Will Biden Hear the People Sing?
The lesson Biden should take from France.
Good news is so rare. To have two pieces of good news in one weekend is even rarer.
In Iran, the more reformist candidate, Masoud Pezeshkian, won the runoff presidential election against the hardliner Saeed Jalili. This probably won’t make much difference in Iran’s relations with the United States or its neighbors—that’s up to the Supreme Leader, not the president—but the fact that he was allowed to win might be a sign that the regime felt the need to accommodate the displeasure of the people. Which is good!
In France, the far-right National Rally Party underperformed, winning fewer seats in the parliament than the New Popular Front bloc on the left and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc.
To voters in both Iran and France, we say merci. Happy Monday.
Au Revoir, Biden?
Vive la France!
Yesterday les citoyens of France did the right thing. But they were able to do so because les politiciens had done the right thing.
In the second round of voting for the National Assembly, the center and the left came together to resoundingly defeat Marine Le Pen’s party. A week before, after the first round of voting, the heirs of Vichy had seemed poised to win a majority, or at least a plurality, of the seats.
But Le Pen’s party fell to third place Sunday. Across the country, centrist and leftist candidates who had finished third in the first round of voting, but who had done well enough to qualify for the next round, chose to step aside to allow the anti-authoritarian vote to consolidate.
So the politicians stepped aside and the voters came through, delivering a significant defeat to an authoritarian, extremist, and Putin-sympathetic Right.
A friend emailed shortly after the results came in:
A lesson from the European elections seems to be that it’s a tough year for incumbents but tougher still for those seen as extremists . . .
On Biden, I have completely come around to your long-held view that he must step aside. The bottom line is that we need to present a candidate who can at once turn out and absorb the full breadth and range of the anti-Trump majority—which does exist.
Sadly for Biden, concerns about his ability to serve a second term with vigor and acuity block his ability to coalesce that anti-Trump majority. Nor do I think he can overcome this age problem. The debate put through the kiln the soft clay that he can not serve out a full second term.
I think it will take at least a full week to bring Biden around . . .
I don’t know whether it will take a week, or a bit more or less time, to bring Biden around. I know that it ought to happen, and I think it will.
Like all such crises, this one moves in zigs and zags, so one moment there are excessive expectations that “the dam is about to break!”, then a few hours later a mini-rebound to a temporary sense that “Biden may succeed in hanging on!”
But since the debate ten days ago, the movement has fundamentally been in one direction—away from Biden staying on as the Democratic nominee.
And the most significant event since the debate—Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos last Friday night—confirms the judgment that Biden should go.
Three exchanges were particularly notable:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Have you had the specific cognitive tests, and have you had a neurologist, a specialist, do an examination?
PRESIDENT BIDEN: No. No one said I had to. No one said. They said I’m good.
Who is the “they” who’ve said President Biden is “good”? Every neurologist and aging specialist I know of has serious doubts. They saw what we saw at the debate. At the very least, they all think he needs an examination. His failure to volunteer for one speaks volumes.
And then there was this exchange:
STEPHANOPOULOS: If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?
BIDEN: It depends on—on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that.
This is not just confidence, or even stubbornness, on the part of the president. This is arrogance. It is an unwillingness to be open to evidence, or to counsel from friends and allies. It is not the answer a democratic politician should offer at a time of crisis.
And at the end of the interview:
STEPHANOPOULOS: And if you stay in and Trump is elected and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?
BIDEN: I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.
But that’s not what this is about.
Biden’s answer is the answer a third-place finisher could have given in France as his reason to stay in. It wouldn’t have been the right answer in France. It’s not the right answer in the United States.
“What this is about” isn’t one man doing his best. What this is about is defeating Donald Trump—who, by the way, would be more dangerous as president than Le Pen’s party assuming the prime minister’s office would have been in France. And who is a far more dangerous threat to the fate of democracy and liberty across the globe.
Stopping Trump and Trumpism is what this is about.
And in this respect the basic facts are clearer than ever: Biden isn’t up to being president for the next four years. A majority of the American people see that, and won’t vote for that person. That’s why, as David Axerod put it Saturday, “Biden is likely headed for a landslide defeat to a lawless and unpopular former president.”
Another Democrat would have a fighting chance to turn things around and to defeat Trump.
But to have that chance, the current leader of the Democratic party will have to do what French politicians just did. He will have to put his own self-regard aside, and step aside.
—William Kristol
The Impending Feeding Frenzy
The zigs and zags mentioned above should be apparent this week on Capitol Hill, where Congress is rushing to wrap up most business so its members can go to party conventions and campaign. This is the first time many lawmakers are in town since Biden’s abysmal debate performance. And they’re going to be hounded about it.
A handful have already called on the president to step down while others have vigorously defended him. During a leadership call Sunday afternoon, at least four high-ranking Democrats expressed their desire to see Biden step aside, including several House committee ranking members.
But members of Congress function a lot more efficiently when they’re together. And they absolutely hate it when they are repeatedly asked a question they don’t want to answer. I’ve seen it in past news cycles like the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, whether they stood by former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) after lewd photos and accounts of his behavior surfaced, and many more.
The combination of in-person strategy sessions and ceaseless murmurs of reporters will likely result in one of two outcomes: Democrats will harden their position behind Biden and chart a path forward—or an avalanche of them will call on the president to pass the torch. We’re currently at nine or so Dems calling for Biden to step aside. We’re putting the over-under for that number at twenty by Wednesday. What are you taking?
—Joe Perticone
Nevertheless, He Persisted
Even if that number of House Dems exceeds twenty, it may not matter, at least in the short run.
Biden confidants say they believe the campaign’s current posture—that the president can survive this crisis—is sincere. They think Team Biden is being bolstered by the negative reaction Democratic base voters had to calls for the president to step aside.
One Democratic House member told The Bulwark that of his interactions with voters over the July 4th break, 80 percent wanted Biden to stick it out while 20 percent wanted him to go. But the more important element, the member added, was who made up the 80 percent: “Black women are strongest for Joe.” That’s the bedrock constituency of the party.
As noted above, these storylines are dynamic and can/will change, especially when members return. But for those Democrats who had been hopeful for a semi-clean resolution involving Biden backing out, the weekend brought little relief. The hope now, as one of those Democrats said, is that Biden will make it through this week’s NATO summit before (with the encouragement of leading party members) reevaluating his situation.
—Sam Stein
Catching up . . .
Nine House Democrats call for Biden to step aside as he seeks to energize his campaign: Washington Post
Hurricane Beryl Makes Landfall in Texas as a Category 1 Storm: New York Times
U.S. Allies Are Already Worried About Another Round of Trump: Atlantic
Russia strikes Kyiv children’s hospital in huge missile attack: Politico
Israeli Troops Return to Gaza City Months After Leaving: Wall Street Journal
Quick Hits: Trump v. Kamala and Trump v. United States
A.B. Stoddard makes the case for Democrats to move against Biden hard and fast. As the old saying says, what must be done eventually should be done immediately.
The Biden family needs to realize, and Democrats need to emphasize, that his decision to step aside allows the party to run on the Biden record, and preserves his legacy. A refusal to withdraw, while Democrats flee an isolated campaign and candidate, will destroy democracy as well as Biden’s legacy.
As soon as Biden delivers this address to the nation, the Democratic party narrative can shift immediately to focus enthusiastically on turning the page to the next generation of leadership that is coming—whether it is uniting behind Vice President Kamala Harris or heading to an open primary.
Mona Charen makes a similar point, but is—shockingly!—optimistic. Kind of.
Some Biden stalwarts object that Kamala Harris is just as unpopular as the president. That is true, but it’s also the case that she hasn’t had many opportunities to improve her standing with voters, and many just think she hasn’t done anything as vice president (which is really part of the job description). If she were suddenly thrust into the spotlight as the nominee, she might rise to the occasion and enjoy a surge of support.
Similarly, many worry that an open convention would devolve into chaos. It might. But it seems equally likely that it would be the first political convention in decades to generate a true contest and accordingly intense public interest.
Jill Lawrence is also relatively bullish on Harris’s potential at the top of the ticket:
I see no way Trump would agree to another debate if his punching bag this time is a 59-year-old former prosecutor who was elected to the Senate the same year he won the White House, and who tracked his misadventures—from his dealings with Vladimir Putin to the “perfect” phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky that led to his first impeachment—as a member of the Judiciary, Homeland Security, and Intelligence committees. Harris is all too familiar with Trump’s record, his impeachments, the legal cases against him, and his constant falsehoods about Biden, Harris, and the state of the nation.
Looking beyond the presidential race, Philip Allen Lacovara, who argued United States v. Nixon fifty years ago today, contrasts that presidential immunity case with Trump v. United States.
We now know that all of the justices recognized the importance of speaking unanimously. Chief Justice Warren Burger was “inspired” by what his predecessor, Earl Warren, had been able to accomplish in achieving unanimity in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark case condemning racial segregation. As Justice Harry Blackmun later explained, “all justices wanted to have a unanimous opinion but not at a cost of something that they felt strongly about.” There were some profound differences, but in a spirit of cooperation, “compromise was struck to get unanimity.”
By contrast, the pro-Trump majority was in no mood to compromise, insisting on handing Trump such a sweeping victory that even Justice Barrett could not bring herself to join in the part of the decision that prevents prosecutors from using “official” acts by a miscreant president in pursuing concededly prosecutable “private” crimes. The arrogant message of judicial realpolitik is clear: All we need is five votes to impose our view of the Constitution. Period.
Cheap Shots
You people are getting as bad as the mainstream press. Biden had a cognitive test four months ago. Why do you keep reporting like this which seems to me to be bad faith. I agree Joe’s not what he used to be but he’s in the best position to fight Trump. What kind of a mess will it be if he steps aside. A circular firing squad.
Another Biden hit piece by Bill. Using a third party dropping out in favor of a major party candidate to a major candidate of a major party to drop out for an unknown is comparing apples to oranges. Your GOP/conservative pretzel logic is showing.