data shows that the average Democrat out there who voted—14 million of them that voted for me—still want me to be the nominee.” Biden claimed that after the debate, he had gone around the country, talked with voters, and confirmed that “there wasn’t any slippage at all” in his support.
That’s not true. In several post-debate polls, the percentage of Democrats who say that Biden should still be the nominee, that he should not drop out, or that the party has a better chance with him than with an alternative nominee has fallen below 50 percent. In a Data for Progress poll, the percentage of Democratic likely voters who said Biden “should remain as the Democratic nominee” fell from 63 to 51. That 51 percent matches the share of Democratic registered voters who said in a post-debate Suffolk poll that the party should not replace Biden. In CNN’s latest survey, 56 percent of Democrats said the party has a better chance of winning if it replaces Biden.
On Morning Joe, Biden declared, “I am the best candidate to beat Donald Trump in 2024.” But the numbers don’t support that boast. In post-debate poll matchups against Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris does about as well as Biden does: 4 points better than Biden in a CNN poll, equally well in surveys by Yahoo News and Data for Progress, 1 point worse in a Reuters-Ipsos poll, and 2 points worse in a HarrisX poll.
None of this has chastened the president. On Monday, in a letter to congressional Democrats, he gloated that in this year’s primaries, “Only three people chose to challenge me. One fared so badly that he left the primaries to run as an independent. Another attacked me for being too old and was soundly defeated.” On Morning Joe, Biden taunted Democrats who questioned his fitness: “Any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me. Go ahead, announce. Announce for president. Challenge me at the convention.”
Biden dismissed his doubters as “elites in the party.” That’s quite a turnabout from a man who got where he is through the acquiescence and support of party elites four years ago.
This is not the way to end an admired career. Biden needs to find within himself some of the humility and grace his opponents showed him in 2020. He has to recognize that his party, once again, must unite behind its strongest possible nominee. And he has to accept that this time, it isn’t him.
—William Saletan
For This NATO Summit, Let’s Think About What Next Year’s Might Look Like
The NATO summit convenes today here in Washington, D.C., tying up traffic and providing an excellent excuse to work from home.
But it should also provide an excellent reminder of what’s at stake this year. For the 2024 election is not only about the well-being of our democracy. It’s also about preserving and strengthening the U.S-led liberal international order that’s brought great benefits to us, and to the world, since World War II.
The mood of the summit should be pretty upbeat. There will be a new British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, leading a party with a commitment to liberal democracy and international responsibility that has come back from the authoritarian brink just a few years ago. French President Emmanuel Macron will be here, leading a nation whose citizens have just rejected the authoritarian temptation. Germany’s leaders have, if somewhat haltingly, begun to step up to meet the challenges in the post February 24, 2022 world.
And the good news isn’t just from Western Europe. Above all, the brave Ukrainians have managed to hold the line these last few months, even though they need and deserve more support from the rest of us. The two new NATO members, Sweden and Finland, will be there; put them together with impressive leaders from the Baltic states and much of Central and Eastern Europe, and one can really say that the current alliance is stronger and more vigorous than the old. And those younger members will push to ensure that the summiteers don’t spend most of their time waxing nostalgic about NATO’s first 75 years, but focused on the present, and the future.
Still, a specter will be haunting this NATO summit: that of Donald Trump. Our European allies are in relatively good shape. We are the problem. There is a pretty good chance that Trump will be our next president, and that, unlike in his first term, he won’t be deterred from an America First Agenda which would cripple the alliance and make the world less safe and less free.
Which brings us back to President Biden. He’s been, on the whole, a good foreign policy president, and we expect him to host a successful summit over these next couple of days.
His commitment to our allies and alliances has been a hallmark of his first term in office. But, as is increasingly clear, he’s not up to a second term, and he’s unlikely to win one.
And that is a threat not only to his legacy, but to our well-being.
So, he should choose to step aside as a candidate. He can do so and then bless a process that could energize and ultimately unite the anti-Trump, pro-democracy coalition behind a winning next generation candidate.
James Carville lays out in today’s New York Times a version of how an open competition for the Democratic nomination might work, along lines similar to helpful suggestions from Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks and venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith, and commentator Ezra Klein.
These are all versions of a ‘blitz primary’, featuring a somewhat structured competition for the delegates whom President Biden will have released, culminating in a choice at the convention. This exercise would flip the script. No longer would we face a long and grim slog to very likely defeat. We could have an exciting and reinvigorating exercise in democracy that would produce a next generation ticket with a decent chance of victory.
Then former President Biden can attend next year’s NATO summit as a respected guest, an elder statesman, rather than watching bitterly and helplessly from afar as Donald Trump goes about destroying everything he’s worked for and achieved.
—William Kristol
Catching up . . .
James Carville: Biden Won’t Win. Democrats Need a Plan. Here’s One. New York Times.
4 dead after Beryl landfall, millions without power. Accuweather.
House Freedom Caucus ousts Warren Davidson. Politico.
"They rolled us. That's what they did." A member of the RNC Platform Committee isn’t happy with the ALL CAPS platform/rant. Just what did she expect?
Quick Hits:
Did ‘the media’ hide Biden’s aging?
Don’t buy that narrative, explains Cathy Young, because reporting on Biden’s mental acuity wasn’t hard to find:
Was the coverage good enough? Obviously not, as many journalists now acknowledge. But the reasons are many and complicated, from the Biden staff’s aggressive access-policing (notwithstanding Bill Ackman’s overwrought fantasies, news organizations like the New York Times complained vociferously about lack of access) to fear of reader backlash to, yes, fear of helping elect Trump, as former Times executive editor Jill Abramson suggested to Semafor. And to claim that the coverage was nonexistent or barely existent simply doesn’t correspond with the facts.
J.D. Vance has a beard problem.
Marc Caputo wonders: can a VP aspirant with a beard find acceptance from a candidate who hates facial hair?
So why not shave his face? It’s probably out of the question for Vance because of how young he is and looks. The Ohio senator turns 40 on August 2 and would be the third-youngest vice president to serve. But Trump wants someone who is experienced—or at least looks experienced. And “without the beard, Vance looks like he’s 12,” said another Trump adviser.
Let’s not test this theory…
Will Saletan explains: Yes, they’d vote for him if he shot someone on 5th Avenue.
Why would some Republicans be more willing to elect a felon to the presidency than to a city council? The obvious answer is that these respondents aren’t focusing on which office is more important. They’re focusing on justifying a vote for Trump.
Cheap Shots:
As a black man who’s been on the planet for 53 years, I know America well enough to know she faith people have in her has a potential candidate will slip away if she’s the actual candidate. And that’s among actual democrats….let alone independents and former traditional republicans.
Agree that Harris should be out front a lot more. And Biden should be running on the strength of his entire administration vs the clown show Trump had in office.
I also think publicly trying to force Joe out is like announcing to your dad’s friends, family and on social media that you want to take his keys away. That should have all been done privately.
And so today is one more day, even here, when our nation does not focus upon why DJT should not be elected as president, why he is incompetent for the job, how Project 2025 stands to impact our nation and millions of people within it in profound and unprecedented ways, and other issues that should be the talking points in what may well become the most important election in American history. Instead we get wall-to-wall coverage of the Stay Joe or Go Joe Show.
Mommy, make it stop.
DJT is happy. The GOP is happy. MAGA is happy. Who had that on their Bingo card at the beginning of the year? Be ready for them to rub it in, gleefully, next week in Milwaukee. It might be a good time to turn off your devices and TV sets and go on that summer vacation trip that your family wants to take. Otherwise the discussion continues, along the lines of: have the Democrats hit rock bottom yet? And if so, have they procured a shovel and begun to dig?