TDS Strategy Memos
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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July 20: What Biden Should Say If He “Steps Aside”
In all the talk about whether Joe Biden should “step aside,” there hasn’t been enough discussion of the rationale he should present if he does so. So I offered one at New York:
The Democratic Party’s semi-public bickering over what to do with Joe Biden needs to come to an end very soon, lest it turn into a horrific party-rending conflict or a de facto surrender to Donald Trump. While he can technically be pushed out of the nomination, it would be nightmarishly difficult to do so given his virtually unopposed performance in the primaries and the lack of precedent for anything like a forced defenestration of a sitting president. It would also express disloyalty to a brave and dedicated leader. But Biden has already lost the united, confident party he needed to make a comeback. He’s trailing in the polls right now. And even more importantly, his own conduct and fitness for office will command center stage for the rest of the general-election campaign, which is precisely what he cannot afford given his poor job-approval ratings and the sour mood of the electorate.
So Joe needs to go of his own accord, and it needs to happen quickly before Republican and Biden-loyalist claims of a “coup” become all too credible. But it’s obviously a humiliating exercise. So if Biden comes to realize the futility of going forward, what can this proud and stubborn man say that will make him something other than an object of derision or pity?
I have a simple answer: He can tell the truth.
The truth is that Biden’s firm commitment to the pursuit of a second term, despite his advanced age and increased frailty, hardened into inflexible determination when Trump made his own decision to launch an initially unlikely comeback. When Biden took office, Trump was a disgraced insurrectionist whose very defenders in his second impeachment trial mostly denounced his conduct, even as they urged acquittal on technical grounds. The 46th president was in a position to serve one distinguished “transitional” term and retire with a wary eye on his fellow retiree festering in anger and self-righteousness in Mar-a-Lago. But as Trump slowly recovered and eventually reemerged as a more dominant figure than ever in a MAGA-fied Republican Party, Biden became convinced that as the only politician ever to defeat Donald Trump, he had the responsibility to do it again and the ability to remind voters why they rejected the 45th president in 2020.
As this strange election year ripened, Biden had a perfectly plausible strategy for victory based on keeping a steady public focus on Trump’s lawless conduct (including actual crimes), his erratic record, and extremist intentions for a perilous second term. The polls were close and Biden wasn’t very popular, but these surveys also showed a durable majority of the electorate that really didn’t want to return Trump to power, particularly as economic conditions improved and the consequences of Trump’s Supreme Court appointments grew more shockingly apparent each day.
Then came the June 27 debate, and suddenly Biden lost the ability to make the election about Trump. He needs to look into a camera and say just that, and conclude that just as the threat posed by Trump motivated him to run for a second term, the threat posed by Trump now requires that he withdraw so that a successor can make the case he can’t make as he’s become the object of endless speculation about his age and cognitive abilities. Biden does not need to resign the presidency, since his grounds for withdrawing his candidacy are about perceptions and politics rather than any underlying incapacity. Biden would be withdrawing as a weakened candidate, not as a failed president.
For this withdrawal to represent a stabilizing event for his administration and his party, it’s critical that Biden not equivocate or complain, and that he show his mastery of the situation by clearly passing the torch to the vice-president he chose four years ago. For all the talk of an “open convention” being exciting (for pundits) and energizing (for the winner), the last thing Democrats need right now is uncertainty. No matter what the polls show and how badly his old friends want him to succeed, it’s the prospect of 100 days of terror every time Biden makes unscripted remarks that is feeding both elite and rank-and-file sentiment that a change at the top of the ticket is necessary. The fear and confusion needs to end now, and Biden effectively made his choice of a successor when he made Kamala Harris his governing partner. The president needs to reassert his agency now, not look like he is abandoning his party and his country to the winds of fate.
A straightforward and honest admission of why Biden 2024 is coming to an end could go a very long way toward enabling Harris and other Democrats to shift the nation’s gaze back to the ranting old man whose acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention showed that he has not mellowed or moderated at all. Of course Biden wants to solidify and extend his legacy over the next four years. But right now, the clear and present danger is that it will be extinguished altogether. He alone can address that threat, not as a candidate, but as a president and a patriot who recognizes his duty.
No one is more tribal than Republicans — and their tribe is WASPs. Doug Jones showed that you don’t have to hide who you are in order to win. So did Ralph Northam. Both were pro-choice, pro fairness in the tax code, and pro medicaid. Both were pro civil rights. They aren’t down the line doctrinaire liberals, but they wer
One thing that Republicans have that we don’t is the illusion of authenticity and devotion to principle.
We don’t have to be strident, but we DO have to be authentic. The more we tailor our message to particular audiences, the less authentic we become. That was one of Hillary’s greatest weaknesses — the perception that she was a phony.
People liked Trump and Bernie because they came across as being authentic. Bernie was truly authentic.
Trump was faking it, but had enough of the nativist GOP base to win, and he was running against Hillary and all of her baggage. Joe is authentic, and that’s why Conor Lamb is having him campaign.
Authenticity and lots of shoe leather.
Gregory
You really aren’t getting it. It is about winning elections, not about your personal ideology and prejudices.
We have ceded the “Jobs” messaging to Mr. Trump. A large number of Obama voters flipped and voted for Mr. Trump. Why was that?
You want to to keep losing? Continue the self righteous dialog with yourself and continue disregarding potential allies of differing creeds, beliefs and priorities. It is a surefire recipe for keeping the Repubs in power.
One fundemental flaw in current Democratic strategy is the emphasis on groups of people. We have excluded the white male in democratic retoric and apparently some of their wives took that pretty personally too. We need to speak loudly in an “all lives matter” tone and stop being a society of exclusivity. At this point, everyone is special except the white male; women, LGBT, minorities, immigrants, veterans, etc. We have to stop parsing people into exclusive groups.
Naomi, although what you said is well written, and sounds good; especially to those who you felt was left out, but the fact of the matter is that the past, and current system of government was built around the special privilege of the white male. So to make the white male feel so called “special” now would be to add special to the existing special; given white males special special privilege while everyone else have to deal with just “special privilege”.The Democratic party intent to deflate the arrogance of the white male was met with push back from certain states not the American People as a whole.Let me be clear, deflation of arrogance is not the same as marginalization.The arrogance being some whites believe; that whites inherently are better and therefore deserve “special special treatment” when it comes to running this country among other things,and because everyone else has been elevated to the same level we must be on a higher level or given more special treatment.
The strategy should be to awaken the same abolition sentiments of the Union to abolish the electoral college that was born out of slavery .Explain to the american people that the popular vote is the will of the “American people” and that the attempt to marginalize the many is an affront to the values of the founding fathers pure thought that all men was created equal with no caveats .
Thank you.
Why do some Republicans become Democrats?: Do you have a rank-ordered list of the reasons that Republicans become Democrats?
It seems clear to me that Dixiecrats became Reagan Democrats because of their racism; that they otherwise more or less were with the 99% and got snookered by Reagan and Southern tribalism.
What is most likely to bring not-racist Republicans back into the Democratic fold? Talk about recruits and recruiting.
Best,
Monty Johnston