Every day President Biden dithers around, now with Covid clouding his already-suspect thinking, trying to decide whether he should withdraw from the presidential race, he sets the stage for a catastrophic destruction of the Democratic Party if he fails to do the right thing and turn the nomination over to Kamala Harris.
I say this as a (formerly) proud Democrat who always backed my party's candidate for president with enthusiasm.
Now I rejoice in replying "stop" to every text message asking me to donate to Biden's campaign. I have no interest in helping his candidacy in any other way, either, because along with two-thirds of my fellow Democrats, I want Biden to withdraw and do what he said he'd do when he ran in 2020: be a one-term president who sets the stage for a younger generation of Democratic leaders.
Just about everything Biden does now irritates me, because I view him as a massive threat to democracy by his so-far stubborn refusal to heed the advice of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Barack Obama, Adam Schiff, George Clooney, and many other Democratic leaders: get out, because if you don't, you're greatly increasing the chance Donald Trump wins in November.
When I listen to his speeches, I hear an old man with diminished faculties who talks about his prior successes, failing to realize that voters are looking ahead to the next four years, not backward to the past three and a half years.
I hate it when Biden says something like, "Republicans want to make abortion illegal everywhere; we can't let that happen," his audience applauds and cheers, and Biden inexplicably says, "No, no, I'm not joking." Geez, dude, they weren't laughing at you; they were agreeing with you. You've just gotten into the habit of saying things that make no sense, like how you start to make a point, lose your train of thought, then say "Anyway..."
Before I looked on these sorts of utterances as Biden quirks, almost endearing, because I was a Biden backer.
Now I see them as signs that Biden is too old and set in his ways to be either an effective president or an effective candidate. And I say this as a 75 year-old man who recognizes how I've developed some senior citizen weaknesses of my own -- the big difference obviously being that I'm not claiming to be competent to lead our country.
Today my political spirits were lifted by reporting that Biden is finally starting to listen to the calls from Democratic leaders for him to withdraw from the presidential race. I seized on the headline of a New York Times story (even with the caveat in smaller type), like a drowning man thrown a life preserver.
Several people close to President Biden said on Thursday that they believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may not be able to win in November and may have to drop out of the race, bowing to the growing demands of many anxious members of his party.
One of the people close to him warned that the president had not yet made up his mind to leave the race after three weeks of insisting that almost nothing would drive him out. But another said that “reality is setting in,” and that it would not be a surprise if Mr. Biden made an announcement soon endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as his replacement.
Some people in Mr. Biden’s camp have told Democratic allies that the president’s resolve to stay in the race has been most shaken by three developments: The decision by Representative Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker, to weigh in so strongly, new state polls showing that his path to an Electoral College victory has grown far more remote and the boycott of key party donors.
Great news.
It's good that Biden appears to have given up on his absurd statement that the only way he'd leave the race was if polls showed that it was impossible to win the election. If Biden truly believes that a poll in July can predict with 100% certainty an outcome in November, his mind is in even worse shape than it looked to be at his debate with Trump.
Polls don't predict. They are a snapshot of a particular time. But there's such a thing as prediction markets, where people bet on all kinds of things, including whether Biden will withdraw from the presidential race. One such market has the chance of this happening at 90% currently.
I sure hope the traders are correct. Our country can't endure another four years of Trump. Right now Biden only has a 28% chance of beating Trump, according to Nate Silver's website, which uses his successful approach to analyzing state and national polls, taking into consideration many factors that go beyond simply aggregating poll results.
If Biden stays in the race, then loses to Trump, this will cause a schism in the Democratic Party that will be extremely difficult to repair. People like me will delight in saying "I told you so!" to those who urged Biden not to withdraw.
Biden's reputation will go from being a president with many accomplishments to "Ruth Bader Biden" -- a stubborn old person who put self above country, just as Ruth Bader Ginsberg did when she refused to step down and allow Obama to appoint a younger Supreme Court justice. Ginsberg hung on too long and died when Trump could appoint her replacement, a tragic mistake that I'll never forgive her for.
I'll never forgive Biden either if he stays in and loses this November. Nor will most in the Democratic Party. Nor should they. Biden has been told by both Democratic leaders and the Democratic electorate that he needs to withdraw. If he doesn't, his place in history will become "the stubborn president who handed the presidency to Donald Trump."
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.