The rationale for dumping Biden is unassailable
What Americans should learn from British politics
It’s objectively true that nobody needs to hear what a British man living in Britain thinks that the Democratic Party in the United States should do about Joe Biden.
It’s similarly true that the world does not need more takes on this story.
But I’m not going to let that stop me – because I actually think there is some value here that a British perspective can add. While the current situation is largely unprecedented in American politics, dethroning leaders at short notice is a core part of how British politics works.
We’ve seen this multiple times in recent years. Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss all experienced what Biden is experiencing now: A moment when the taboo of questioning their leadership has been broken. And I expect that before the Democratic National Convention next month, we’ll also see the thing that typically happens next.
Perhaps a low-ranking House member, albeit someone who is not a usual suspect, will break cover, and say that Biden should step aside. Then another will. Then a more senior Democrat will – and much like how the resignations of Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak precipitated Boris Johnson’s downfall – it will create a permission structure for the rest of the party to follow. And though the situation isn’t exactly as analogous – for legal reasons1, Biden is the nominee unless he decides himself to go – it will be clear that he has lost his authority.
In fact, I will be surprised once the seal is broken if events don’t move much quicker than we perhaps expect. And this will be a good thing, as the longer he drags out this inevitable process, the more damage he will do the party’s chances in November.
But as painful as replacing Biden might be for the Democrats, it is also going to be necessary – because I think the rationale for Biden stepping aside is, at this point, is unassailable.
So here’s a British man in Britain explaining four reasons why.
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1. There are no more set-piece moments to turn things around
One of the big ‘winners’ of the debate was Nate Silver. For months he has been raising the alarm about Biden’s age – only to receive pushback from the same American liberals who had considered him a prophet during the Obama era, when his election model was saying things they wanted to hear.
In mid-May, when the debate schedule was torn up at the behest of the Biden campaign, Silver wrote about that far from being a sign of confidence in Biden’s ability to turn around his poor polling position with an early debate, it was a sign the White House wanted to “minimize his exposure to unscripted moments”.
And despite the theatrics of a video where Biden challenges Trump saying “make my day”, it was actually a defensive strategy, as evidenced by the Biden campaign reducing the number of debates from the typical three to two – even though as the person who is behind, you would expect Biden to want more debates, as extremely high profile opportunities to shake up the race.
Anyway, this speaks to the perils of keeping Biden after the disaster on Thursday.
The problem isn’t that Biden might similarly fuck-up any remaining high-profile “set-piece” moments during the campaign – the problem is that there aren’t any more.
Between now and the 5th of November, perhaps the last two big moments to turn the race around are his convention speech in August and… the second debate, which is/was to be on 10th September.
And obviously the chances of either of these providing a positive game-changing moment are surely incredibly low.
In the case of the of the convention speech, though this is a relatively big moment, it is still nothing compared to a debate.
For example, Thursday’s CNN debate had 51 million viewers on TV, and a further 30 on “digital” channels, whereas both party’s 2020 convention speeches got around 24m viewers on TV. That’s not nothing, but the speech and its coverage are both more likely to be watched by already committed and engaged partisans, and is still only around half the number of people who watched the disaster last Thursday.
So what of the second debate? First, it might not actually happen. Trump is ahead in the polls – so why would Trump voluntarily go through with something so high risk, if he’s already coasting to victory?
And secondly, if it does happen… are we really expecting it to go any differently? I mean, did you watch on Thursday? Holy shit. That seems like a bad bet for the fate of the free world.
2. The elite consensus is already obvious and almost nobody is pushing back
What’s really striking about the reaction to the debate is how uniform it has been in the media and pundit classes.
I mean, to give one example, here’s the current sidebar on the New York Times website:
Of the seven named writers (so leaving the entire Editorial Board aside), only Jamelle Bouie offers something resembling a defence of Biden remaining in place, and that’s framed more around the perceived difficulty of replacing him, rather than arguing he is well placed to beat Trump.
And the reaction is similar on amongst opinion-formers on social media. Listening to the Democrat-cheerleading Pod Save America podcast, it was obvious that even the influential hosts seemed to know it was Game Over for Biden, even if they were reticent to say that explicitly (instead talking of the need to “have the conversation”)2.
In other words, this really doesn’t feel like – again, amongst opinion-formers – like a standard controversy or crisis, where a bunch of people are arguing for one thing, and another bunch are arguing for the opposite. It wasn’t just a “bad debate” like the one where Obama was bested by Romney in 2012. And everyone knows this, because it is obvious. So there’s basically a consensus – even if not quite everyone has voiced aloud what they are screaming inside their heads.
What this actually reminds me of most of all is another British thing – go with me here: The downfall of Liz Truss after the disastrous “mini-budget” in autumn 2022.
In that case, the reason the mini-budget was so politically disastrous for her and her party was not just the market reaction or that the measures within it unravelled, but it was that when the budget fell apart so did her entire rationale for being Prime Minister.
And similarly, with Biden, his entire rationale for running for re-election is that he is uniquely placed to beat Donald Trump. It was a rationale that was completely correct in 2020: If Trump had faced Elizabeth Warren, or one of the other candidates the Democratic activist class had preferred, then Trump would be preparing for his third term, and Putin’s tanks would be parading through occupied Kyiv.
However, 2024 is different. Fucking up the debate was not just a bad performance, it was a nuclear missile exploding on top of Biden’s entire rationale for running, because it is now blindingly obvious that a frail 81 year old, who looks like he barely knows what room he is in, cannot defeat Donald Trump.
No doubt in the next few days, polling numbers will fully reflect this – but Democrats do not need to wait to know that after the debate the race changed. Before, it was a contest where Biden was behind, but could conceivably eke out a win, but now it is a contest where Biden is clearly – obviously – doomed.
And to emphasise again, everyone already knows this. Though there are a lot of people worried about confronting reality, let’s be real: If Biden is on the ballot in November, he will not win.
So the Democrats need to pull the emergency leaver.
3. The risk from rolling the dice is now extremely low
There are now three plausible outcomes for the Democrats: They keep Biden and lose. They dump Biden and lose. Or they dump Biden and win.
The only other outcome – keeping Biden and somehow winning – just isn’t going to happen, for the reasons described above.
And what the debate has done is dramatically change the risk profile of the different choices the party has to make.
To be clear, there are obviously no good options at this point. The most likely outcome, whatever they do, is that the Democratic3 candidate will still lose in November, whoever is the candidate. That’s a result of the macroeconomic situation, and bad choices made by the party many months and years ago.
But this just means the case for doing nothing and hoping for the best is incredibly weak. Because imagine a world where the new candidate is someone utterly disastrous, and the Democrats lose by an even wider margin than they would have done under Biden. Even though this sounds like it would be worse, it wouldn’t actually matter: A loss is a loss.
And sure, there are down-ballot considerations4, but the reality is that, to use an American term, Trump is the whole ball-game in 2024 – the goal is to stop him regaining power so that there will actually definitely be a 2028 election.
This is where the situation in America differs a lot from Britain. Though for the last year there had been persistent muttering about replacing Rishi Sunak it never coalesced into a move against him. But I bet if the Conservative Party really did think Keir Starmer was an existential threat to democracy, and there was the mechanism available to shake up the race, that they would have thrown the “Hail Mary” and similarly replaced Rishi at the last minute too.
Anyway, given all of this, my point is that the risks from each of the two paths ahead have dramatically changed in the last few days. And given they are now behind, and will imminently because decisively behind, there is a strong case for the Democrats rolling the dice and hoping for the best. Because doing nothing means certain defeat if you’re the underdog.
4. A new candidate might actually be good
Finally, I think it is worth dwelling on the potential upsides of a new candidate to lead the ticket into the election.
Obviously on one level, there is a risk that the process of choosing them could be a total shit-show. Perhaps candidates will attack each other viciously, and create a strong sense of disarray in the party. It’s inevitable that different factional interests would try to promote their own people, setting up a last minute and materially impactful scrap that reopens the Hillary/Bernie wounds.
And it’s likely that of the contenders for the nomination, some will be bad or not as optimised for the election as Biden, from an ideological perspective.
But this could also be the moment that the campaign resets.
A brokered convention would be a new big ‘moment’, which the race is currently lacking for the Democrats to shake the race up. There would be real drama at the convention over the pick – which would attract much more attention than normal. So it would be an incredible opportunity for whoever emerges to force voters to pay attention and see the new alternative offering to four more years of Trump5.
Then there’s the candidate’s own qualities. One striking characteristic of modern American politics is negative polarisation. Voters choose one candidate over the other not necessarily because they like them, but because they hate the other guy. Both Biden and Trump have experienced historically low approval ratings. So a new candidate – a relative unknown – could conceivably be a good thing.
If the new candidate is a blank slate to most voters – especially to low-information swing voters who decide elections – then they could appear relatively fresh, and voters might project things they like on to them, as a contrast to Trump, who at this point is a very known quantity.
To bring this back to British politics, we’ve seen this dynamic play out over here. In 2017, Labour over-performed, in part6 because Jeremy Corbyn wasn’t particularly well defined and seemed different to the staid politicians who had defined politics for a generation.
It was only by 2019, when he voters were more familiar with him and his, er, eccentricities, that the result was disastrous7. Similarly, I’m sure one of the reasons Keir Starmer is performing so well now is because to many voters he’s a new character who while unknown seems broadly competent – and crucially he’s not one of tired old Tories, who they’re sick of.
So this is all to say that the newness, and the new candidate being unknown could be an asset (even Kamala Harris is relatively unknown, compared to Trump and Biden). And on a mechanical level, there’s no need to worry about things politicians sometimes worry about, like name recognition or awareness, because this is a candidate for the most important job in the world, and whoever they are will receive blanket media attention.
Only one path
I’d like to think there is only one way the next few days and weeks are going to go. That’s because the rationale for pulling the emergency lever is, as described above, unassailable.
But ultimately it’s going to come down to Joe Biden deciding himself to give up – unless he voluntarily retires, his delegates at the convention will have to vote for him, and the world will be speed-running the end of Pax Americana.
I hope then that he is the principled man people talk of him as. Hopefully he’ll admit he can’t do it, and retire with grace. But realistically, he is also a politician – and on some level, you have to be a bit of a raging egomaniac to think that you’ll run for President in the first place. And as 50 million people witnessed first hand the other night, who knows what is going on inside his head?
That’s why it’s going to be important that Democratic elites learn a little ruthlessness from British politics – and move against their leader. Even if they can’t force it legally, speaking out and undermining Biden’s authority, to force him to step aside, is the only option they have if they want to keep Trump out of the White House.
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Biden’s delegates are legally pledged to him at the convention, unless he releases them voluntarily.
They sounded just as despondent as they did during the Keepin’ It 1600 live-stream on election night 2016…
I suppose I mean this in both senses of the word.
I’d actually be very surprised if there was much down-ballot impact, given that the problem that will put people off some critical voters won’t be an ideological consideration that maps on to other candidates, but just that Biden is really fucking old and clearly diminished.
It’s always easiest to focus on the loudest people, but is always worth remembering that the swing voters the Democrats need to persuade aren’t the hardcore MAGA nutters – it’s cross-pressured people with more moderate (and probably wildly inconsistent) views.
This footnote is to acknowledge the role of Brexit polarisation, Labour’s surprisingly moderate manifesto, Theresa May’s performance skills, the dementia tax…
Yes I know, as well as Brexit, Boris being a more charismatic opponent, Labour in disarray, etc.
Thanks for this.
Just to focus on one side point for a mo; there is a crucial difference between replacing Rishi and Joe which is what it reinforces in the minds of voters.
Since the 2017 election we've had four PMs (May, Johnson, Truss and Sunac) which averages at less than two years each. Most traditionally Conservative voters view the party as a collapsing institution presiding over a collapsing country. A last minute emergency leader actually reinforces that picture.
Certainly before the election was called Rishi wasn't their problem (although he's buggered that up now).
For the Democrats, keeping Biden in place is weakness. A failure to address a real problem at a critical moment - and many would be Democratic voters hate them for the position they are putting the public in.
Biden is the iceburg for the Democrats whilst for the Tories their whole disaster to disaster approach where they have no core beliefs can't be steered around by ditching the hapless scarecrow they accidentally elected leader.
The argument I have heard on the 5th Column is that no one wants to be the person who initiated a new candidate and then they lose, since the argument will be Biden would have won. It also means that the Democratic Party will have to confess to having someone unfit to be a candidate in place and effectively hiding that from the electorate, which will make a loss even more likely.
This seems illogical in extreme to me, but groups of people can be weird.