Member Newsletter
When we collectively wrestle with a situation like the one Democrats are now grappling with, it is important to remember that multiple things can be true at once. I’ve spent most of the day thinking that Joe Biden has very much not ended this “drop out” question — which I kind of thought he had by Monday evening — and thinking that withdrawing in favor of Kamala Harris may be the least worst bad option available. But there are a couple dynamics I want to mention that are helpful to think about.
One issue I’ve written about is the disjuncture here between elite responses to this political tornado and the responses of ordinary voters. This turns out not to be specific enough. All of the information I’ve gotten on this is anecdotal. But some anecdotes are better and more valuable than others. It seems clear to me that quite a few ordinary Democratic voters want Biden to step aside. I’ve published some of their emails below. I really have no idea what the relative percentages are. But it’s certainly not like the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal where DC political elites rapidly developed an iron consensus that Clinton had to resign and then realized that there was an angry and large majority of regular Democrats saying absolutely f—king not.
If it were a 50-50 split, that’s not really a good thing. Because one side is going to get denied what they want and it takes a lot of work to bring those people along. But these are Democrats terrified that Joe Biden is going to lose the election for them. And they may be right. But I’ve seen indications that the reaction has been quite different among actually undecided voters.
I was in touch with one person who really has their hand on the pulse of what undecided voters are saying in swing states — and not someone on the Biden campaign. And what I heard from this person was that the whole thing hasn’t made a big impression on these voters. They mostly assumed Biden was super old and at least borderline senile because they’ve been awash in Biden viral videos for two or three years. So it just didn’t land with any of the force it did for politically active or aware Democrats. These two realities aren’t really in contradiction at all. They can both be happening. And I suspect they are both happening. I don’t think polls are dispositive right now. Because a lot of this really comes down to predicting — with far less data than we need — how the next four months play out. But actual polls show little movement. Yes, there are headlines about big movements. But if you look at them critically there’s really not much and they seem to be shifting back at least a bit.
Another point is a breakdown of how these collective freakouts happen, the precise mechanics. Much of what we saw in the days just after the debate was a kind of hotwire situation in which reporters responded en masse to the debate debacle, often with a feeling of aggrieved vindication. Donors — especially major donors who often have the cell phones of the elected officials — see that coverage and freak the F out. Donor calls elected officials. Now the elected official if freaked the F out and they’re talking to the reporters who are churning out a new run of stories, which notches up the volume several points each day. So you have this kind of chain reaction. And maybe the message of that chain reaction is valid. But it is largely a closed loop and understood this way you can see how it can escalate very, very rapidly.