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.
Democrats are driving a polarization over immigration that will probably backfire.
Liberals are confusing support for a humanitarian DACA with support for open borders.
Democrats are officially not in favor of open frontiers but the discourse on the left has finally arrived at a place where it amounts to tacit support for it.
If you oppose the Wall, ICE enforcement, the use of administrative law, detention and deportation, then in essence you support open borders.
If you think there should be very few restrictions on family reunification (chain migration), that risk of absconding should be ignored and that everyone who is eligible for asylum should receive it (no quotas) and be resettled, then in essence you support open borders.
DACA negotiations have collapsed because Democrats and the far right are colluding to undermine them. The far right with bad faith proposals and Democrats with a no compromise stance given that the courts have suspended Trump’s DACA repeal action.
One can understand Democrats’ defense of the diversity lottery and some family reunification rules, as well as an unrestricted path to citizenship for Dreamers and many other previous immigrants, but Democrats have adopted a take it or leave it attitude, even though they are the party in congressional minority.
Once DACA arrives to the Supreme Court immigrants may be left with very few protections. Democrats are gambling with time and with immigrants’ interests.
The fact that the Obama administration (with the exception of DACA) had legislative, fiscal and administrative policies regarding immigrants that were similar or even identical to Trump will always explode in the face of Democrats when trying to pin Republicans with accusations of abuse and lack of sensitivity.
The left has arrived at a place where opposition to police brutality is confused with opposition to all police enforcement and opposition of ICE brutality is confused with opposition to all immigration enforcement.
At the same time, the left wants vigorous federal enforcement of civil and voting rights laws and LGBT rights, ADA, labor law, abortion rights, consumer law, privacy laws, environmental laws, freedom from religion, etc.
Gun rights and freedom of religion don’t get the same defense and are tacitly opposed. So are some aspects of freedom of expression and association.
In other words, the rule of law is to be applied selectively.
Liberals talk about human rights, but countries of origin and transit have a duty to respect the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
And it is a legitimate question to ask if parents risking their children’s lives are doing it for the children or for themselves.
The notion that Mexico is such a bad country that everyone deserves to leave is itself racist in the dual forms of white supremacist thinking and white saviorism.
When the right talks about alternative facts and fake news these are the kind of issues they talk about.
One can understand that Trump’s comments over immigrants are problematic, but he is being smart about making those comments in contexts where the facts can easily be interpreted as favoring his position. His conflation of all immigrants with gang members is meant to provoke liberals into defending gang members. This is what he has done for two years and it seems to keep working. Trump is pushing for cynicism because cynicism only favors the right.
The left is increasingly complicit in pushing cynical views about how government works.
ICE and the Police are conflated with overall brutality. People only have rights but no obligations. International law only applies to the United States.
The right of people to look for democracy and a better life doesn’t include domestic citizens. The opinions of domestic citizens are reduced to racism if they don’t support policies that are tantamount to open borders even though nobody openly talks about open borders.