Next Candidate Up

"Time is the school in which we learn, Time is the fire in which we burn." - Delmore Schwartz, Poet

I had feared the debate was going to be a signal moment that showed President Biden’s age, but even my grimmest visions did not live up to what happened on CNN. My greatest worry is that he would have a Mitch McConnell moment and freeze up like the Senate Minority Leader. The president had no energy or voice, his head was overfilled with facts, and he did not seem cognitive enough to confront the lies of Trump. I have made the argument here before that Mr. Biden ought to take credit for his many accomplishments and then step aside to support a new Democratic successor. Such a noble act would add to what history might proclaim as the best one-term president ever produced by the United States.

And there is still time to withdraw and let his party find a new nominee. I struggle to understand how the people who work with the President on a daily basis do not speak out and politely urge him to consider the country’s future rather than his second term. We are all aware that he believes he is the best candidate to defeat the demented Trump, but after the debate I think there will be a broad consensus that he is not up to the critical task at hand. There were multiple chances for him to call Trump a liar in their putative debate, but he did not recognize a single one on abortion, January 6, covid, or any other lie that spewed from the previous president’s mouth. Biden looked, in fact, like a disaffected and lost old man, which, I’m afraid, he is.

Like most presidential debates, this one wasn’t really a debate. When Biden lost his way and ended an early answer with, “We beat Medicare,” I suspect much of the Democratic Party and the electorate moved on to wonder who is next, or to plan which country they were going to move to after Trump took office again. CNN, once more, committed a form of malpractice by eliminating fact checking. The network’s future might be more grim than the President’s. If Biden had been even slightly more cognizant of Trump’s lies, he would have turned and challenged them, but, as a basic function, moderators ought to refute untruths with facts. Why CNN management made such a decision is not justifiable, regardless, because it turned the entire event into a another Trump lie-athon. He might as well have been on a podium somewhere down in Dixie, explaining how he’s the greatest president for Blacks since Abraham Lincoln, and maybe he’s done even more than Honest Abe.

Nonetheless, if American voters have no choices other than two elderly white men, one vile, pathological, a convicted felon and adjudicated as a rapist, the other an octogenarian with a good heart but fading mental capabilities, then our country has fallen farther down the poop sluice than even the cynics suggest. By keeping the incumbent president as its candidate, the Democrats almost certainly assure a Trump assault on our democracy, and a destabilizing world. The American electorate is not overflowing with intellect when Trump got just over 74 million votes in 2020. Although Biden defeated him by 7 million, it is probably a safe assumption that millions of those melted away after the CNN debacle. Even if they don’t vote for Trump, their absence from the electorate will make this significantly closer than circumstances might suggest.

There was a clear and demonstrable strategy by Biden’s campaign team to have him focus on issues. His head was bubbling over with numbers and policies and he had trouble articulating where they all fit in his record. The simpler approach would have been to just attack Trump. Call him a convicted felon every time he addressed the man, accuse him of planning a coup and putting the entire country at risk, tell him there is a public record of him being a sexual predator and a racist, explain that he was so foolish on covid that he wanted people to inject bleach for a cure, and he kept arguing, “We expect this to go away in weeks, but maybe days, when the weather warms up;” instead, millions died. There was so much material to hammer Trump with that it is astounding Biden, even if he is addled by age, did not think clearly enough to throw the stones provided by Trump’s record.

The Democrats need to move quickly and concertedly to replace Biden. He is still rational enough to be convinced that his debate performance ruined his chances at reelection and the country cannot well endure another Trump term. Keeping Trump away from the White House has motivated Mr. Biden in this campaign and if he understands he no longer has the power to accomplish such a goal, he, logically, ought to refuse his party’s nomination. The Democrats have rules to allow floor nominations at their conventions, which involve delegates circulating petitions to get signatures to nominate a candidate. A percentage of delegates in attendance is required, and then nominating speeches are allowed and the candidate must formally accept, either with a speech or in writing.

It’s complicated, though. If Biden declines to run further, the traditional assumption is his vice president becomes the party’s choice of successor. No rules dictate such a conclusion, but that will be the expectation. The Democrats are not likely to unite very well behind Kamala Harris. Her tenure has been low profile and she has suffered great criticism, much of it justified. To sideline her, however, for Gov. Gavin Newsom of California or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or even Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, is likely to create disaffected black voters. Moore, a charismatic black governor, would mitigate some of that on any ticket for the Democrats, but marginalizing a Black female VP will be bad optics. Other potential replacements are Sen. Cory Booker, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and former Congressman Adam Kinzinger. Democrats have a deep bench. The options are not simple to choose, but a change of the ticket is essential, or Trump wins.

And America loses.