But if that’s the worst of all worlds, the one we’re in now is a close second. The Democratic Party’s agonising discussion about Biden’s future has now been going on for three weeks. Insiders have spoken, at various moments, of a proverbial dam breaking, but so far, we’ve seen just growing cracks and leaks. Of all the party factions, only donors have been vocal about the need for a new candidate, which has let the Biden camp paint calls for his exit as elitist interference with the will of the voters. And with relatively few elected officials defecting – even as many vent to reporters off the record – both Biden and his remaining supporters have been able to pretend that the majority of Democrats are still behind him.
The result has been a despair-inducing slog. The president has had a few good moments in recent weeks, including a great speech in Michigan. But more often, his public performances have only underlined the profound pathos of man unable to accept his inexorable decline.
It’s time for Democrats who want a new nominee to hold hands and jump. There is no salvaging this campaign; Biden has lost his party’s confidence. On Wednesday came the bombshell news that Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, almost certainly speaking for his caucus, has urged Biden to end his campaign. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker and one of the most brilliant Democratic strategists, has reportedly told him he can’t win. In a recent Associated Press/NORC poll, 65% of Democrats said the president should withdraw. And though it shouldn’t be dispositive, donor money may be drying up. The campaign is in a death spiral that threatens to pull down-ticket Democrats into the vortex. They need to push for the quickest and most decisive end possible to this crisis.
The collapse of Biden’s support in the party is by no means total; there is still a substantial minority of Democrats who believe that whatever his weaknesses as a candidate, jettisoning him will only invite chaos. In recent weeks, I’ve argued both publicly and privately with some of Biden’s remaining backers, and they generally make several points.
They say that Biden’s polling, especially at the national level, remains within the margin of error; a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll has the president leading Donald Trump by 2 points. They say that there’s no proof that Vice President Kamala Harris or another Democrat would do better, especially when faced with the full force of Republican demonisation. And they say that because Biden is determined to stay in the race, calls for him to make way for another candidate only help Trump. When I debated Dmitri Mehlhorn, the pro-Biden adviser to Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, last week, he said, “The time we’re spending talking about Joe’s new liabilities is time we’re not spending talking about Trump’s new liabilities.”
The problem is that while Biden remains the Democratic candidate, there’s no way to end discussion of his liabilities, because they’re obvious almost every time he speaks. It’s true that the bottom has yet to fall out in national polling, and it may never collapse completely: The country is polarised, and there’s still a significant bloc of voters like me who would vote for Biden in any condition over Trump. But many state polls look terrible; recent surveys show Trump leading in every swing state.
It’s important to note that this doesn’t reflect broad backing for Trump or his agenda. An Emerson poll released Thursday found that while Biden is losing support, Trump doesn’t appear to be gaining much, even after the attempt on his life. And a YouGov poll found that while Biden is trailing in five swing states, Democratic Senate candidates are leading. Recent polls have shown Harris, as well as other Democratic alternatives, doing better against Trump than Biden. We can’t know if their advantages would survive an inevitable Republican onslaught. But people are desperate for an off-ramp from a bleak choice between men who are both seen, to different degrees, as unfit.
In the end, polls cannot by themselves tell Democrats what to do, because they are a snapshot of the present, not a road map to the future. Polls can’t tell us whether Biden is capable of convincing people that concerns about his age pale beside worries about Trump’s criminality and dictatorial ambitions. They can’t measure the effects of voter excitement or depression. Nor can they indicate whether it’s feasible to run a presidential campaign that depends on Democrats not saying out loud what most of them think privately. These are intuitive human judgments. Most Democrats have already made them.
Now we need a party capable of articulating where it stands and charting a path forward. The last three weeks of behind-the-scenes maneuvering have been alternately enervating and panic-inducing. It cannot go on. Democrats who no longer think Biden can lead need to start leading themselves.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Michelle Goldberg
Photographs by: Eric Lee
©2024 THE NEW YORK TIMES
