Reacting to Biden's Debate, Part 2

President and Dr. Biden at an Atlanta Waffle House

It has been four days since the first presidential debate between incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.  The initial reaction to this debate was, to put it mildly, explosive.  Democrats had assumed that Biden would be able to easily dispatch Trump, but in the aftermath, while Trump clearly didn't "win," it's very obvious that Biden lost.  Through a combination of over-preparedness, a cold that Biden was suffering from, or a true sign that the current president is starting to show his age, Biden appeared lethargic and unable to land many counterpunches against his longtime political rival.  In the wake of that, there were thousands of articles across major news outlets, including an editorial from The New York Times, that called for Biden to step aside.  

The Biden campaign (and it's worth noting, every major elected Democrat in the country) has dismissed such allegations, and indeed, they had a much better few days following it.  Initial polls didn't show much movement for either candidate in the actual election even if a lot of polls showed Trump had won the debate.  This was the lowest-watched debate in recent history (it didn't help the view count much that it's late-June...who wants to watch a presidential debate when you can be at the lake or beach instead?), and it's possible it just didn't sink in (or lay voters saw something different than the chattering pundit class-more on that in a second).  Biden also countered with a really strong speech in North Carolina and a post-debate stop at a Waffle House in Atlanta that went viral, both of which trended pretty heavily on social media over the weekend.  It's possible that this was just a bad day for the campaign, which (despite Democrats' propensity for overreacting) is something that does happen in a presidential debate.  It's worth noting that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all "lost" their first debates before winning their second when they ran for reelection...and then ultimately winning the November election.

I wrote an article in the immediate aftermath of the debate laying out what the damage this debate might do, and to address the idea of whether or not Biden should drop out.  I tried to stay relatively neutral in that article, but I realized as I was writing it and in the day that followed (I had a long weekend for my birthday) that I initially wanted him to drop out.  I love Joe Biden-he's my favorite politician of my lifetime-but I meant (and still mean) what I said in that article.  I'd rather have Kamala Harris win in November even if that meant that my favorite politician had to leave in humiliation-the election should always be about winning, not about ego or favorites.

And I still think there's something to that argument.  Harris has more malleability as a candidate.  She has more room to lose, yes, but if we think that Biden is truly going to lose, then it'd be better to take the riskier bet than the sure loser.  Harris, after all, would put the age question squarely on Donald Trump (who is decades older than her), and would make Trump have to properly sell "the economy is bad" when it's really not, rather than use the age question (which has been far more effective against Biden) against her.

Vice President Kamala Harris (D-CA)

I also think that the past few days have been a moment where a lot of Biden supporters (myself included) admitted that we're worried about the impact that age has had on the campaign, a sort of taboo that we don't want to say out loud.  I'll be honest-on some level I wish that Biden was retiring this year.  The incumbency was so important, a reason for him to stay on, and Biden's coalition in 2020 was so attractive, but so far this year he has not been able to assemble it, and one wonders if someone like Harris (or Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom) might've been able to pull it off more easily in an open primary.  Getting to say that out loud, and having that honest discussion, felt like a release.

But I will admit my mind changed pretty quickly from "let's replace him" to "this feels like a power grab."  It's okay to admit when you're wrong, and I think some Democrats (because that fear has been real and some have been looking for a way to express it) were over-eager to get on record as saying that Biden's campaign was a bad idea (or a tough sell), and I think in the process things got pretty gross & problematic.

For starters, people with a vested interest in Biden losing seemed way too into the idea of pushing him aside.  The New York Times got rightfully eviscerated for calling for Biden to step aside, despite the Times not doing the same when Donald Trump became a literal convicted felon...they also hadn't called for Senator Mitch McConnell to resign when he had several very public medical issues during press conferences, far more concerning than Biden appearing rudderless in a debate.  The Times has been waging a war against Biden for months now, seemingly over access to his administration, and people correctly pointed out that they did the exact same thing to Hillary Clinton in 2016 even as Trump was (again) more publicly sharing random non sequiturs in debates.  Clinton, nearly eight years later, is as sharp as ever-that was much ado about nothing, and felt like a hit piece.  The same can be said for Nate Silver, who has been so strongly on record about a Biden loss that if he were to win this November his already shaky reputation would be in tatters (even his old website 538 gives Biden much better odds than Silver does).  Him calling for Biden to leave the race felt like a way to cover his butt with the uncertainty of a Harris candidacy.  And finally, the Pod Saves America crowd were quick to jump on the "let's have a conversation train."  I don't talk about it much, but I cannot stand those guys, and I think in general they are really toxic for the Democratic Party.  They take a disproportionate amount of credit for Barack Obama's two presidential victories, and spent much of the 2016 election being over-confident or dismissive of the Clinton campaign (and we saw how that turned out).  As they are doing something similar to Biden, one wonders if they are more vested in the Obama aura than on future Democratic victories.  After all, a second Biden term would prove less that Obama was something they caused themselves, and more that Democratic Party politics is something most of the country responds to (it would also set up a direct, eight-year comparison between the two presidents that it's not clear Obama would come out on top of with the chattering classes, given the successes of Biden's first term).

Pod Save America hosts Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, &
Tommy Vietor

The pundit class also was much more interested in the "re-run the open primary we initially wanted" idea than the sober impact of having to swap out our nominee in July.  Names like Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer were thrown out as equally plausible as Kamala Harris, which is simply not true.  Harris is the sitting vice president, and as I pointed out on Friday, would get right-of-first-refusal, something she wouldn't really give up without something more enticing (which, short of a Supreme Court seat, isn't happening).  That people were so casually dismissive of Harris (her chances, but more importantly her ambition & earned right to be the next-in-line as the vice president) felt telling that they had their own agendas (and was, to be frank, a little racist).

But perhaps the most telling thing that got me to be more skeptical that this was the right move was, well, that no tangible evidence pointed in the direction that Biden had suffered a mortal wound to his campaign.  Polls didn't seem to move initially (we'll know more over the next two weeks, and it's possible all of the "replace Biden" press will have a toll in the same way "Hillary's emails" did in 2016 even if the initial debate might not have).  This isn't good (Biden was hoping, and Democrats were expecting, the polls to go up, which they might've with a clear win in the debate), but it's also not a clear emergency when Biden is so close in most polls (even if he is still losing).  Donations were incredibly strong (Democrats had a bit of a rally-around-the-flag moment, and with Q2 closing, at the exact right moment given Trump's strength in fundraising in April & May), and most post-debate interviews with undecided voters seemed to favor Biden, not Trump.

This is where I think the pundit class told on itself, and while I commentate a lot on politics, I'm not afraid to say out loud what I think is happening here.  For the past few years, voters have heard (repeatedly) that Biden is too old to run for reelection.  This has been planted in virtually every voter's mind, and so when the voters saw it on a major stage, this wasn't going to have the impact to the lay voter that it would've if they hadn't been prepared for it.  What they hadn't expected, though, was that Trump's cognitive anger and clear mental decline (leaning into casual, shockingly open racism) was there.  The biggest line of the night that translated into something people actually remembered (rather than just "Biden seemed out of it") were Biden attacking Trump for sleeping with a porn star while his wife was pregnant ("you have the morals of an alley cat") and Trump stating that "immigrants will take Black jobs."  If you're an undecided voter, particularly a Black or Latino undecided voter, this is going to make you question Trump more than Biden.

But it also points out that the media has been lying about their coverage of these two men.  That Biden's age was a surprise to Nate Silver and The New York Times  but not Trump's erraticism (while the undecided voters were like "yeah, I knew that") shows that one of these things has been covered much more to the American public than the other.  And what's more telling is that the media seemed genuinely shocked by Biden but not by Trump...strongly indicating that they didn't actually believe the coverage of his age that they were selling, and to see that it might be right shook them.  It's possible that right-leaning news outlets (and at this point, that includes The New York Times) had done Biden an unexpected favor-they'd lowered expectations enough that your average voter thought he was in line with them, but by not showing Trump unfavorably, they'd made him look worse by comparison.

I do not know where this goes, but what I will say is that the reaction here was ugly, and I will confess that I took a small part in it.  I still think there's some credence to having (non-public, behind-the-scenes) discussion with the Biden/Harris campaign and powerbrokers like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and the DNC leadership over what's best.  If Biden truly isn't up for November (and the cold story was a lie), we'd be better off with Harris.  But at this point I think Biden staying put might make the most sense unless polls start to show a drop (and hint that Harris could win where he couldn't).  What I will say, though, is I'm done having this conversation on this blog until something new (tangible announcements from actual powerbrokers or a consistent trend in polling) have something new to say.  Having this dialogue every single day is not healthy for whomever ends up the nominee (or my mental health), and I'm not contributing to that.  We'll continue to cover politics on the blog, but this is my last word on if Biden should step aside until we have something new to print.