The Bonfire of the Democrats

We are witnessing the makings of a bad mix of ambition, apathy, politics and greed.

We were really hoping to make today’s newsletter squarely about the implications of the Law of the Sea Treaty but, you know, this Biden storyline! And so, we’ve decided to dutifully keep covering it, with a mix of some fresh reporting, exclusive focus group data, and a poignant plea by Bill to the Democratic Party establishment. 

Happy Thursday! [It’s not Friday, right?]

(Composite / Photos: GettyImages / Shutterstock)

The Real Conspiracy of Democratic Elites 

Biden’s campaign team, the influencers on his payroll, and a small cadre of loud political obsessives have argued this past week that there is a cabal of hand-wringing elites engaged in a palace coup against the will of Democratic base voters. 

“I’m getting so frustrated by the elites — now I’m not talking about you guys — the elites in the party, ‘Oh, they know so much more.’ Any of these guys that don’t think I should run, run against me,” Biden said in an appearance on Morning Joe, the breakfast show of choice for coastal elites. 

Nancy Lee Grahn, a white actress on daytime soap operas, offered a representative sample of how that argument was playing out on social media. 

This frame—that there is a cloistered, privileged media class playing games with democracy for shits and giggles while the average Democrat pines for Dark Brandon—is a compelling one. That’s because it presents clear, digestible heroes (marginalized Americans worried about how Trump 2.0 could hurt them) and villains (know-it-all limousine liberal environmentalists who are personally protected from the Trumpian threat). 

But here’s the main problem with that story. It’s just not true. In fact, as Ezra Klein shared with me on yesterday’s podcast, the opposite is what’s taking place. 

The real conspiracy is that the Democratic elites are the ones protecting Biden. They don’t believe he can win and they are sanguine about what a second Trump term would look like. And their “stay the course” talking points are merely an attempt to manipulate the desperate and worried Democratic base voters who are willing to do whatever it takes to beat Trump. 

Here’s Klein: 

Klein: “You don't know how the party can replace him. You don't want to be blamed for any of this. You just stay quiet and walk the calm path to defeat. I think it is clear. …People are weighing this set of things. Like,‘it would be quite unpleasant for me personally to come out against the president as an elected official in an Democratic party and weighing what will happen if Donald Trump wins’ and saying, in a revealed preference way, ‘I can live with Donald Trump winning.’ And I've had people say that to me off the record, to be fair.

Tim Miller: Really? 

Klein: “… I’ve had top Democrats say to me basically something like, ‘I don’t know why all these Democrats who think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy are acting the way they are. But the reason I’m acting the way I am is because I don’t think that.’”

You can live with Trump?! Are you sure??? Like really, really sure? 

These fuckers are out there telling those of us who are desperately arguing that the Democrats should present a path to victory, that we are helping Trump by demanding this bare minimum. Meanwhile, in private, they have come to terms with Trump winning. 

Outrageous. 

Grassroots Democrats who genuinely care about beating Trump should demand more from those they have entrusted with the responsibility to represent the party and successfully beat the Trumpian threat that they have been assured is existential. 

—Tim Miller

Speaking of existential…

If I took a drink every time someone in one of my focus groups used the phrase “the lesser of two evils” to describe how they make their vote choice, I would die of alcohol poisoning. 

But there’s another thread that’s emerging: voters comparing Joe Biden to their aging relatives who won’t give up their car keys. That’s not an analogy you want to hear with democracy on the line. On Wednesday, these comparisons were more common than ever among the voters I talked to—a group made up of those who cast ballots for Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020 but were now undecided.

“I've seen firsthand how difficult it is to get, you know, mom's driver's license or aging parents’ license away from them,” one participant said. “What does that look like when it's the president of the United States?”

This is fundamental to understanding voters’ fears about Biden’s age. They are disinclined to give him the benefit of the doubt because many have seen this all before. They don’t want their octogenarian father (or grandfather) running the country, let alone driving a car.

Most of these voters believed Biden should leave the race: “Letting him continue to run is like not taking the keys away from your parents,” one said. “Anyone’s letting him run to this point is just being weak.”

—Sarah Longwell

How The Elites Should Act

I’m still recovering from venturing into Trump’s lizard brain yesterday, so this morning I won’t expostulate at length. I do want to make one point, building on the excellent items you’ve just read.

Sarah reports that the participants in this week’s focus groups of Clinton 2016 and Biden 2020 voters are very concerned about Biden’s age and his capacity to govern for another term.

As they should be. And as they have been for a long time.

There has always been wide support for the idea that Biden should be a one-term president. Biden himself said in March 2020 that he viewed himself as “a bridge, not anything else.” 

Obviously the evidence of Biden’s decline, in the debate two weeks ago and more broadly evident in recent months, only makes that sentiment more powerful. It’s reasonable for voters to want Biden to be a one-term president.

It’s not reasonable, on the other hand, to have Donald Trump as our next president. And a majority of Americans have also consistently balked at that, as well. There’s not as big a majority in resistance to that prospect as there should be, but still, it’s a majority.

So Americans don’t want Trump, and they think Biden is too old. They are right on both counts.

Which brings us to Tim’s piece. Most of the time, in a representative democracy, voters have no direct way to effectuate their wishes and to solve the problems they see. It is the job of elites—representative and responsive and responsible elites—to help do this.

Every society is going to have elites. In a liberal democracy, we try to structure things so that the power of those elites is checked. We try to see to it that elites are responsive to the broader public, that they can check and balance each other, and that, hopefully, they have a real sense of responsibility as well.

There is an organization that has been devised to try to tie together elites and the public in necessary and beneficial ways. That organization is the modern political party. Modern democracy depends on political parties to tie together the people and the elites, to ensure the circulation of elites, to arrange as much as possible for elites to be both responsive and responsible.

The failure of the Republican Party to do one of the main things a political party is supposed to do—to check truly malevolent demagogues—is a signal elite failure of the last decade. It’s been terrible to see for those of us who once had an attachment to and respect for that party. More important, it’s been terrible for the country.

Now it’s the Democratic Party that is being put to the test. Can Democratic elites get Joe Biden to step aside? Can they then arrange a process that allows for an open competition whose result will be responsive to public sentiment? This process will be somewhat more reminiscent of the old way convention delegates, influenced by party elites, selected presidential candidates. It produced some pretty good presidents!

This is the historic task of the elites of the Democratic Party today.

A Democratic Party that can rise to the occasion, and help arrange for Joe Biden to step aside in favor of a candidate able to win in 2024 and fit to serve for the next four years, would be a party whose voters and elites would be worthy of respect and support.

 —William Kristol

Catching up...

• Most Democrats want Biden to drop out, but overall race is static, poll finds: Washington Post

• Inflation Data Projected to Show Cooling Pressures: Wall Street Journal

• Biden’s High-Stakes Moment: Tonight’s NATO News Conference: New York Times

• It seems like Project 2025 is everywhere. But what is it? NPR

• A Trump Ally Is Training 75 Armed Citizens. Is That a Militia? New York Times

Quick Hits....

Sam Stein asks: Upset at Biden for Sticking It Out? Blame the Voters. Why the voters? The president’s ability to survive has little to do with the steps he’s taken. It’s because voters can be weird and inconsistent.

“About a third of [Barack] Obama ’08 voters thought he might have been born in a foreign country. They still voted for him,” said Stu Stevens, the longtime GOP political operative who, under Donald Trump, grew disaffected with his party. “How many 1992 [Bill] Clinton voters thought he was trustworthy and honest? How many 2024 voters think a convicted felon should be president?”

“We have a strange human ability to hold contradictory ideas and decide which to ignore,” he added. “People are weird and inconsistent.”

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