If you put a gun to my head and made predict it right now I’d say that Joe Biden will win in November. But how confident am I in that prediction? Let’s put it at 50.01%
I think Biden will win based mostly on faith that two things will happen that are far from certain. The first is that the abortion issue will still be relevant in enough states and it will overcome liberals’ unhappiness with Biden over Israel. They may not love him, but the existential threat of Donald Trump plus abortion rights will still turn them out in droves for him. The second thing I like to count on is that independent voters, once they stare down the reality of actually electing Trump again in the fall, will throw up their hands and choose the lesser of two evils.
But, again, those are things I hope will happen in the future. On the other side of the argument are present day realities. In the latest New York Times/Siena poll, Trump has a commanding lead in Nevada, Arizona and Georgia, all states Biden won last time. And it’s neck and neck in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Biden would have to run the table in these three states to win again.
If this were one bad poll that would be one thing. But this just reflects consistent results over three years. Nothing seems to change the numbers. The latest poll was taken in the middle of Trump’s criminal trial in New York and after he lost civil trials for business fraud and sexual assault. In the meantime, we’re awash in good economic news. Inflation is coming under control sans recession. Wage increases have outpaced inflation for an entire year now. The stock market is at record highs and shows no signs of retreating. And yet, when it comes to getting credit for anything Biden is made of Teflon. That’s not fair, but politics rarely is.
In a thoughtful piece yesterday, the New York Times’ Ezra Klein reports that this is more about Biden than it is about his party. In pretty much every race, Biden is running behind other Democrats. Here in Wisconsin the President is five points behind Sen. Tammy Baldwin. Baldwin is an out lesbian, Dane County liberal while Biden portrays himself as Scranton Joe, a regular guy, and still he’s not resonating in a blue collar state. To be honest, I think Baldwin would have a better chance of being elected president than Biden. I think the “regular guy Joe” routine just doesn’t sell. His suits are too perfect and the pocket square says a thousand words.
And yet my party marches on grimly to Chicago. And speaking of Chicago, there’s nothing but risk waiting there as pro-Palestinian protesters are gearing up for demonstrations at the convention. (They’ll leave Republicans alone because, you know, it makes so much more sense to harm the party that is on your side on virtually every other issue you care about.) It doesn’t help that the media is salivating over the 1968 comparisons. The footage archives are being scoured as we speak. Who’s still alive? Tom Hayden. Nope. Jerry Rubin? Dead. There’s always Jane Fonda, the woman who never met a camera she didn’t love.
With so much evidence piling up and so little reason to think that anything will change why can’t we take the better bet, that bet being someone other than Biden/Harris? Because it’s not about Joe Biden. It’s about Donald Trump and keeping that singularly awful human being out of the White House.
Maybe my 50.01% hunch will be correct, but nobody knows how this is going to play out. It comes down to relative chances for success. I think the odds are that we’re better off with a different ticket.
I know that Biden already has the delegates locked down and I realize that a man who has lived for this for 82 years can’t see that stepping down is what’s best for his party and his country, something that seems so absolutely clear to me and to a majority of Democrats.
But it’s clear to me, and I’ll bet that it’s clear to the majority of you, that we’d be better off with Andy Beshear or Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro. Forget about the delegate count. Forget about the damn Democratic Party rules. What’s our best shot of stopping Trump? That’s all that should matter.
Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos 
The voters who made it possible for Biden to win in the 2020 election are drifting away, and Biden has now collected too much baggage. I would go for Beshear or Whitmer, and I’m confident that Democrats could win with either.
As a practical matter, how exactly do we get the party to replace Biden on the ticket? Give me a damn To Do list, and I’ll start working it!
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I don’t know that there’s a way, but that’s my point. We have a nomination process that is broken. All the signs are that Biden is the wrong candidate and yet the system gives us no way to nominate anyone else.
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Biden has the delegates locked up, so whatever is done will require his full cooperation (which may not be forthcoming). At least three things have to happen: 1) Democratic leadership from both the House and Senate need to send a delegation over to the White House to tell Biden that the trajectory of his run for President is very clear, and likely to get much, much worse. This would be a “tough love” intervention on a scale that we’ve never seen before. 2) Alternate candidates need to be identified. I would want the leadership team to have already met with them to sound them out on the whole idea, but the need to keep this contained for a while may force leadership to wait on that step. 3) Biden will have to agree to release his delegates to vote for whoever emerges as the drafted nominee.
Timing will be critical, for as soon as wind of this gets out, the firestorm will be ignited. Knives will come out at the convention (and probably before) unless Dem Leadership lines this up quickly and keeps a lid on it. There will have to be some fancy broken-field running to avoid the (possibly accurate) impression that this is all being decided in smoke-filled rooms. Whoever is running this will have to be an experienced and knowledgeable hardball player, with the skin of a rhinoceros and the skills of both a Marine drill instructor and a career diplomat.
I believe that this has to be done – there is too much at stake: the fate of our nation, the fate of a world that is on fire, literally and figuratively, the future of our descendants. Democrats need to leave the August convention with the highest level of excitement and the sure knowledge that they have the team that will win. Only then will they be able to take back the House, hold onto the Senate, and keep the Presidency. We will need all of the levers of power to prevent the disaster that we all see coming.
We’ve all been sitting on our hands when we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that there needs to be a major mid-course correction. Time to get to work!
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Dave, you are correct, the “system is broken”, irrespective of the elections outcome, America is in trouble. Massive national debt, a divided population and a declining influence in world politics.
My advice for what it’s worth;, is America should backoff, take a step back, get it’s own house in order and bare in mind, being a World Leader has it’s drawbacks.
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