Replace Biden

After the President’s Disastrous Debate Performance and Dangerous Supreme Court Rulings, Democrats Should Choose a New Nominee

Biden’s befuddled debate performance was painful to watch, but we can’t ignore it and pretend all is well.

It was painful to watch and even harder to accept.

For 90 minutes last Thursday, we watched the president of the United States struggle to speak, wearing the far-off look of someone suffering from dementia, mindlessly mouthing boring policy minutiae — and flubbing much of it — but unable to complete a coherent thought.

I physically winced and squirmed as Joe Biden seemed to confirm longstanding and widespread concerns that he’s just too old and feeble for this, particularly facing a ruthless and dangerous demagogue like Donald Trump, who spewed a barrage of lies, invective and gibberish at the debate but still looked vigorous and presidential in his delivery.

In real time, I found myself reaching the same inescapable conclusion as so many others — from my relatively apolitical sister, who called me in a panic, to some of the biggest thinkers and institutions in the Democratic Party orbit — that this was a disaster and something has to change.

Joe Biden isn’t up for this challenge. He’s going to lose to Trump. Biden needs to withdraw and be replaced. Democrats need to find a new presidential nominee by Aug. 22, the closing night of the Democratic National Convention.

Biden Must Go: I made my declaration that Biden needs to withdraw the next morning on Facebook, supplementing it by quoting what I wrote in Scribe’s End Notes on Feb. 28 when I laid out how Biden should bow out and support a quick and vigorous process for choosing a new nominee.

“Trump and the Republicans would lose their minds, with years of demonizing Biden going to waste, little time to paint devil horns on the new nominee, and all their ageist attacks suddenly used against them. It would be awesome to watch,” I wrote.

Some friends argued against the call I made in two Facebook posts, and even more strangers debated me on other Internet threads that I weighed in on. But most of the people who reacted were aghast at what we’d all witnessed at the debate and wanted Biden to withdraw.

Many were angry and felt duped by Biden and team’s “trust us, he’s fine” dismissals of concerns about Biden’s age and bad polling numbers over the last year. That sense of betrayal has only hardened over the last week as our concerns about Biden have been met with dismissive, belittling and arrogant responses by Biden and his team.

The Republican Party is now a cult of personality led by Trump, demanding unquestioning fealty from its officeholders and supporters, no matter what Trump says or does. Democrats can and should model something more enlightened and democratic.

We won’t be gaslit by Team Biden. We all know what we saw on that debate stage, and it just doesn’t square with the White House spin that Biden is still sharp and vigorous. They made a big deal of Biden’s teleprompter-read rally speech the next day, but his team still refuses to let Biden do in-depth media interviews or press conferences, which is another bad sign that even they don’t have confidence in his abilities.

By the afternoon on the day after the debate, there was blood in the water. The New York Times editorial board published a scathing call for Biden to drop out, and so did its veteran columnist Thomas Friedman, a personal friend of Biden’s (and another strong one yesterday). The New Yorker editor David Remnick joined the chorus, saying Biden should withdraw to save the nation. The Washington Post also editorialized that Biden should strongly consider dropping out.

Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, and other top Biden surrogates — who also happen to be the leading replacement contenders if Biden does drop out — have remained loyal and defended Biden, as you’d expect them to do. They need Biden’s support and/or delegates if he does drop out.

But the concerns and calls for Biden to withdraw have only grown stronger in recent days, with three members of Congress calling for a new nominee, reports that Barack Obama is concerned, and key Biden ally Rep. James Clyburn calling for Biden to prove himself and announcing he’ll back Harris is Biden drops out.

Even Rep. Nancy Pelosi defended Biden’s critics, calling their concerns legitimate and saying it’s up to Biden and his team to prove their fitness for office after that disastrous debate. Pelosi framed this moment well: “I think it’s a legitimate question to say is this an episode or is this a condition.”

If Biden isn’t willing to subject himself to greater scrutiny by the press and public, we should assume this episode reflects his current condition and replace him as the nominee.

High Stakes Getting Higher: During the debate, Trump made clear how dangerous and unhinged he is. Trump falsely and repeatedly claimed millions of criminals and crazy migrants were flooding the country, committing heinous crimes and stealing “Black jobs,” yet he ignored CNN’s question about his stated plans to arrest, imprison and deport them all.

Trump defended the Jan. 6 attack on Congress and his provocation of it, pledged to free those convicted of the violence, weirdly tried to blame Pelosi for it, lied about his economic and political records, made grandiose claims about his power and ability to immediately end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and sounded every bit like the dictator he aspires to be.   

Right after the debate, the U.S. Supreme Court added to the dangers of this moment and the stakes of this election in a series of right-wing extremist rulings. It gutted federal government power by overturning the Chevron doctrine that deferred interpretation of regulations to administrative agencies, allowed local jurisdictions to crack down on the homeless even when no shelters are available, and struck down the obstruction of official proceedings charges against Trump and other Jan. 6 defendants.

Then on Monday, the Supreme Court went even further by finding that Trump and other U.S. presidents are immune from all criminal liability for their official acts, including Trump’s efforts to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election and corruptly appoint a new attorney general to carry out the plan.

As three Supreme Court justices said in their dissent, the ruling effectively ends the bedrock constitutional principle that nobody is above the law, elevates the power of the president to that of a king, and puts the U.S. on the path to dictatorship. As they wrote, “The President in now a king about the law.”

If Trump becomes that president, he’ll be unleashed to become the dictator he dreams and talks about becoming. And he’ll never leave voluntarily. The country as we know it now will end. These are now the stakes of this election.

The Way Forward: Fear of Trump’s return to power is the central concern of almost all Democrats and left-leaning or Trump-hating independents right now. It is at the core of arguments by those who want Biden to step aside and those who want to stick by him and aren’t happy about rising calls to replace him.

I understand both perspectives, and for a long time now, I’ve defended Biden against his critics. Even if Biden had lost a step, I argued that he’s still a much better president than Trump, partly because he trusts and surrounds himself with competent people.

But that debate changed my perspective. It was Biden’s last best chance to overcome doubts about his competence, and he not only failed in that, he made things infinitely worse.

Even before the debate, a Gallup poll found that 67% of Americans believed Biden was “too old to be president.” That already high number is on the rise. A CBS poll after the debate has 72% of respondents saying Biden “does not have the mental and cognitive health to be president.”

Just today, a New York Times poll had 74% say the same thing. It found that Trump had widened his lead over Biden since the debate among likely voters, with the spread now 49% for Trump and 43% for Biden.

But rather than despair or fear the messy process of finding a new nominee, we should embrace this moment. The vast majority of Americans have said they don’t like either Trump or Biden, and they have a dim view of both major political parties and the state of modern politics.

So let’s listen to Americans and give them what they want: hope and change.

Tomorrow, aptly enough on the Fourth of July, Biden could announce that for the good of the country, and in recognition of the concerns about his abilities, he’s withdrawing from the presidential race. He should support an open contest to replace him and release his delegates to vote their conscience, even if he also wants to endorse Kamala Harris to replace him, which would probably be a good idea.

Then the party can invite new nominees, hold a couple of debates among the contenders, and see who has the political skills and support to win over a majority of convention delegates.

Sure, it would be messy and maybe even ugly at times. But it would also be an exciting departure from politics as usual, a spectacle that would rivet the nation and upstage Trump’s chaotic showmanship just as he was preparing his big finish (which is why Team Trump is so concerned about Biden being replaced).

There’s no guarantee that a new Democratic nominee would win. But at this point, Biden seems to be increasing guaranteed to lose. Either way, now is the time consider a better strategy. We can disagree about that, and that’s fine, as long as we all come back together by the end of the convention.

Because there’s too much at stake to do nothing.