Biden’s attempt on Monday to settle the question once and for all did not work. On Wednesday, former speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), one of the party’s most respected leaders, reopened the debate with some carefully chosen words on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run. We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short,” Pelosi said. “He is beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make that decision.”
Pelosi knows Biden has decided to stay in the race; she just doesn’t take that as a final answer. And in a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll of registered voters, conducted July 5 to 9, 56 percent of Democrats surveyed said they believe Biden should pull out of the race. Anyone who argues that choosing a new candidate would divide the party should face reality: The party is already divided.
Sticking with Biden but expecting him to lose is simply not an option. The stakes are too high.
In his four years as president, Trump didn’t just enact reactionary policies that took the nation backward, appoint Supreme Court justices who stripped away abortion rights, disrupt vital international alliances and generally act on grievance and whim. He went so far as to try to overturn a presidential election, inciting a violent crowd to storm the U.S. Capitol.
Trump faces state and federal felony charges for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, along with separate federal charges for allegedly absconding with sensitive classified documents. He has already been convicted of 34 state felony charges stemming from a hush money payment to an adult-film actress. His campaign speeches consist of lies, non sequiturs and incomprehensible ramblings. At 78, he, too, would be the oldest person ever elected president.
That is a description of a candidate who should be trounced in a landslide. Yet the Post poll shows Trump and Biden tied at 46 percent. And this is one of the rosiest assessments of Biden’s prospects since his “bad night” debate performance; the RealClearPolitics average of polls has Trump ahead bythree points.
On this date in 2020, by contrast, Biden led Trump in the RCP average by nine points. Biden ended up winning the popular vote by 4.4 points.
For Democrats — and for the future of our democracy — these are not good numbers. Polls in the crucial swing states are even less promising.
It is impossible to ignore the debt that the Democratic Party owes to Biden. He not only came out of retirement to defeat Trump but went on to have one of the most impactful — and progressive — presidential terms of my lifetime. He absolutely deserves another. But can he win, when 85 percent of respondents in The Post’s poll say he is too old to serve four more years?
It might not be impossible. Trump is also seen as too old, by 60 percent of voters. Biden’s campaign team can argue that the president’s deficit is within the margin of error in many polls; and they have built a formidable get-out-the-vote operation. Most Americans — for good reason — view Trump unfavorably.
But in the Post survey, Harris leads narrowly in a hypothetical contest against Trump, 49 percent to 47 percent. And when Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents were asked who should replace Biden at the top of the ticket should he step aside, the vice president far outpaced those such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and even former first lady Michelle Obama.
Changing candidates would be a gamble, and there is no guarantee it would work. It is hard for me to imagine a process that ended with anyone other than Harris as the replacement. At 59, she would turn the age issue in her party’s favor; and I’m confident she could unite and inspire the Democratic base. I’m not sure, though, how she would ultimately fare among independents and the lost tribe of anti-Trump Republicans. No one really knows what would happen.
If the smartest politicians and numbers crunchers in the Democratic Party see a way for Biden to win, they must all agree to make that happen. But if not — and no one has yet shown a credible road map to victory — they must all agree to make a change. A leap of faith is better than an inexorable slide into the abyss.
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