The Briefing, Vol. XII, Issue 30
This week:
- Democrats force Biden out of race, throwing Democratic campaign into chaos
- Biden’s revenge: endorse Kamala Harris
- Republicans call for his resignation as president
President 2024
Tale of Two Parties: “A bullet couldn’t stop Trump. A virus just stopped Biden. You’ve got the nominees of this party (the GOP) getting their butts kissed; Biden is getting his butt kicked by his own party. The Democrats are coming apart, the Republicans are coming together.”
Those words, from the mouth of longtime left-wing activist Van Jones on CNN, aptly sum up the direction the presidential race has taken since the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump (R).
President Joe Biden’s (D) subsequent cancellation of events, supposedly due to a COVID diagnosis, only added additional sharpness and humor to the contrast between the two presumptive nominees. If he’s testing for COVID in 2024, it already makes him look weak. If it’s part of a coup d’etat within the Democratic Party, it’s even worse.
The Republicans’ convention could not have come at a better moment for the party. Between the Democratic lawfare against him and now the assassination, events had guaranteed that any unease with Trump on the right would vanish.
Indeed, all the unhinged conspiracy leftist theories about Trump being involved in setting himself up are almost understandable (although obviously false), given how well this has unfolded for him politically.
A party convention is supposed to be a carefully choreographed display of party unity. As the 2016 Republican convention demonstrated, they often feature lots of of back-stabbing, conflict, and off-message leaking behind the scenes, even as people smile and praise each other in public.
But in the case of 2024 Republicans, the choreography was almost entirely sincere. Republicans have never been more united. The Republican Party has never been more supportive of Trump, and that feeling of support is already feeling contagious to many swing voters.
‘Winter of despair.’ At the exact same moment, the Democratic Party is spreading a very different kind of contagious feeling. Things were going so badly that the party of Jefferson and Jackson is throwing the chips, cards, dice, and other game pieces into the air to see if it can come up with something better. Its luminaries, perhaps lacking imagination, are so eager for something different that they do not believe that this could make things even worse for them.
Democrats have abandoned their voters’ choice for renomination after a very public and acrimonious battle.
The party appears to be as demoralized and divided as it has ever been in modern times, and the fight over who will be the actual nominee still hasn’t even begun.
As the weekend began, a growing number of Democrats were trying to cast Biden aside in favor of a back-up candidate. They attempted last week to make his exit from the race seem invevitable, through a combination of strategic leaks to the media (Democrats manipulate the media like no one else) and public announcements of opposition to Biden by lawmakers with higher and higher profiles.
Biden entered the weekend with a defiant statement that he’s the nominee and he’s not backing out. His allies at the DNC even pressed to hold an early roll call vote on a Zoom call to nominate him prior to the convention. Legally speaking, this would have been (and still is) necessary for the Democratic nominee to qualify for the ballot in Ohio, due to its 90-day deadline. But it provided Biden’s campaign a convenient mechanism and excuse to prevent anyone else from taking his nomination away from him.
Biden finally drops out: Biden could have hung on, but in the end he chose not to. It isn’t hard to see why.
Two polls last week showed Biden leading — in Massachusetts (by 18 points) and California (by 25 points). Aside from those, not a single poll taken since July 13 has contained good news for him. Perhaps this is to be expected as a post-convention bounce for Trump, but Democrats, with all the chaos now reigning in their party, will probably not find it easy to match this with a bounce of their own.
Two new polls of Wisconsin showed Trump widening his lead over Biden (now three to five points), as did two in Pennsylvania (Trump by 4 to 6 points) and two in Michigan (Trump by three to seven points). So the most important swing states were swinging, all of them in Trump’s direction, and don’t forget that he probably only needs to win one of them.
After Biden: Some liberal writers have been rather sanguine about the post-Biden possibilities for their party. We do not believe his withdrawal improves their chances much, although admittedly we now find ourselves in political terra incognita. Little can be taken for granted, since Biden’s exit from the race leaves everything so uncertain. But as we noted here consistently for months, Biden was losing before all the revelations of his cognitive diminution. Also, his most likely replacement has even lower approval ratings than he does.
Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris (D) in most surveys, including new national polls and new polls of Georgia and New Hampshire. Still, the data are much thinner than they are for a Biden-Trump matchup. it is unclear whether Democrats will choose Harris as their nominee, but Biden pointedly endorsed her — an act that will both encourage his delegates to support her and pressure Democratic insiders not to work against her. Bill and Hillary Clinton, perhaps desiring to remain relevant, backed her as well. So did Jim Clyburn, who single-handedly got Biden the nomination in 2020 when he endorsed ahead of the South Carolina primary.
This stands in contrast to Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, who did not endorse her. Obama, perhaps unable to say anything nice, called Biden “one of America’s most consequential presidents,” and expressed confidence that Democrats would come up with “a process from which an outstanding nominee emerges.” So there are signs that some Democrats think they can do better, but also signs that they will fail to stop Harris.
At this point, Harris has received enough public endorsements, both from progressive officeholders and moderates such as Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, that she can probably win by force at convention. The delegates at next month’s convention will be disproportionately Biden loyalists (compared to other Democrats, that is), with about 99 percent of them pledged to Biden. It is easy to forget that key Democratic constituencies, such as black women, have been highly supportive of Biden and were publicly defending him, in some cases to the bitter end. They may be more likely to back Harris and to resist any attempts to unite behind anyone else’s selection.
Electoral Map: Here is the map, based on all the latest polling, that Biden faced when he made the decision to call it quits. It was a perfectly justifiable decision from his perspective, but one that he probably should have made much sooner.
Remember, Biden’s electoral situation was already dire even before the debate forced the media and Democrats to come to terms with his long-evident mental decline. Note that the battle lines have shifted over time: first from the Sun Belt (Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina) to the Midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania), and then in the last month from there to the East Coast and its weaker Democrat-leaning states (Virginia, New Hampshire, Maine). At all times, Democrats have been on the run.
Whether the selection of Harris or any other Democrat will improve the situation is very much an open question. So far, there exists little evidence for to say it will.
One rather cynical Democratic argument in favor of Harris is that, if she does lose in this year’s unfavorable environment, then Democrats won’t face any DEI-related controversies over bypassing her in 2028. If she wins, great. But if the first black female vice president has lost, there is already sufficient reason not to renominate her.
Calls for Biden resignation: On the other hand, why not make her president now? As GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has pointed out, if Biden is unable to go on in the campaign, how is he capable of serving as president? Republicans would like to make this an issue, since it forces some awkward questions onto Harris and other Democrats.
Here is at least one answer: For personal reasons, Biden needs to stay in office for several more months. He almost certainly intends to pardon his son Hunter for his gun conviction and any convictions that result from his upcoming tax trial. He may also want to pre-emptively pardon yet-unprosecuted acts by Hunter and the president’s brother, James, which could be brought up by a Trump Justice Department. But he doesn’t want to do any of this before Nov. 5, because the optics will be terrible.
