Many congressional Democrats believe their party is hitting the edge of a cliff and shouldn’t even try to turn around.
Late last week, Senate Democrats held a private meeting to discuss Joe Biden’s electoral effectiveness in the wake of his disastrous debate performance and subsequent revelations of his apparent cognitive decline. According to PoliticoMore than four in 50 Democrats in the caucus said they were committed to sticking with Biden as their party’s nominee.
By many accounts, a large majority of Democrats on the Hill believe that Biden has little hope of defeating Donald Trump and that another candidate would have a better chance. Capitol Hill reporters Heather Kegel and Jake Sherman claim That they haven’t spoken to a single congressional Democrat “who has said privately that they think Biden is capable of running and beating Trump at this point.” said the unnamed “senior Democrat.” Politico They are sure that the president will lose the election.
Then a 20-year-old man almost killed Trump.
The former president’s near-death experience has made some Democrats more pessimistic about Biden’s prospects. And yet, Saturday’s tragic events have also left many wanting to convince him to step down.
The specific rationale for this capitulation varies among lawmakers. Democrats who spoke to The Washington Post Robert Costa He summed it up by saying, “It’s time for the country to stand together, and that means Democrats will stand together, too.”
As Jonathan Chait Comment, this argument is inconsistent. It’s unclear why a tragic act of violence — perpetrated by a young man with no apparent political motive — would force Democrats to change their behavior. If anxiety unites the nation, lining up behind a president seems counterintuitive 38 percent Approval rating.
Regardless, the tendency to prioritize the pursuit of unity over victory is informed by fatalism: Many Democrats have decided that Trump’s attempts on life have made him unbeatable.
A senior House Democrat said Axios On Sunday, “We all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency.” A veteran Democratic consultant echoed this new conventional wisdom in an interview NBC The same day the news said, “The Presidential Contest ended last night.”
If the Democrats are certain to lose whoever they nominate, why bother with the uncomfortable, divisive task of persuading your party president to drop the nomination?
But this defeatism is rooted more in the Democrats’ own cowardice than in objective reality.
We still don’t have much polling data after the assassination attempt against Trump, but there’s no reason to think that Republicans’ brush with death will lead to a sustained increase in support for him. America is a deeply divided country, and voters’ opinions of Trump are generally deeply seated at this point. The defining characteristic of this year’s elections is their relative insensitivity to (even extraordinary) events.
Polls taken shortly after Trump’s criminal conviction cost him about 1 percentage point, and that shift dissipated in the weeks that followed. Biden’s disastrous debate performance cut nearly 2 points from his lead. Maybe Saturday’s assassination attempt will prove to be the one thing capable of uplifting the nation as a whole, but there’s no reason to assume so.
While there are big swings in the polls this week, such swings are likely to revert to long-term averages over time. Four months is an era in the American news cycle.
Meanwhile, polling data taken late last week suggests that the Democratic Party is in good shape. It’s only Joe Biden who isn’t.
When asked which party voters want Congress to run at the moment favorable Democrats lead Republicans by 0.6 points, according to FiveThirtyEight’s polling average. In battleground states, Democratic Senate candidates are consistently outperforming Biden. A New York Times/Siena College Poll Reports released Monday showed President Trump trailing by 3 points in Pennsylvania, while Democratic Sen. Bob Casey led Republican challenger David McCormick by 11 points.
Meanwhile, a fresh set Swing-state survey Trump leads Biden by 7 points in Arizona, 2 points in Michigan, 4 points in Nevada, 5 points in Wisconsin and 3 points in Pennsylvania, according to YouGov. In those same polls, Democratic Senate candidates led Republican candidates by 7 points or more in all of those states.
Some Democrats believe that only Kamala Harris can realistically replace Biden and that she would not be a stronger candidate than the president, even in his diminished state.
I think this view is wrong. For one thing, we’re in uncharted territory; No one can be quite sure what will happen if Biden steps down. More importantly, though, there’s good reason to think Democrats could improve their chances by replacing Biden with Harris. The vice president is currently voting at least as against Trump as in Biden: RealClear Politics average vote, Harris trailed Trump by 2 points while Biden trailed the way His 2.7 points.
Harris is also one lower Disagreement rating than biden. It is conceivable that her numbers are currently frustrated by her association with him.
Most critically, Harris is not in obvious cognitive decline. The vast majority of voters do not consider him too old to serve. He is an accomplished public speaker. All these qualities set him apart from Biden.
Biden’s boosters point to his relatively small poll decline since the debate as evidence that he’s still viable. After all, as I wrote above, the significance of even extraordinary campaign events tends to fade over time. But this argument is based on a conceptual error. Biden’s problem isn’t bad debate, it’s the sadder reality of his debate performance: He’s no longer able to reliably pull off even the bare minimum when communicating with the public.
In an Oval Office address Sunday night, Biden proved unable to successfully deliver a brief speech even while reading from a teleprompter. The president aimed to say that “in America, we settle our differences at the ballot box rather than “with bullets.” Instead, he said that “we settle our differences at the war box”—then, apparently trying and failing to correct himself, he continued. put it, “You know, that’s how we fight in the box, not with bullets.”
By itself, the president mistakenly suggesting that America’s political conflicts should be resolved on the final battlefield would be of little consequence. But Biden’s flub underscores his campaign’s fatal flaw. A bad debate will fall out of the news, but a candidate’s increasingly limited ability to communicate effectively will not. Biden’s downfall will limit his ability to generate favorable political narratives while ushering in new negative news stories that spotlight voters’ top concerns about his candidacy. The president’s Oval Office address on Sunday and a recent news conference gave him a rare opportunity to ingratiate himself and his team to a large national audience. Because of Biden’s limitations, these served less as opportunities to exploit than risks to survival.
All that said, Democrats who still believe in Biden aren’t the problem. Those lawmakers who believe their party will do better if he steps down — but are doing nothing to bring it on — are those who are most derelict in their responsibilities.
Such Democrats may tell themselves that there is no point in pushing Biden to resign because their party is doomed either way. But this is a justification for cowardice, not a blunt assessment of reality.
Given the facts available, it is not reasonable to accept a second Trump administration as inevitable. And it is not ethical to do so, at the expense of keeping a liberal reactionary out of power. Democrats have a way to win. Some will simply avoid personal risk or discomfort rather than accept it.
