Must Biden Go? Pro and Con

Welcome to beg to Beg to Differ. The Bulwark’ weekly roundtable discussion, featuring civil conversation across the political spectrum. We range from center left to center right. I’m Mona Charen, syndicated columnist and Policy editor of the Bulwark, and I’m joined by our regulars Bill Galston of the brookings institution in the Wall Street Journal. Damon Lincoln, who writes the sub stack newsletter notes from the middle ground, and Linda Chavez of the Niskannon Center.

And Linda is joining us today even though she is not feeling well, she’s down with COVID for the second time but has managed to get here anyway which we appreciate. Our special guest this week is Corey Shockey, director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute. So welcome one and all. Corey, I’m so glad that you were able to make it this week because we need a refresher on foreign and defense policy, and particularly, I want to hear your views on What’s going on with senator Tommy Tuberville? As of now, the nominations of three hundred and one senior military leaders, including the commandant of the Marine Corps and others, have been held up because Senator Tuberville does not approve of the defense department policy on giving liberal leave to people to seek abortion services in states other than the one they’re stationed in or something like that.

And because of this, he is holding up all military promote it would be funny if it weren’t so serious, well, it is still kind of funny, but, I looked on the defense department website, and they said that soon the, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff is gonna be just joint chief of staff.

That is a good line.

Yeah. So my question for you is, first of all, how serious a, threat is this to our readiness, our national security, And second, why in the world are Democrats not standing up on their hind legs and making a huge issue of this?

I’m glad you broke it into two separate questions because I think that’s analytically and politically the correct way to approach it. So it is not that serious a problem for the readiness of the American military. Because it’s such a well functioning institution. That’s actually the dirty little secret that you can have In addition to the three hundred and one promotions, everybody two star and above, their promotion is a function of their assignment. So for example, the director for strategic plans and policy in the chairman staff is one of those three hundred and one.

He cannot assume the job because, that Tupper Bell hold up. But you know, the two star who’s acting in the job’s pretty good at it anyway. So it’s difficult to get traction on the readiness case. Which is one of the reasons this has been going on so long. Mhmm.

The second reason it’s been going on so long is because the White House actually thinks this is a political winner. It corrodes Republican reputation for being serious about fence policy. It calls into question the responsible behavior of the Senate. Right? So A lot of Republicans are trying to say the house is the problem, but the senate, those guys are serious.

And this corrodes that argument as well. The thing that is, I think, deeply problematic about Senator Tuberville’s hold. I’m sympathetic a little bit. To his concern about the policy, but there is a way to deal with this in the regular order of business of the Congress. Which is you legislate the restriction.

Mhmm.

Senator Tuberville doesn’t have the votes, hasn’t even tried to get the votes. And playing hostage with the military is really bad for civil military relations in the United States. Most importantly, it encourages others in legislative and executive positions to politicize the military, to hold it hostage, to use it as a battering ram in ways that will be problematic for the military’s desperate effort to stay out of our partisan squabbles. And the second way it will be damaging is the American public begins to think about our military, the way they think about those supreme court. Which is if they behave in ways consistent with my political preferences, they are non partisan.

And if they behave in ways that disagree with my politics, they’re completely corrupt. And that’s actually really bad for recruitment, for retention, for the symbiotic relationship in a free society between the military and the body politic That’s why it’s so dangerous what he’s doing.

Such an enlightening answer. So I guess the answer to the second half of my question is embedded in your responds, namely that the Biden administration thinks this is working to their benefit or the Democrats in general think it’s working to their benefit. I just wonder whether that’s accurate because how many of average voters do you suppose are even aware of what Tuberville is doing? I bet this is mostly a inside the Beltway story that only people who are extremely interested in public policy even know about democratic party doesn’t take advice from me, but if, you know, if I were advising them, it would be an opportunity for them to be incredibly Dentorian, stand up on the floor of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, whoever else, members of the White House staff, and say, you know, the the Republicans are holding hostage, promotions in the military, they have such low respect for the independence of the military and for the non politic of the military, according to Cory Shockey, and they have no worries about military readiness and so on, but they’re not doing that. Alright.

I’ll leave that there. Let’s turn to Ukraine and American leadership there. Secret Podcast Anthony Lincoln is in Ukraine right now, and You know, we’ve discussed on beg to differ many times over the last eighteen months that, you know, I think pretty much our whole panel believes that Biden has done quite a good job on Ukraine with some caveats, but I am gonna ask you this question. Is it possible that the Biden administration has been just too slow too reluctant to give all of these arms. And, you know, the support among Republicans is crashing through the floor, for continuing to support Ukraine.

And, you know, it’s holding up among Democrats, not sure how long that will last. Isn’t it kind of malpractice to slow walk the delivery of weapons when they need them so desperately.

Absolutely. It is. The Biden Administration has been understandably concerned about Russian escalation, but they have overcompensated for it. And they have paid a price not only in public support as the war drags on. But most importantly, they paid an enormous price in Ukrainian casualties, military, and civilian.

I would encourage listeners to go find a Washington Post piece by AEI’s Brady Africk who has looked at all of the satellite photography of Russian held territory in Ukraine and has plotted the improvement of Russian defenses over the six months that we were stalling on delivery of tanks and other weapons that we had committed to the Ukrainian war effort. It gave the Russians time to build defenses in-depth, the minefields, the Sura vegan line, and their last ditch defenses. That are dramatically raising the cost to Ukraine of liberating their territory. And remember once having somebody senior in the Clinton White House tell me years after the Kosovo War that they ought to have factored into their decision making. The moral and practical costs of casualties as a function of US decision making time.

And I think we should factor those things in in how we assess Biden administration see in Ukraine as well.

Okay. Thank you. One more thing, one more topic, and then I’ll invite the rest of the panel to jump in if they so desire. The Biden administration, vis a vis China. It’s a complicated subject, but, there’s a school of thought on the right that says, actually, We should not be supporting Ukraine against Russia.

We should be holding our ammunition close and preparing for the day when we’re going to to go to war with China. What are your views on that perspective?

So it is a legitimate concern that the United States does not have anywhere near the stockpiles of weapons and ammunition. That a war with China would require us. But what is being provided to Ukraine is a rounding error on that deficiency. And I would argue that the intensity of combat between Russia and Ukraine is a salutary wake up call for the United States and other allies. The British military assesses they have five days of supplies at the rate of expenditure of artillery by Russia or Ukraine.

So it is unquestionably a problem. But Ukraine is the canary in the coal mine. And even if we turned off assistance to Ukraine, it would come nowhere near the magnitude of replenishment. And both Congress and the last several administrations are culpable in the decision to short change defense on procurement and ammunition and stockpiles. They’ve been playing a game of chicken, and what it’s gonna take to fix this is multi year contracts and, you know, rebuilding the stockpiles in the cupboard for the circumstances in which we now find ourselves.

And what kind of a signal would it send to China if we were to abandon Ukraine?

Oh, absolutely. Coming after the end of American involvement in Iraq, the end of American involvement in Afghanistan. The undertaking of a commitment as vast as the president has argued. That is we are in it until Ukraine succeeds writing that off would send a very destabilizing signal about the credibility of American guarantees. And it would not only scare the Taiwan East Japanese, South Koreans and Australians that would scare our European allies too.

And thereby require a lot more American military effort and stationing and exercises to reassure them if in fact they’re reassureable. So It really matters.

Yeah. Okay. One more question from me, and it’s this. The Biden Administration Visavich China has done some things that are completely in sync with the Trump approach. It has maintained, for example, all of the tariffs, but it is done other things that have been in sharp contrast and that I believe are actually important and right, and I’m curious to hear you on this.

I mean, One of the things the Biden administration has stressed is that we need allies and that our allies are very, very important. It’s not just one on one us against China, in trade, or military, or any other struggle. And so I think the Biden administration has actually done well on enlisting allies. How do you feel about that?

I think that’s right. I think they have done a terrific job a creative job, an inventive job in expanding the issues that the quad of Japan India the United States and Australia undertake together. You’ll remember they led with vaccine production and dissemination. They’ve done a terrific job capitalizing on Red Fresh month between South Korea and Japan. Which has been one of the most difficult needles to thread in American Alliance policy in Asia.

They are supporting and taking up good ideas that India and Japan have pioneered on secure supply chains. And rare earths. So I agree with Humana that they’re doing a lot. Right? But the countervailing pressure is president Biden’s inclination, his natural comfort zone, is to talk about the US China competition as democracy versus autocracy.

And that’s problematic and actually pretty unpopular among Asian allies. They don’t wanna crusade against authoritarianism in Asia many of them are for a daring government. And they also need China for their continued economic prosperity. Secondly, they don’t want an actual war with China because they can’t afford it. And so what they are pleading for from the United States is an economic vision that helps all of us reduce our reliance on China.

And that’s where the continuation of Trump tariffs, the general anti trade and protectionism of the Biden administration undercuts their own strategy for managing China.

Yeah. It’s, that there are dangers in that kind of an approach if it taken too far. I mean, you know, one of the reasons that Japan attacked the United States Pearl Harbor was because we imposed their sanctions on them, and they felt they had no choice. Alright. Well, Bill Galston, you have some you have some thoughts or questions?

My thoughts on these matters are much less significant than Carrey’s. So I have questions, but not thoughts. I have three questions, actually. Question number one, Cory, is your assessment of the prospects for significant progress by Ukraine’s forces against the Russian defenders anytime soon.

Yeah. So I seem to recall losing a wager to you on this very subject.

I’m waiting for my lunch, by the way.

I think the prospects are actually still pretty good for three reasons. The first is that slow and painful as Ukrainian progress has been since their offensive started in May. It does appear in places to have breached the initial minefield defenses, the Russians. So there is the potential for breakthroughs Second reason, I remain pretty optimistic that there will be significant progress by the end of the calendar year. Is that the countries of the West who are supporting and arming Ukraine have committed to the long term.

And so, you know, the European Union’s assistance is now almost equivalent to the United States as in part because of longer term commitments they have made. And so the reassurance that Ukraine can keep fighting because a trapdoor is not gonna open underneath them and destroy their prospects for continuing to fight. Either financially or militarily. And third reason is I do think the prehension mutiny, and in particular, the lack of response by the Russian military to that mutiny. Suggest that the Russian military may be quite griddle and quite hesitant to persevere in the face of Ukrainian success.

And then the fourth reason is that we have placed enormous restrictions on how Ukraine can fight this war. And it’s evident in the way we have only provided arms with restrictions on preventing their use, physical restrictions, and policy restrictions. On their use against Russian territory. And I think the Biden administration having made such an expansive commitment to Ukraine’s success and running up against the sand falling through the hourglass they are relaxing those restrictions. You’re seeing a lot more, Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian territory.

You’re seeing a lot more long range targeting of Russian weapons depots. And last night, evidently, the southern military headquarters of the Russians in Dombas. And I think that’s actually gonna be operationally significant for the Ukrainians that they can push the ranges back and they can force a conversation within Russia about the increasing cost within Russia of continuing the war?

Well, from your lips to god’s ears, but one of your points, Corey brings me to my second question. You cited the long term commitment that now characterizes the stance of the European Union. Which is good news. But I am not so confident about the long term persistence of American aid in part because of what Mona said at the beginning, namely the very significant erosion of republican support for continued aid, not just among certain people in the house or representatives, but If you look at surveys, the base of the Republican Party. So what is your assessment of the prospects that when the current trash of aid runs out legally at the end of this month, that it’s going to be renewed.

Yeah. I am more confident than you are because I think about six weeks ago opposition to arming Ukraine bottomed out. And public support, particularly republican support has been increasing since then due to a lot of effort by Senator Roger Wicker, by Senator McConnell and other committee leaders in particular in the senate. And they appear confident that the votes exist in the house as well. I think there are two concerns raised by opponents to Ukraine aid that all of us need to deal with.

And in particular the Biden administration is failing in its responsibility to deal with. And the first is the Republicans in Congress are and should be concerned about the size of the debt. And it brings up a second thing too, which is president Biden has not explained where this fits in American priorities. He has not extended the political capital to bring Americans along. He’s just signed to the checks and generic statements He hasn’t actually explained to the American people why this matters says he’ll commit troops to the defense of Taiwan, but so concerned about committing American troops to the defense of Ukraine.

Those are questions people are right to ask and want the government accountable for. So I think the president has some explaining to do congressional Republicans in particular in the senate, but also in the house have stepped forward to try and do that nobody has the bully pump that the president does.

Well, I have a third question, but I think I’ll defer it and come back to it if there’s time.

Linda, you’re up next.

So I do have a question. You sort of partially answered it for me. Corey in terms of what needs to be done next because it’s clear to me the United States is not good at these long term involvements. We never have been. And I’m sure it’s occurred to bill.

It certainly is a occurred to me that when you start describing the way in in which the United States has put various kinds of restrictions on what weapons can be used, how they can be used, It reminds me of some of the failures of Vietnam. Now there, we were in, you know, obviously directly involved, but the kinds of restrictions that were being placed. I think did erode the ability of the United States to be able to win that war at a point that it might have been possible. And, certainly, the dragging on of the war is what eroded public support. So you have suggested that president Biden has to go to the American people and make a case for this support.

I’m wondering if in terms of the presidential election that’s coming up, whether you think that there is a way to have this not just be a partisan issue where it’s the democratic leader, but that we can get some loud, vocal, republican support because, really, when you see those numbers and seventy one percent of GOP voters being opposed to this, which basically tips the whole American public into being slightly fifty five percent against it, then I wonder what you see as trying to reinvigorate the kind of support we had early on which was broad, which was bipartisan, in which everybody understood what the stakes were. And how do we go back there?

So it’s a really important question, but I don’t think there is failure of bipartisan support. So former vice president Pence, and governor Chris Christie both of whom are presidential candidates. Both of them have already gone to Ukraine, have strongly made the case that American support for Ukraine is in our national security interests. Nikki Haley has also made that case The problem is that the far and away front runner for the presidential nomination and Viveik Ramosame who is posing as the vice presidential candidate for Trump are both stridently against continued support to Ukraine. And even if they were in favor of it are so unsound in their thinking on national security that it’s likely to flip the tables over.

And DeSantis isn’t great either.

DeSantis isn’t great. That’s true. But also Kevin McCarthy is not great. But I would also point out as a second data point that both DeSantis and McCarthy backed up under pressure from other Republicans after having opposed a to Ukraine and McCarthy is now saying that not only will he personally vote for continued assistance to Ukraine but that he has the votes among Republicans to pass it.

So not only are they bad their week. Oh, sorry. Alright.

Linda did I’m done. That’s fine. I think she very nicely answered my question, and I and I hope against all hope that she is right.

Okay, Bill. You had a third item. So why don’t we come back to that now?

Thanks, Mona. Here’s my third item, which is something completely different, but something I spend a lot of time worrying about. The topic Cory is the US Navy and its plans for the future. I keep on reading reports and listening to congressional testimony. It sounds credible to me to the effect that at precisely the time when we need to be moving forward on new naval strategies in in the Asia Pacific in particular and innovative ways of implementing defense strategies that we’re actually moving Bulwark.

And that planning for the Navy is pretty much for a variety of conceptual and also narrowly political reasons very much stuck in the status quo that our prospects for rebuilding the navy under these circumstances are not bright. Our prospects for our underseas fleet. Reaching anything like the levels laid out as minimum requirements are not bright. Am I pushing the panic button here or is there a real problem?

You are exactly right that this is the most pressing defense policy problem for the United States. You know, Asia is a maritime theater and a couple of things conspired to produce the disgraceful failure of intellectual leadership. We have in the uniform Navy and the underfunding of the fleet that has produced the navy much too small for the demands of the strategy. On the first part, the collapse of professionalism in the navy You know, there was a major corruption scandal. We call it the Fat Leonard scandal, bribery of Navy officials, in the Pacific Fleet.

And the Navy to their credit, Court Marshall and cashierd, the officers involved, or at least many of the officers involved, but that did also do some pretty serious damage to the pipeline of expertise in naval leadership The second thing is the Biden national security strategy and in particular the defense part of it is a trillion two hundred billion dollar a year sticker price that they have proposed to budget at the level of seven hundred fifty billion dollars. Congress keeps adding to that, but not adding enough to rebuild the navy. And Congress has also permitted the corrosion of the defense industrial base. In nineteen ninety, there were fifty four major defense contract in the United States. There are now five.

And so in order to build the number of submarines, for example, that we have committed to to provide to Australia and to ourselves. You can’t do it on the timeline without dramatically expanding the industrial base. And business is not gonna do that unless they have commitments that are more than year to year, which is how both administrations and congress have played chicken on these things. So what is required to fix this is a serious increase in defense spending and multi year contracts that will produce a navy adequate to execute the strategy. And the Biden administration, because they’re in power now, they’re not the first people to have done this badly.

But they’re responsible for it now and they are buying an enormous chasm between the strategy they say we can execute and what the navy in particular can actually produce in the Pacific. So you are hitting the panic button and you’re exactly right to do so.

That’s so so interesting. I mean, you know, just one more example of the harm that comes to a country that chooses to govern itself by continuing resolutions and, you know, stop gap spending bills and government shutdowns.

Exactly right, Mona.

Yeah. I have a suggestion, Mona.

Yes.

This is a suggestion from a brookings institution scholar to an AEI scholar. I think the conversation has to be ratcheted up starting at the intellectual level. What about some sort of big joint Brookings AEI, Hoha meeting, a full day discussion of this issue. If I could persuade this is not great.

I’m in.

But if I could persuade someone that this was a timely issue, I would love to be able to work with you to give up the emphasis.

I will gladly not just me, but Mackenzie England, the best defense budget analyst in the country, Elaine McCusker, former acting comptroller, who is a clarion voice on the damage that continuing resolutions and governing by government shutdown due to the defense enterprise, and John Ferrari retired army general who set in motion the debate in Congress about the inadequacies of the Navy Congress has now legislated in the last year’s National Defense Authorization Act, a commission on the Navy because they no longer trust either the Navy itself or the secretary of defense or the White House to solve the problem, the inadequacies of the Navy bill mentioned.

Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, now you know that beg to differ is not just a podcast. It is a policy dating service as well. And,

event planning. Well,

Corey is my favorite policy eight. There’s no doubt.

No. There we go. It is now time to move on to our next topic. It’s been in the wind for several weeks now, but Damon, I think, brought things to a head with his piece, sub stack which he titled.

Kaho Biden’s gotta go.

Kaho Biden’s gotta go. Alright. So, Damon, make your case and then we’ll punch holes in it.

Well, I mean, a piece like this on a sub stack is, obviously, I don’t have any, grand ambitions about Biden reading it and going, you know, this guy’s right. I’m stepping down. But and partly, I should also say that I was inspired to write this piece because of AB Stoddard’s very good piece. And the bulwark late last week, making her own version of this case and plugging the idea of Gretchen Whitmer stepping in. Now I wanna make clear I’m not advocating a kind of scrum where a bunch of Democrats throw their hat in the ring at this late date and try to challenge Biden for the nomination.

I think that’s too late. It wouldn’t work. It would end up just weakening Biden further. I merely try to make the case that given the fact that Trump is, you know, about thirty eight to forty points ahead, for a solid year now and shows no signs of weakening. So he’s by far the front runner.

We need someone who can be a strong match, and Biden doesn’t appear to be up to it. I talked about three main reasons. One, the issue, I’m sure we’ll talk about more and that gets talked about all the time these days his age and not only the numerical fact of his age, but the fact that he sounds, walks, talks, and acts like he’s pretty enfeebled, and he’s also not in the public eye as much as he should be. This has all kinds of implications among others. In the topic, we’ve just been discussing the fact that he doesn’t really talk about Ukraine very much except in very broad statements.

He hasn’t made any kind of primetime address to the American people trying to lay out a case for why this matters. I think that’s very important when it comes to Ukraine policy, but it applies to other areas as well. I worry about his capacity to actually wage a campaign for months on end. Can he do it? Will it simply plug a new story in the news about the the thing that he stumbled around on the stump, what he said.

So forth and then bringing up in people’s minds over and over again that he seems too old, which is not just me or a pundit reaction. Polls are consistently showing something around eighty percent of Americans think he’s too old, and that’s even sixty nine percent of Democrats in a recent poll. That’s a lot. So secondly, the economy, I am quite frustrated not just with Biden and his team, but with many Democrats in their attempt to do victory laps over the fact that inflation is down. I made a point a couple of weeks ago on the podcast along these lines.

It is great that inflation is down, but inflation is a measure of the rate of price increases. It is not a measure of where prices are on some objective scale. So if inflation is down. That does not mean that my groceries now cost what they did in twenty nineteen. It merely means that they’re staying in the very high place they ended up within the last nine or six months.

While there is a lot of evidence that some segments of the economy, people are doing quite nicely. They have a lot of money to spend and they are spending it. There’s also, I think, a lot of evidence, you know, partly anecdotal and then partly some harder data to show that there are other segments of the economy where people’s wages are slowly rising now, but they have absolutely not kept up with the rises that we saw over the last two years. And there are a lot of people hurting because they were kind of struggling to get by before and now they’re further behind. So I worry about that.

And finally, the Hunter Biden, the saga, which I’m less emergent about than, certainly than the Republicans who try to bash Biden about it all the time. But as I’ve also said on the podcast in recent weeks, I think that it weakens him relative to another imagined candidate who does not have a child who has been influencing peddling, trying to use the president’s name to enrich himself. And there’s a lot of evidence that Biden’s son did that. It’s a kind of drip drip, drip slow, continuing story that is likely to drag on into the general election campaign. And it undermines any attempt by Biden or other Democrats to make the case that Trump is so thoroughly corrupt.

We can’t countenance him becoming president again because it makes it seem like, although Biden might not be as bad, he’s kinda in the same league. He’s another one of those corrupt politicians. And yes, Trump is corrupt too, but at least he admits it. He’s not ashamed of it. He he sort of says that gives me an insight into how corrupt everybody else is too.

And the Hunter Biden story, contributes to that kind of crazy line of reasoning sticking I’ll stop now, but I do want to urge people if you want to see another variation on these kinds of arguments. Take a look at Joe Klein He has a sub stack who doesn’t. The sub stack is called, sanity Claws, and he had a very compelling piece this week titled, hiding Biden. In which he made his own version of that case as well.

Okay, Damon. Great piece. I have a lot of demurals, let’s say, but I’m gonna hold back and let’s hear from Bill Galston. What do you think, Bill?

Well, if my grandmother had wheels, Look, I don’t want to exaggerate the disagreement here, but I have, first of all, I have never believed that Joe Biden having sought the presidency his entire adult life and having waited more than thirty years between his first run for the presidency and his ultimate success would give it up.

He’s like the king Charles of America.

Very much so. And so psychologically, I’ve never believed it. Now In fairness to Damon, I think he’s not making a prediction that Biden will give it up, but rather an argument that he should So let’s consider that argument on its merits, and it’s not without merit. But I think it suffers from an incompleteness. Biden’s age is

a big

negative, and he could begin to mute that negative by being much more active publicly. And I’m surprised that he hasn’t been I hope the reason that he hasn’t been is that he can’t be. If that’s it, that’s really alarming, but we don’t know that. Point number two, the economy. The economy is the economy.

And we went through twenty two consecutive months where price increases, outpaced wage increases. Those lines crossed three months ago, and the fundamental question, political is, as well as economically, is whether real wages will continue to increase between now and election day of twenty twenty four. If they do, we’re gonna have one kind of election. If they don’t, we’re going to have a very different kind of election. Hunter Biden?

I really don’t know how to assess that. It’s clearly not a positive. I’m not sure how much of a negative it is. It would be better. If it weren’t hanging around Biden’s neck, but whether it’s an albatross or a hummingbird remains to be seen.

Finally, I would be more persuaded if I saw solid evidence that Democrats other than Joe Biden would perform better against Donald Trump. I’m not saying that evidence cannot be created, but I haven’t seen it up to now. Maybe Damon has. So we’re assuming that Gretchen Whitmer, for example, would run better than Joe Biden. That’s an interesting hypothesis but we need some evidence to support it.

And we need evidence to support it based on a much fuller public knowledge. Of her character and her record than now exists. And one of the things that I’ve learned about politics at the presidential level is that people who look really, really good at first glance turn out to have some negatives that don’t emerge in contests for any race below the presidency. The level of scrutiny, the level of opposition research, the level of public expectation, I would like to believe that Gretchen Whitmer would be a stronger candidate, but I don’t know that, and I don’t think Damon does either, but perhaps he has that potential level is that people who look really, really good at first glance. Turn out to have some negatives that don’t emerge in contests for any race below the president.

See. The level of scrutiny, the level of of opposition research, the level of public expectation, I would like to believe that Gretchen Whitmer would be a stronger candidate. But I don’t know that, and I don’t think Damon does either.

No. I certainly don’t, and I will absolutely concede that the problem with staking out the position that have is that there really is no way to ever be able to do that kind of straight comparison because no potential alternative will have anything like the name recognition of the sitting president who’s been in public life for decades on end, even if there were straight polling data comparing head to heads, including Whitmer and others, it wouldn’t really be very worthwhile because a lot of those respondents won’t really know anything about the other

Right. And let me bring Linda back in here. In addition to that, Linda, if Biden had chosen, say, at the after the midterms to say, okay. I’ve succeeded and I achieved all of these things, ticked them off, and now I’m going to be a single term president. It would have given a solid runway.

For people like Gretchen Whitmer and many others to test the waters and to begin the process of assembling a team and raising money and doing all the things you need to do to launch a presidential campaign. But to do it now, It’s just no longer in the realm of possibility. What do you think?

Well, I’m very sympathetic to Damon’s position because I think that Biden is going to be a much weaker candidate this time around than he was last time. And though everything in my rash brain tells me that Trump should be an even weaker candidate this time than last time. Apparently, my rational brain isn’t functioning because it it appears that at least in polling data that he is doing far better than he should be in match ups with Biden. It would have been in my view a good thing if Joe Biden had said to himself for the good of the country I’m going to be old. He knows all of us as we’re getting older and and certainly Bill and I can talk to this, we know that we’re not what we were ten years ago, much less twenty years ago.

And that, you know, we’re slower. You know, it isn’t that we haven’t acquired wisdom. It isn’t even that we may not be functioning intellectually at a very decent level. The fact is that age diminishes and age has clearly diminished this president. So I wish that he had made that decision as you suggested after the midterm Then we could have had a real contest on the Democratic Party side.

And I hate to tell you, those who are fans of governor Whitmer, I don’t think she would be the one that would emerge. I think that she is too left of center. I think the only chance of getting a nominee that can defeat Donald Trump is someone who can appeal to those independents who basically lean slightly right of center, but are discomforted by Trump’s mouth feasts, his, you know, criminality, his personality, everything about him. So you but you have to have somebody that can appeal to those voters. You know, when I look at somebody like a Governor Beshir from Kentucky and I say maybe he could do you know, here’s a guy who’s one in the southern state and who seems to be quite competent.

He’s young. He’s good looking. He speaks well. But you may be right, Mona. It may be too late for that.

And so, unfortunately, we’re gonna have a rematch. It’s gonna be Biden Trump And some of us are going to feel no compunction whatsoever about pulling the bind lever again, but The hope is that you’re gonna get young people who weren’t enthusiastic about him. Blacks have become less enthusiastic about him than they were because they were really his base and the reason got his nomination last time, we have to hope that there are enough people who are gonna see this as an election that really is gonna determine the future of democracy in the United States and go out and vote. And I I don’t think we know the answer You know, we have to hope that there are enough people who are gonna see this as an election that really is gonna determine the future of democracy in the United States. And go out and vote, and I don’t think we know the answer to that.

Yeah. So, Damon, we have to distinguish between the kind of candidate that we would like to see the Democrats mount and the kind of candidate absence Biden that would be most likely to secure the nomination. We have to be realistic. So, first of all, I have trouble imagining that the Democratic party would willingly deny the presidential nomination to his sitting vice president, because she’s the first African American woman in that post, and there’s you know, the big portion of the Democratic base is African American, and another big portion of the Democratic base believes strongly that African Americans need to be supported, you know, and when you look back at, twenty twenty, who were the, you know, the Marquee candidates, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren. So, you know, we can talk all we want about Andy Beshir and Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitmer.

But past experience doesn’t suggest that those would be the ones the party would throw up if Biden were not the candidate. So that’s one point. And then another is that we are looking at polling right now about a race that is, you know, fourteen months away, and voters are just not focused. They’re saying, you know, forty six to forty six percent that they, you know, support Trump and Biden, which is horrifying. I mean, a country that wasn’t in deep, deep disarray would never give forty six percent, support to the idea of a Trump second term.

It doesn’t say anything good about us. But at the same time, we have to bear in mind that this far out polls are just that. They are snapshot. People haven’t focused on it And when Trump’s craziness and inappropriateness is back in front of people’s faces as it was, for example, last summer during the hearings of the January sixth committee, it will have, I think, the result of concentrating people’s minds, and they are not gonna cheerfully and heartily reelect an eighty two year old, but they may reelect an eighty two year old if the alternative is a out of control narcissist who’s already been convicted of crimes.

Yeah. I hope so. I mean, maybe ever since twenty eighteen, I’ve made a kind of vow to myself that one should not project current day polls into the future. As an act of faith, but one must kind of, you know, do, I guess, what amounts to sort of the same thing for the opposite reason, which is Whoever is winning at the moment is winning. And until that changes that’s how it is.

I am thoroughly alarmed that poll after poll after poll has Trump and Biden running essentially tied. And, you know, you can go to real clear politics where they have series of all these head to head polls that have come out over going back months and months. And the latest I checked, it was Biden up point eight percent. And, of course, with the advantages that the Republicans in recent cycles have had in the electoral college, that’s of Trump win. Like a solid

—

It is.

—

I mean, Biden needs to win by at least three points. If not four to prevail unless the dynamic in the electoral college shifts, which it might. I mean, for instance, Michigan has really kind of seemed to tilt left, ever since twenty sixteen in a way that might have it kind of out of contention. And if that’s true, then pro pastor win some other state instead, and maybe he can’t. So there’s, of course, a lot of uncertainty.

I do find it alarming precisely because both candidates are an effect incumbents this And it’s the first time that’s happened since eighteen ninety two. Right. It is not a sitting president and a challenger who’s untested. Now Trump’s test, did he pass it? Not to my mind.

But but a clearly significant number of Americans look at that and they’re like, yeah, you know, we survived those four years. He could be president again. And dad in a way makes it an incumbent versus an becoming battle, and we have no living memory of how that dynamic plays out. And that has me worried in a different way than I would be in many other scenarios.

Absolutely. And there’s one other factor, not just that the electoral college dynamic could shift between now and then, but also there could be a third party candidate, which I think everybody on this podcast agrees would be a catastrophe. Alright, Bill.

Okay. Well, I hate to do advertisements for myself, but you’ve left me no choice. I’ve written a couple of Collins in the Wall Street Journal in the past three weeks on all of this. And the most recent one is an extended argument about why twenty twenty four election. Like the twenty twenty election and the twenty sixteen election, and a long list of elections really since the late nineteen eighties have been very close.

And I don’t see any reason whatsoever to doubt the Wall Street journals forty six percent to forty six percent. Finding. In particular, when we reflect that Donald Trump got forty six percent in twenty sixteen and forty seven percent in twenty twenty, that looks very plausible to me. And when you further reflect, on the fact that two thirds of the people who are for Trump say that they’re for Trump because they support him and not because they oppose Biden. But for Biden, it’s exactly the reverse.

Two thirds of the people who say they’re gonna vote for him say that they do it to oppose Trump. Rather than because they favor Biden. So you put all of this together, and I think sadly that what you see is what you get. And I don’t think we’re going to get any relief from pre election anxiety until election day. I would be astonished If we reached a point in the poll’s next fall, where Biden seemed to have anything like a safe lead.

Alright. Anxiety. Here we come. Here we are. Here we have been for quite a long time, and here we are remaining.

Alright. But let’s go now to our final segment, the highlight or low light of the week, and I will start with Linda.

Well, you know, you all are supposed to be my friends and I miss you can hear under the weather with COVID and you should have planned a show to cheer me up. And instead, you you gave a show that had nothing but worrisome news about Ukraine about the election.

About the navy.

I’m gonna try about the navy about everything in the world. So I’m gonna try to cheer myself up and possibly, the rest of you. To note that, you know, for everything terrible that’s happening in the Republican Party, there are a few glimmers of hope of sanity within the party in certain party circles in certain states. And I wanna point to to one very briefly, which is the impeachment that’s going on in Texas of the attorney general, Ken paxton, who is mister Magaman and who’s been under indictment, who’s been impeached by the house, including by some of his house republicans there, and now is being tried by the senate. So we’ll see how that turns out, but it’s good news that it’s happening.

But I want to point to an article in the New York Times this week by two people. I think I’ve mentioned them before in our in my recommendations. One is Stephanie Maravczyk and her husband, John Shields, and they have written an article entitled Republicans in Wyoming see clearly what’s happening. And it’s an interesting piece because what it talks about is the way in which in Wyoming, which, by the way, is the state that voted most heavily for Donald Trump last time around.

Course, there are only seventeen people in the whole state.

There are only seventeen people as I I know that because my family’s from there and and Alan Simpson and I used to have a an ongoing choke about that because he wrote me once to say, I see your mom’s from Wyoming. What’s her name? Maybe we knew each other and it turned out that my mother’s best friend and and his favorite cousin were knew each other. So everybody in Wyoming noticed that. But in Wyoming right now, What’s happening is some of the old guard in Wyoming are beginning to win control back of certain counties and the Republican Party in certain counties for very, very deep red countings have put sort of, you know, more regular Republicans in positions of leaderships.

And you’ve seen that efforts to try to turn immigration, for example, the number one MAGA issue into a big deal in the state of Wyoming had failed in the legislature, which there was an attempt to get anti sanctuary legislation passed and it didn’t really go anywhere because there are a whole lot of cities and Wyoming period, but even if the cities there are, Cheyenne and Casper, the two I can think of that are big enough to call cities. They’re not looking to make themselves sanctuary cities. So so that’s good news. And, you know, maybe it should give us hope and maybe we should you know, realize you you look what happened in Georgia this week as well with governor Kemp there suggesting he’s not gonna call the state legislature back in to essentially remove Fani Willis from her investigation. So maybe there’s some glimmer of hope out there, and that’s what I want off for this week.

Thank you for that, Linda. Okay. Bill Goldstein.

Well, my particular highlight this week is part of a bigger highlight. Tony Blinkins visit to Ukraine yet another vigorous show of support by the Secret Podcast state But I wanna go farther than that. I think Tony Blincoln has done a really, really good job consistently as US Secret Podcast state. He has shown up everywhere. He’s been tireless.

He’s always well briefed. He is always very clear and sure footed in his public statements. And behind the scenes, he has been the major force within the administration, pressing the White House and the Department of Defense to reduce restrictions on arms that we do provide to Ukraine to accelerate the delivery of arms that we have been slow to deliver. And he has displayed, I think, a real, not only steadiness of purpose and performance, but a moral center as well that I find refresh There’s nothing flashy about him. He’s not a grand theorist.

The day by day and step by step, he’s doing a job that makes me proud that he’s our secretary of state. And I don’t frequently wax enthusiastic about public officials, but I think he’s exceeded expectations very substantially.

Thank you, Damon Lincoln.

Well, we spend, a good amount of time on podcast every week, talking about, you know, what’s become of the Republican parties and threats from the right, and I write about that subject a lot in my own work. But today, I wanna highlight, a review of a book by someone on the left who I’m personally fond of. Whose work I very strongly disagree with. So I like this critical review. The book is by, historian named Samuel Moine, who teaches at Yale Law School.

He has a book out titled liberalism against itself it is an interesting book. It looks at a a series of post war American, mostly American intellectuals but is highly critical of them for what Moin describes as the way the cold war works their liberal thinking and made liberalism defensive and kind of afraid of enemies all over the place, not just communists, but just kinda threats around every corner. And Moin has also made updated versions of these arguments for the Trump era, accusing liberals of being teranophobic, you know, afraid of tyranny everywhere because he wants, as a man of the hard left, he wants liberalism to be open to critiques of the present order that call for much more radical change. So this book is a way of trying to criticize liberals who who gave into their cold war fears and kind of slinked away. And so that of being as idealistic as he would like them to be.

I I mean, I’m a proud defender of Cold War liberalism and sort of consider myself a Cold War Liberal in a way, even today. And so this is in some ways trained exactly at people who think the way. I do about the world, so I don’t really like this and I appreciated that Jonathan Last in New York magazine this week wrote a very good, I think, fair, but pretty severely critical. Essay on this, the title of the review is Sam Moin can’t stop blaming Trumpism on liberals and then subtitled liberalism against itself, make an incoherent attack on liberalism. So I recommend it to, listeners.

It’s a well written review. I also recommend if you see the book around, take a look at it. There are interesting sketches of some of the intellectuals in it, but I really don’t appreciate. The things that Moin would like to see happen, I think, in fact, are not only intellectually dubious. I think politically speaking this would be something akin to a suicide pact for, the Democratic party if they were to follow this kind of advice.

So down with that book, even though, again, personally, I like Sam Moin quite a lot and, maybe we’ll persuade him to moderate his stance a little bit down the road.

Maybe he’ll come on this podcast and defend his thesis. By the way, Tarana phobia is a new one on me, but I’m happy to sign up as a Tarana robe right here

and now.

Okay. I mean Well,

I mean, America is founded in ran a

full way.

Yeah. This is the most the most American of sentiments. Absolutely.

So anyway, along those lines, since you mentioned it, I’ll do a little advertising here. This week, I was privileged to appear on the shield of the Secret Podcast. It is also another podcast produced by the Bulwark, where I chatted with Eric Adelman about useful idiots then and now. And so that’s a related topic. We’ve covered a lot of cold war ground, and then talked about how the world has turned upside down, and the usefulness now are found on the right.

So, also, I too have a highlight and not a little light this week, and it’s very similar to Linda’s, but it concerns Ken Buck who is a congressman from Colorado who is in the Freedom caucus, believe it or not, and yet he been coming out with these statements lately that are just so bracing. So this week, he wrote a fiery letter to the GOP of El Paso County in Colorado taking issue with a letter that they sent out that is full of falsehoods on many subjects including the treatment of the January sixth defendants. And Buck, you know, makes mincemeat of their arguments. He points out how false they are. People are not being held without charges and you know, he notices that there are some that are criticizing the conditions under which these defendants are being kept.

He said, That’s interesting. I mean, this has been the subject of concern for people on the left for a long time. You know, sort of welcome to the party. They’re being held as all criminal defendants are held and have been. And he writes things like it is irresponsible.

To allege without evidence as your letter does that Americans are being systematically denied their most basic constitutional rights based on their political beliefs And, anyway, it goes on in that tone throughout the entire thing. He is now being, of course, assailed by people like Marjorie Taylor Green and others. He was also criticized because he does not think that the Republican majority in the house should initiate impeachment proceedings against Joe Biden for no high crime or misdemeanor that anybody has been able to identify. So, anyway, here’s a guy who is a member of the Freedom caucus. And has been really courageous and truthful and he needs to be applauded for this.

There are signs of conscience and integrity still in the Republican Party, so good for him. With that, I want to thank our guests Corei Shaki, she had to jump off after our first segment, but it’s always a delight to hear from her. And, of course, our regular panelists, as well as our producer, Katie Cooper, our Sound Engineer, Jonathan Last, and our editor, Aaron Keane, Thank you one and all. We will return next week as every week.