Member Newsletter
I wanted to share a few thoughts with you about the current state of things with President Biden’s candidacy. See it more as comparing notes with you than reporting, per se.
Yesterday there was a frenzy when President Biden’s interview with BET was released and he said that he would leave the race if doctors told him he had some medical condition or illness that made it necessary. Was this planting the seed? Was this how it was going to happen? When it was reported a couple hours later that Biden had COVID, I thought to myself: Are we going full Aaron Sorkin here? Is this really happening? It was one of those few moments when I literally couldn’t figure out what was going on. Is this for real? Are we saying the interview was a cue up for the COVID? Does he really have COVID? Are the writers just pushing the bounds of realism?
But as I alluded to yesterday afternoon there are other things happening that are not cinematic. Random backbenchers telling Biden he should end his candidacy was never going to do it. As we’ve said from the beginning, the people who can deliver that message to the President are Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, perhaps Barack Obama, though that last one is a lot less clear to me. Starting yesterday it became clear that all three congressional leaders either had or were in the process of doing that. That matters, in ways that all the other stuff does not.
It’s important here to say what a parliamentary leader is and what they do. As I’ve said before, Nancy Pelosi is one of the greatest parliamentary leaders in any living American’s lifetime. To become that, you need to know in minute detail what the members of your caucus individually and collectively think, what they’re willing to do and what they’re not willing to do. An effective parliamentary leader than uses that knowledge to guide the caucus, within those constraints, by employing members’ trust in that leader. There’s also the fear of punishment. But certainly in Pelosi’s case trust was the far more important factor.
The point here is that these leaders are channeling the views of their members, members who either fear they will lose office or not be in the majority. It’s not precisely the same as how well they think Biden will do in his own election, though there’s not really strong reasons to think these two factors or assumptions would diverge.
All three seem to be telling Biden that he should step aside, at least in part because he’s endangering other Democrats on the ballot. As I’ve explained, private polling data from the campaigns shows most Democrats entirely unaffected by all of this. They were running ahead of Biden before the debate. And that gap widened after the debate. Their fear is that a losing and demoralized presidential campaign will lead to a fall off in turnout that will swamp a lot of Democrats who polls are showing to be ahead. That’s not an unreasonable fear.
Biden apparently also recieved the message in the last couple days that donor money for his campaign is really drying up. That’s another big thing.
We’re getting a lot of signs right now that Biden is about to withdraw from the campaign. Maybe not today but that it is coming soon. My only slight hesitation about saying I think that’s going to happen is that there have been a couple other times when I was basically sure it was going to happen and then it didn’t. But right now it certainly looks like it.
I’ve been saying for the last couple weeks that I’m basically agnostic on who the candidate should be. A decision should just be made soon. That’s basically still where I am. I’m a practical person. And because of that, what I think should happen often fuses, as I think through these things, with what I think will happen. That’s all part of the same equation of “whatever is going to happen, make it happen fast so everyone can get behind the new person.”
I hope the leaders have given some good thought to what Kamala Harris’ campaign will look like and how it will do. That’s not at all doubting how she’ll do. It’s just a reflection of the fact that this is a really big decision. But don’t assume that they have hidden knowledge that you or I don’t. This is fundamentally a guess that Harris will do better. An educated guess. But it’s still a leap into the unknown which sets aside a lot of really basic assumptions about how you win the presidency. And while I said I’m agnostic on who the candidate should be, I don’t think it can be anyone besides Joe Biden or Kamala Harris for reasons I’ve said before. I definitely think Harris can win. And I think there are various ways her selection can be a big shot in the arm for Democrats. The last three weeks of paralysis have been devastating and everyone wants to move past this. It won’t be the same campaign. There are slivers of the electorate that Biden has access to which I don’t think Harris does. But I think it goes the other way too. Harris can get to places Biden couldn’t. So it’s a different kind of campaign. It’s probably one where the southern tier states come a bit more into view and the blue wall states a touch less. There are lots of potential upsides and downsides. And everyone has to accept that range of possibilities and throw themselves into making it happen.
Final note. There are a lot of ordinary Democratic voters who are really pissed about the idea that Biden is getting forced out of the race. Anyone who doesn’t get that is totally, totally fooling themselves. And there are a lot of people fooling themselves. I’m pretty confident that is manageable if that happens. But it needs to be managed. The key thing is Biden embracing it and credibly embracing it. The other critical part is Kamala Harris being the next choice. And more generally it has to be done with a lot of smarts and grace to honor Biden’s presidency and not give anyone any sense that he’s being tossed aside or treated in an undignified way. We already had a primary process. Democratic voters chose Joe Biden. You only set that aside in the most extraordinary situations. And only Biden himself has the standing to do that and make it work and have Democrats accept it.