The President Has No Clothes!

Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? If you watched the presidential debate, you know what you saw.

I spent last week out of the country on a family trip to Guatemala. As a result, my media consumption was limited, like drinking through a narrow straw. (That’s not because internet access is difficult or expensive—once I navigated the language barrier, buying 10GB of data for a local SIM card cost me about $16 from Tigo. Here in the greatest country in the world, ATT offers 10GB for a hotspot for the low, low price of just $25/month, plus a single line charge of $300! TMobile will give you lines with 10GB for just $70/month.)

But I did manage to watch President Biden’s interview with George Stephanopoulos, and to catch the headlines about which Democratic leaders were saying what about whether he still had their support. Since getting home, I’ve also caught up on the backlash bubbling amongst many Democratic activists against the media, which if I can summarize fairly says: “This is like ‘Hillary’s emails’ all over again. Why aren’t they calling for the convicted felon to drop out of the race? I’m canceling my subscription to the New York Times. So there!”

It's true, the mainstream media is addicted to spectacle. The “news” after all refers to things that are new, and reminding readers or viewers of something they already know—that Trump is unfit, dangerous, delusional, etc—is not something our media typically does. Whereas hyping something truly new—the evident decline of the sitting president—comes naturally. And with that hype inevitably comes overkill and errors (like assuming a neurologist’s visits to the White House must have all been about managing Biden’s health).

That said, if you’re obsessing over how the press is making a mountain out of a supposed mental molehill, maybe you’re focusing on the wrong thing. Watching America through a narrow straw last week, my mind kept coming back to one thing. I saw what I saw in that debate: a frail, aged man struggling to hold his train of thought, failing to complete sentences, incapable of forcefully confronting his opponent, fearful of stumbling afterwards, and fundamentally not up to the job of being president. Yes, Trump was lying a mile a minute, but we’re in no position to do anything about him being the GOP nominee. If you’re trying to ignore what the debate revealed about Biden, I have a children’s story for you to read.

We’re in uncharted waters. The only other time a sitting Democratic president has abdicated was at the end of March 1968, when Lyndon Johnson announced that he was not seeking re-election. The twin challenges of the Vietnam War and rising social disorder at home had ground him to a pulp, but what caused him to give up his political career was the primary challenge presented by Senators Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy. Their rising success in places like New Hampshire and in the polls were what shoved LBJ to his decision.

Today, there is no single politician betting his or her future on pushing Biden to abdicate, nor is there any vehicle for doing so like an upcoming state primary election. The time for that kind of challenge passed months ago, when Biden appeared far more vigorous and capable. Now, knowing that time’s arrow moves in only one direction, we are facing a very different problem.

However this crisis gets resolved, I’m going to remember a few things about it. First, in the days immediately after the debate, as many of us considered the possibility that Biden would have to withdraw, I’m not going to forget how exciting that was. The idea that we might have a vigorous new candidate capable of confronting Trump instead of this sour repeat of 2020 was thrilling. The thought of a Kamala Harris/Gretchen Whitmer ticket going up against whatever version of Christian nationalism Trump offers seemed really promising. Something like that could still happen.

Second, I won’t forget how much this past week has exposed about the disconnect between the Democratic party’s leadership and ordinary voters. The only apparent channel for influencing the White House has been big donors, it seems. To my knowledge, no membership organization has done anything to survey its base—though Indivisible did send out an email to local chapter leaders asking them how concerned they were about Biden’s ability to win and whether they thought Harris would have a stronger shot and excite their members more. (If you belong to a group that has done anything similar, please leave a comment describing what they’ve done.)

Third, I’ve never felt more like someone living in Soviet Russia trying to interpret obscure statements or absences in order to figure out what is actually happening. Are the nearly identical tweets from leading Democratic governors like California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Kathy Hochul backing Biden proof of anything beyond an organized White House effort to shut down dissent, for example? Did New York liberal congressman Jerry Nadler look like someone was holding a gun to his head when he recanted his reported support for passing the torch? Did Squad leader Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez declare that the matter of Biden dropping out was “closed” because she doesn’t want the left to be blamed if he quits or loses and figures the upside (he somehow ekes out a victory in November) would be better for progressives? Or is she mainly thinking ahead to 2028?

That said, right now I think the door is still open to Democratic leadership convincing Biden to step aside before next month’s national convention. The biggest sign of this is former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement today on MSNBC that “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run.” That’s far from a ringing endorsement. With polls suggesting that Democrats could lose 20 or more House seats instead of retaking the majority, Pelosi is the most significant bellwether of sentiment from that side of Capitol Hill to watch. So far at least three members of the DCCC’s Frontline list of endangered members, most of them in swing districts, have spoken publicly in favor of Biden passing the torch: Pat Ryan of NY, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of WA, and Jared Golden of ME. These people have outsized influence on the rest of their caucus because as Pelosi liked to call them, they are Democrats’ “Majority Makers.”

As I said last week, my view is that Biden is done. Sadly, at this stage in life, the aging process only goes downhill. His legacy as a successful president is totally on the line. And our hopes for preserving democracy are too. So I’m fully on board with the Pass the Torch, Joe effort. Spread the word.