It was a stunning debate last Thursday, June 27. But its aftermath was even more shocking. For 90 minutes we heard one of the candidates lie breathlessly and repeatedly, declaring (to name just a few examples) that constitutional scholars universally desired the repeal of Roe v. Wade, Nancy Pelosi confessed to responsibility for the January 6 terrorist attacks, and undocumented workers are receiving social security. In the wake of such monstrous assaults on reason and decency by Donald Trump, an authority as venerable as The New York Times editorial board called upon his opponent to withdraw from the race. What an age of wonders we live in.
What did Joe Biden do that so offended The New York Times? He looked old and tired. He had trouble rushing to finish his thoughts in two minutes, and was unprepared for the sheer level of poisonous bullshit that spewed from his opponent's mouth.
Still, for a man who had to overcome a childhood stutter and has always been prone to gaffes, Biden got off some impressively coherent assertions. He pulled out a campaign staple: the 400 billionaires who live in the US pay an effective tax rate of 8.2%, If that could be raised to be on par with the 25% effective tax rate most people bear, the US could raise $500 billion in revenue. You can disagree with those numbers (and many economists do), but you must admit that anyone who can recite them from memory under hot lights and enormous pressure looks like he has pretty good command of his faculties.
The cable news shows have continuously replayed the end of the segment I cited in the last paragraph. In that snippet, Biden mumbles something about "when we broke Medicare" and trails off as his time runs out. But that is not the effects of age or dementia. That's just Joe Biden. The guy who back in the 1980's was such a poor public speaker that he had to plagiarize the speeches of Neil Kinnock, head of the UK Labor Party.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is waging an all-out assault on the foundations of our democracy. That is clear from many signs ("Find me 11,000 votes," January 6, "Project 2025," "I will be a dictator on day one...," etc.), but was reinforced during the last debate. Some of his lies were not viciously toxic, just totally disqualifying. Any person who doesn't understand that the principle of "the buck stops here" precludes shunting responsibility for January 6 onto Nancy Pelosi doesn't belong anywhere near the Resolute Desk. But all of the toxic horseshit about how undocumented immigrants are bankrupting Social Security and Medicare is pure fascism. Trump needs one half of the country to feel it is at war with the other half. Otherwise Trump's fecklessness and lies would not stand a chance against anyone with any knowledge, experience, or sense of decency.
What The New York Times and others don't seem to understand is that Trump is not waging a campaign against any particular candidate. He is waging a campaign against our system of democracy itself. That is why his story about Joe Biden now is the same as his story about Hilary Clinton then: "S/he is crooked! S/he serves a rigged system! Oh, and by the way s/he is unwell and not up to the job of serving a crooked system!"
People find it difficult to believe that Trump is campaigning against democracy itself because he is such a boorish character. How could such a clown have any ideological beliefs? But one doesn't have to believe that Trump is ideological to understand that he is out to break the system. Whatever his personal beliefs may be (and I am not inclined to think that he has any), he is smart enough to see that he does not have the knowledge, skills or temperament to be the president of a democracy. So he must break the democratic system. He set out to do it in 2020, and he will finish the job beginning in 2025 if he is re-elected.
Trump's followers by and large know that the destruction of the system is the end game. They have various reasons for wanting to see the system destroyed. Some want a theocracy in place of our secular democracy. Some want to see white supremacy written into law. Some have endured brutal economic hardship (seeing their local economies destroyed by technology or globalization) and believe that any system would be better than the one we have now. Whatever their grievance, they will never trust anyone who speaks against Trump, who has become the embodiment of their rage. Biden could have done handsprings and recited Jabberwocky from memory and Trump's supporters would still deem him too old, and crooked to boot.
The idea that replacing Biden will increase the Democrats' chances against Trump is dubious. Trump will begin to tell lies about his new opponent. He is not very imaginative, so many of these lies will be the same. It will be interesting to learn how someone 30-40 years Biden's junior is nonetheless too infirm to be president, but Fox News will find the footage to demonstrate that. Moreover, because it was never about Biden, it was about the system, all of the lies that Trump tells about that new opponent will land with virtually the same impact as those he is telling now.
What can the Democrats do? Biden is still their best candidate. He may look old, but the choice between him and Trump is like the choice between a stale piece of bread and a cyanide tablet. Anyone who prefers the cyanide tablet to the stale bread is going to be dubiously persuadable even if you offer them a nice fresh croissant.
The strangest thing in the wake of this debate is the enthusiasm for the candidacy of someone like Gavin Newsom. The impulse to appease Trump's voters is shockingly resilient. Never mind that the Democrats nominated a conservative white man in 2020 who the Trumpkins proceeded to paint as the devil incarnate, if we only give them a slightly younger version this time, they will be mollified!
The only person who could possibly replace Biden on the ticket is Kamala Harris. If Biden withdraws in favor of Harris, the story that he did so only because of his age remains plausible. If Biden withdraws in favor of anyone else, the Trump campaign and the right wing media will crow continuously (and until November) about how Biden's withdrawal constitutes a "confession" that his was the "worst, most corrupt administration of all time."
This is not to suggest that Trump would not say the same thing about Biden withdrawing in favor of Harris. He will say that and other lies, and a Harris campaign (as would be so in a Newsom campaign, or any other) would find itself struggling in the polls just as Biden is now. Such difficulties might be partly offset if Harris made a bold choice for her running mate, like Gretchen Whitmer. Watching Trump try to run against two women might almost be worth the risk of seeing Biden withdraw. But in any case, the idea that Biden's age poses a greater threat to the Republic than the walking tornado of toxic shit named Donald Trump is patently ridiculous.
The problem is that Biden can't win the election. We can't unsee and unhear what we all saw and heard at the debate. Fintan O’Toole put it well in this week’s New York Review of Books:
ReplyDeleteI was reminded of Hans Christian Andersen’s chilling story “The Shadow,” in which a man’s shade comes to life, gradually infiltrates his existence, takes over his entire persona, and kills him off. Biden’s shadow is Trump and we got to watch in real time as it inhabited and displaced him.
This happened at a point in the debate when Biden had already alarmed viewers with his weak, raspy voice, his looks of stricken confusion, his fragmentary or unintelligible answers, his claim that “we created 15,000 new jobs” (he meant 15 million), and his boast, which Trump pounced on with relish, that “we finally beat Medicare.” The horrifying feeling of watching a president in freefall had been firmly established when the cohost Dana Bash raised the obvious concern that both men would be well into their eighties at the end of a putative second term. Biden, a man capable of dignity and even of grace, morphed, before our eyes, into a bargain-basement Trump. The contest for the future of the American republic became two crabby old men in the clubhouse shouting “My swing is bigger than yours.”
Trump boasted that he had won two club championships. He could “hit the ball a long way” whereas Biden “can’t hit a ball fifty yards.” To any opponent who was fully present, this pitiful bragging would have been manna from heaven. Trump was inviting the one thing he cannot withstand: mockery. He had left himself wide open to a quip of the kind that would have shown Biden to be quick-witted and endeared him to viewers: “Did you win those championships at your own clubs? How do we know they weren’t rigged?”
Instead, Biden shanked his response out of bounds, way beyond the outer limits of intelligent political debate into the mire of idiocy: “I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice president, down to a six. And by the way, I told you before I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?” That’s a ball that will never be found again. It will always be out there, lodged in some dark hollow of American history—the final proof that Biden really has lost it.
Not only did the debate come down to this level of mutual fatuity; Trump, rather than Biden, was the first to realize that it was all too embarrassing to be endured. It was the man whose shamelessness knows no limits who grasped how mortifying it was that the past and future leaders of the free world were uttering lines like “I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.” Trump moved to end it: “Let’s not act like children.” Even then Biden was too slow to grasp what was happening, to understand that Trump had just established himself as the adult in the room. Biden continued in playground mode: “You are a child.” It seems that he thought he was winning, that this puerile comeback was somehow a point being scored for democracy.
As in some gothic movie, the two men were switching identities. Trump had enough self-awareness to put on a little show of restraint, to demonstrate to viewers that he understood how pathetic this episode of reality TV was becoming. He may have sensed, too, that he had already delivered a knockout blow by luring Biden into his own swamp of malicious triviality and spiteful juvenility. For that crucial minute, Trump seemed vaguely presidential—and Biden, as he blundered on with the insults, seemed more than vaguely Trumpian. He needed to remember the old adage: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” Biden surely knew that debating with Trump is pig-wrestling. The job is to make sure that the pig is not allowed to enjoy it and that you don’t get too soiled. Trump clearly liked it and Biden got the mud of a debased and infantile politics all over him.
But as O’Toole himself concedes, that latter line of reasoning is false. Biden may be employing a losing strategy, he may even (to a degree) be replicating Trump’s offenses, but in the final analysis any equivalency drawn between Biden and Trump is a complete fallacy. None of what any of us saw on June 27 or O’Toole wrote changes the fact that these two propositions are logically congruent:
ReplyDeleteA. Biden’s debate performance was so bad that I am going to vote for Trump (or not vote at all, or vote for Jill Stein, etc.).
B. Biden’s debate performance was so bad that I am going to cut off both my legs.
Biden is old, and he is running a bad campaign. Perhaps his age will even affect his performance as president in a second term. But any damage that Biden might do is vastly offset by the existential peril posed by Trump. If Trump is elected, barring some miracle democracy in American ends indefinitely.
That last paragraph is admittedly an argument as to why Biden should win, it does not argue that Biden can win. In the whole of the essay that you cited O’Toole never makes an overt recommendation of what he feels should be done. His tone suggests that Biden’s campaign is so irredeemable at this point that he should withdraw from the race. My most serious criticism of O’Toole would be that if that is indeed his advice, he should state it explicitly. The crisis is too dire at this juncture to mince words.
I remain doubtful of the wisdom of Biden’s withdrawing from the race. This is not because I believe that he is the only Democrat who could beat Trump. As O’Toole suggests, that notion is just silly, and Biden must drop it.
Six months ago if you asked me whether I thought Biden should withdraw from the race I would have said no, not because I so love Biden, but because the risk of dividing the Democratic party in the face of such a high-stakes contest seemed too high. The Biden who showed up to the SOTU in January looked capable of campaigning, so risking the kind of debacle that resulted from Lyndon Johnson’s withdrawal from the race in 1968 seemed utterly foolish.
If you took a recording of June 27’s debate and brought it in a time machine back to January-me, that Andrew Meyer might feel differently. Biden choked at a critically important moment in the race, one that had been engineered by his own campaign team. It was an act of political malpractice with few parallels in our history. If I knew then about the dangers we would face now, I would probably have surmised that Biden’s withdrawal from the race back in January was worth the risk.
But the situation is different now. Stephanie Jones has a piece on her Substack (“The Biden Replacement Theory”: A Joke That’s Not Funny) in which she argues that replacing Biden at this juncture is a pipe dream. Biden has raised about $1 billion to fight this campaign (Trump even more), any new candidate would be starting at zero (campaign laws prohibit the transfer of Biden’s funds, according to Jones). Given the arcane and Balkanized election regimes that prevail state-by-state, by the time the Democrats ratify a new candidate it will be too late to get that person’s name on the ballot in many states. That will require that the new candidate be “written in,” which will likely lead to results echoing the debacle of Bush v. Gore.
I admittedly do not have the knowledge necessary to fully assess the empirical basis of Jones’s argument, but I find it intuitively persuasive. We may well be stuck with the horse that we started this race with. If that is the case, we had better hope that he wins, and do everything in our power to see that he does.
If Biden can withdraw from the race and does, so be it. I have little interest in any ultimate outcome other than Trump’s defeat and the rescue of American democracy. Whatever candidate replaces Biden, provided they are not more toxic than Trump (a virtual impossibility), will have my full support. 2/3
If Biden stays in the race, IMHO he has two options:
ReplyDelete1) Fight against the perception of his age. That is his key liability. If during the debate Biden had said every word the same, but smiled through the whole ninety minutes and spoke with a strong, clear voice, he would have been criticized for being silly, but we would not be in the crisis we are in now. The problem he faces is that the debate was a uniquely visible moment, it will be almost impossible to create another event that will draw as many viewers and as much media attention. The recent interview he did with George Stephanopoulous was an utterly futile attempt at damage control.
A fix is almost but not quite impossible. Intense danger demands high risk. Biden’s team could put together a “gimmicky” event that would put Biden’s fitness to the test and arouse people’s curiosity. If, for example, he were to offer one of the major networks a “town hall” session in which audience members (vetted against security risks and attempts to insert political plants) would be chosen at random and be given two minutes to ask the President any question they desired (the questions might be pre-screened, but withheld from Biden himself), that would give Biden the chance to show that he can think on his feet and still has some pep. Two such events might put enough pressure on Trump to debate again, in which case Biden would have a real chance to redeem the errors of June 27.
Biden’s camp has not shown any sign that they realize the necessity for such measures. This may be because they are too obtuse, or it may be because Biden simply does not have the coherence or stamina left to actually perform under the conditions I described above. If that is true, it is a real (perhaps insurmountable) problem. He still has one more option, however:
2) Level with the American people. Admit to them that his age prevents him from campaigning effectively, but that he is compelled either to run for office or surrender the Republic to fascism. This would entail giving up all of the “I alone” horseshit that O’Toole so rightly critiqued. It would also require him to lay out in detail all of the points made by Jones in her Substack essay (why it is impossible for him to withdraw at this late date), and to issue an apology: “I thought that I would be up to the task of campaigning [as opposed to governing], but the debate proved me wrong. I am sorry. I must still ask you to vote for me, however, for the sake of our democracy.”
This last option is admittedly a “Hail Mary.” It has the virtue, however, of being surprising. American politicians are almost never so candid with the electorate, the sheer shock of such a moment might have the necessary effect. The argument itself also has the virtue of being true.
Whatever Biden chooses to do, the duty of all rightly guided citizens remains the same: defeat Trump. If Biden remains in the race, I can understand the frustration of those who feel he should withdraw. I would only caution them that declaring Biden incapable of winning the election may just be a self-fulfilling prophecy. 3/3
"the idea that Biden's age poses a greater threat to the Republic than the walking tornado of toxic shit named Donald Trump is patently ridiculous"
ReplyDeleteAndy, I didn't say this or anything of the sort. I merely said what is now patently obvious to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear: Biden cannot win the presidency. Too many Democrats have concluded that he is senile, to say nothing of the undecided voters who will decide this election. A Harris-Whitmer ticket (or Whitmer-Harris ticket) would beat Trump.
Hey again Paul. I was not accusing you of having made the argument to which you refer. I learned back in graduate school [after losing a certain bet to you ;)] that you always state exactly what you mean, and that one must always scrutinize your words carefully.
ReplyDeleteI articulated that argument as an example of the faulty thinking that is causing the current crisis. The Democrats to whom you refer who believe that Biden is too senile, for example, are indulging in such illogic (or paternalistically attributing such an outlook to millions of other Americans, whom they assume cannot be trusted to vote sensibly). Even if Biden is senile (which, IMHO, he is not, to any significant degree), he poses less of a danger to the Republic than Trump. A senile president is a problem, but one that is remediable through mechanisms like the 25th Amendment. A con artist who is out for nothing but his own power as president and who has a proven track record of subverting our constitution is a death sentence for democracy.
That said, you may be right that the general perception of Biden’s senility makes it impossible for him to win the election. If so then our best hope is that he can be replaced on the ticket. If he can and is willing to be replaced on the ticket I agree that Harris-Whitmer is our best chance. Placing anyone else above Harris is pure folly for three reasons: 1)It would constitute an “admission” that the Biden-Harris administration had been incompetent and corrupt; 2)It would rightly infuriate millions of women (if the top of the ticket is a man) and/or people of color (if the top of the ticket is not a person of color); 3)It would be anti-democratic, since during the primary season millions of Americans have already registered their faith that she CAN serve as president by voting for her as Biden’s running mate.
I would be very excited by a Harris-Whitmer ticket, and I think that millions of others would be too. That excitement might carry the Democrats to victory, but I suspect that if and when such a race began, the polls would show Harris-Whitmer facing similar difficulties in the race against Trump as Biden-Harris. Trumpism is a cult, and its members are driven by blind faith. They believe that Biden is decrepit criminal not because of any particular evidence they have seen but because their Dear Leader tells them it is so, and because Fox News and the rest of the right wing media echoes the Dear Leader’s tune in harmonic chorus. If Biden is replaced Trump will began singing a new song about a new opponent, and the effect will be similar to what it is now.
If a Harris-Whitmer ticket has a slightly better chance than Biden-Harris, the effects such a switch will have on “persuadable” voters will be very minimal. Anyone who is considering voting for Trump now, after ALL we have seen, is pretty daft. If the cyanide pill looks tasty, it is impossible to predict what we can put in front of you that will draw you away from swallowing that thing. A Harris-Whitmer ticket would boost the Democrats’ chances chiefly by increasing morale and driving up turnout.
But of course, Stephanie Jones may be right that replacing Biden on the ticket is pragmatically impossible. If that is so, we should not (we cannot) give up hope. Every rightly guided citizen has to do what they can to achieve the effect without the switch- WE MUST BOLSTER DEMOCRATS’ MORALE AND DRIVE UP TURNOUT with our time, our effort, our money, and our communication.
You may not believe this but you’re just about the smartest person I’ve ever met.* I’m a paid subscriber to newspapers in eight languages, I have no social media accounts, and I now read only two blogs: the Language Log (I’m interested in linguistics) and Madman of Chu (*see above). Based on what I’ve been reading in the papers these past few months, it’s a mystery to me that brilliant people like you cannot see what ordinary people know: Biden is toast. The Democrats’ only job now is to nominate a candidate who can beat Donald Trump. I would vote for Kamala Harris in a heartbeat, though I would personally prefer any member of the Progressive Democrat Caucus. But that’s neither here nor there. What ought to be clear to everyone by now is that to win this election, you need a candidate who appeals to centrist Democrats and independents. I’ll vote for Harris is she’s the candidate. Or for Gretchen Whitmer. Or even for Josh Shapiro (a conservative Democrat from a key swing state). It’s not rocket science: nominate a candidate who can actually beat Trump.
ReplyDeleteFlattery will get you everywhere, Paul :). I must not be very smart, because though Biden’s campaign is clearly in trouble, I would not bet good money yet on either the certainty of his dropping out of the race or losing the election. My tune may change after this afternoon’s press conference, but as of now I can see a path to victory for him.
ReplyDeleteMy basic problem is that the assertion “Biden must withdraw” is an expression of what I think of as the “static-state fallacy.” The “static-state fallacy” is the tendency to assume that the future outcome of any action can be predicted on the basis of current conditions that will inevitably change as a result of that action. If, for example, I refrain from approving aid money to a community because too many of its people are out of work (thinking that such lazy people will simply waste any resources they are given), I am discounting the possibility that the very act of giving the community money might put many of its members to work.
We have seen an example of this phenomenon already in this election year. Six months ago everyone was drooling over the prospect that being convicted of a felony would knock Trump out of the race, because a majority of people polled said they would not vote for a convicted felon. But that assumed that those same people would feel the same way after Fox News and the right-wing spin machine had gone to work making excuses for and telling lies about Trump’s conviction. Now here we are, weeks after Trump’s conviction, and even before Biden’s disastrous debate performance Trump’s conviction had been virtually forgotten.
Biden’s withdrawal will solve some problems but create others. Yes, having a younger candidate will dispense with concerns over Biden’s age. But it will also mean that whoever is the Democratic candidate will have no money, and will in all likelihood not be on the ballot in several states (barring a lawsuit that will have to go all the way up to the SCOTUS). Beyond that, any new candidate will have vulnerabilities (real or imagined) that will be exploited by the MAGA propaganda machine.
On the flip side of that coin, assuming that Biden’s refusal to withdraw dooms him to defeat is likewise premised on the static-state fallacy. What is giving Biden the most trouble now is not his debate performance or the perception of his age, but the division and chaos among Democrats. If we ever reach a point when Democrats resign themselves to Biden’s staying in the race, all that sturm und drang will cease, and Biden’s chances will improve. Again, not an outcome I would bet good money on, but with every passing day that Biden refuses to withdraw, it becomes more likely.
If Biden really chokes his news conference tonight, that will probably end his chances at reelection (though it will not guarantee that he does not remain the nominee). If he does a passable job it will not dispel the doubts or settle the noise, but it will buy him time that he may or may not use profitably. In any case, those who feel strongly that he must withdraw from the race would be well-advised to adopt a more effective strategy.
Generalized calls for Biden to withdraw are neither constructive nor likely to succeed. If Biden withdraws before there is a general consensus about who should replace him, chaos will ensue. It will be like throwing a slab of meat in a crowd of starving dogs. For political reasons (as I have explained upthread) if Biden is going to be replaced it must be by Kamala Harris. The “pro-withdrawal” folks should get behind her and make their case. If there was a harmonious chorus calling for Harris to be the nominee, that might sufficiently amplify the pressure on Biden to compel him to withdraw.
Michael Moore called Biden’s debate performance the other day “the cruelest form of elder abuse.” What we are now witnessing is elder self-abuse. Just yesterday (Thursday, July 12) President Biden introduced Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin.” When the two met in the Oval Office, Biden looked lost overall and especially while looking at his talking point cards. Zelenskyy was clearly alarmed and charitably made a show of looking at a note pad himself, as if he too were unable to speak unscripted. An hour later, Biden referred to Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.” You’d expect the president of the United States to be if not the smartest person in whatever room he finds himself in, at the very least the most commanding presence in the room. He now looks lost in every room he happens to find himself in. Last week George Stephanopoulos asked Biden how he’d feel if Trump beat him to the presidency. Biden’s answer: “I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the goodest job as I know I can do, that’s what this is about.” His goodest job is not good enough. President Biden’s brain entropy is progressing in one inexorable direction. He is fast losing the fight against the second law of thermodynamics.
ReplyDeleteLet me get this straight, Paul. Is your point that Biden is old? Stop beating around the bush already ;).
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure at this juncture how you expect me to respond.
If you want me to join the chorus calling for Biden to withdraw, I hate to disappoint you. I can't do so, not because I feel that his withdrawing would be any kind of tragedy at this point, but because I can't really be sure that joining this chorus won't do more harm than good.
I would indeed expect the president to be the smartest person in the room and a commanding presence, which has made Trump's presidency and continued political solvency utterly mysterious to me. How such a cretin continues to lurch through our political scene spouting obscenity is baffling to contemplate. It would be funny if it didn't spell the end of civilization as we know it.
Here's what I know:
1)Biden could be dead and stuffed with straw, and he would still be a better president than Trump.
2)Given the utter mystery of Trump's political viability, anyone who claims that they know for certain "Candidate X can't beat Trump, but candidate Y can!" is talking out of his or her ass.
3)An infinite number of chimpanzees with an infinite number of megaphones could sing a song about how Joe Biden should withdraw from the race to the tune of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and it still might not happen.
Given those absolute truths, the question of whether it will be more or less helpful for any individual citizen to call for Biden's withdrawal from the race is impossible to answer with any certainty. Every citizen must follow his or her conscience in that regard. If you feel strongly that calling on Biden to withdraw from the race will help, by all means you should do so. You might write him a letter to that effect, if you haven't already. It probably couldn't hurt to write letters to some of the newspapers to which you subscribe as well. Massive sustained pressure might get Biden to withdraw from the race. Maybe.