Quick update. A reminder today from Ezra Klein at NYT that a “mini-primary” would be good for the party. Here’s what I just posted at Facebook:
If Jim Clyburn, the black SC congressman who delivered the nomination to Biden in 2020, thinks a "mini-primary" would be good for the party, then all the hand-wringing about displacing Kamala Harris is moot. Thanks to Ezra Klein, as usual, for getting it right.
The NYT link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/07/opinion/biden-jim-clyburn-democrats.html
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Here’s what I’ve been thinking about Joe Biden’s candidacy since my panic set in on Thursday, June 27, at 9:06 PM EST.
Yesterday I was at a 4th of July picnic with some old and new friends, a lovely occasion coarsened by my introduction of this fraught issue, and soon silenced by the consensus that Harris can’t win, the implication being that to remove old Joe from the ticket is to set the stage for the catastrophe of Trump’s victory in November. I’m not so sure, because the polling shows that any Democrat, even the unknowns, do better in a matchup with Trump than Biden.
At any rate two things are clear by now. First, Biden’s staff and Democratic Party leadership are complicit in a massive cover-up of his decrepitude which is worse than the crime, as per the logic of presidential scandal since Watergate. Second, the cover-up has passed the point of denial on the proverbial dial of terminal diagnosis: it has become magical thinking, the kind of behavior and utterance that, on display in adults, we rightly call delusional—or demented.
In chronological order as posted at Facebook:
June 27, 10:08 PM:
Did Joe Biden have a stroke? The way he is destroying sentences makes Trump sound almost coherent. I have never seen such an awful debate performance in my life, and I'm old enough to remember watching the first one. Even when he's not speaking, Joe looks slightly slack-jawed. It's a disaster. And there is no leadership in the Democratic Party to repair this damage. How do we get Gretchen Witmer and Josh Shapiro to head the ticket come November?
June 28, 6:26 AM:
Joe Biden had a clear path to winning the debate last night, so clear that an average 8th-grader could have walked it. There were only 4 issues he had to address, and he could have turned every question into an answer to one of them: 1) the economy/inflation, 2) immigration/crime, 3) reproductive rights, 4) fitness for office. The short answers are (1) Covid, supply chains, corporate greed; (2) The border is a mess, Trump didn't want it fixed, I have done what I can without Congress, and crime is down; (3) Trump is proud to have revoked a constitutional right, turning abortion back to the states is like popular sovereignty ca. 1854, it actually makes things worse by endangering all forms of civil liberty and returning us to a moment when females were under male domination: it's the Slave Power, stupid; 4) Trump is unfit for office because (a) he won't cede power in a fair election, (b) he incited a violent insurrection, (c) he is a known rapist and a convicted felon who is willing to do anything to protect himself against the law.
June 28, 2:39 PM:
Now the question is the practical one: how to get a new ticket on the state ballots? There's an answer already in the Zoom plans for Ohio, which were made to put Biden on the ballot before the convention in view of a state-specific deadline: get the ticket together everywhere in this manner so that the convention has the candidates in place for their big speeches in Chicago. To get this done, Joe has to step aside, free the delegates, open up the nominating process NOW, and hold a "primary" debate if necessary. Harris can participate with the President's blessing and/or endorsement, but sooner than later the Obamas must step up to endorse some combination of Witmer/Shapiro.
July 1 [6 days ago according to Facebook calculations]:
The panic on both sides of the argument has subsided; mine has, anyway, as I see (faint) evidence of rational calculation from the DNC and from people once close to Biden. You can't force him offstage, but he might be open to an entreaty that lets him focus on his legacy. To wit: Joe, you beat Trump, and you returned us to a social-democratic policy path that doesn't forget the "cultural" issues of race, gender, sexuality, and basic human rights (as per Roe). If you leave the stage now, Democratic tickets will be fortified down ballot nationwide by fresh faces, and new answers to pressing questions. Kamala Harris must be part of the plan if not on the ticket--her endorsement, at minimum, is essential. You roll it out in mid-to-late July, and if you can, you couch the decision in terms of a diagnosis: that will blunt the charge of lying about your condition (you just received this), and will also open up the party to a set of candidates that might well but doesn't necessarily include Harris.
July 5:
It seems almost too obvious by now. If Biden is right, that this is an existential choice not between two candidates but between a republic that might be bent to democratic ends and an oligarchy that will surely bend to the whims of the wealthy, then he has no choice--because he now stands no chance of beating a sociopath who would pimp out his own daughter to win the approval of wealthy men, no matter how ill-gotten their gains. Last week the DNC insiders told us to wait on the polls, thereby hedging their bets. Well, the polls now show that any Democrat, even the unknowns, do better than or as well as Biden. The bet is off. It's time for a Democrat, any Democrat, to say to Trump and his bloodthirsty constituency, which now includes the SCOTUS majority: "You do not have the right to do what is wrong."
The link to The Intercept’s aggregation of polls on alternatives to Biden:
https://theintercept.com/2024/07/02/biden-polls-democrats-alternative-candidates/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=The%20Intercept%20Newsletter&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0rE43KQddZjyalnckiiVVC63_r5qC-gBUkXqPeVQ8k1v2av--fuLInT4Q_aem_7U6r14VtIu0GiWrDMs8uXA
July 6:
The tide has not only turned, it's now a tsunami. The outright denial of the obvious reality doesn't even qualify as a coverup anymore—it's not defiant, it's pathetic, like the magical thinking of a frightened child, or the abject gibbering of a senescent grandparent. I didn't think Biden would hold out this long against overwhelming evidence, but that opinion presumed that his faculties were relatively undiminished. The presumption was clearly mistaken. Joe has got to go, but he cannot admit it. Someone will have to on his behalf, and it won't be a member of his family or staff--they're too complicit in the collective delusion.
The link to Axios and its deep background reporting:
https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-46a9c630-3b3d-11ef-9fca-8d7505586fb1.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3cf-f6pgvmYiK8p-g_LR-mnbUPWmg5UpHvErs4CBj0KYR0jBUcblucyhU_aem_KVVr-Kz1ovRmAHJ9BFmRKw
The worm turns. It's always amazing how quickly the conversation changes. Six months from now the talk may be of tariffs, immigration restriction, and Chinese exclusion. Depression of 1893 anyone?
I'm unconvinced, though you make the most compelling case I've observed to date, and in your always-gratifying style.
I remain here: "The Beowulfian Case for Keeping Biden"
http://disq.us/t/4phbbmn