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I lost friends by supporting Joe Biden over Bernie Sanders in 2020. For a long time I’ve been an advocate of his type of politics, which has been enormously productive both in terms of policy, but also in showing how the MAGA movement can be beaten. Biden delivered some of the most important progressive accomplishments of recent decades while also scoring big bipartisan wins, and all along the way he maintained an appeal to exactly the type of swing voter who decides elections. He knocked both 2020 and 2022 out of the park. He did a great job, until he got to the point that he couldn’t do it any longer. And that point is clearly now.
One way that I try to keep myself honest as a pundit is to consider situations through a reverse partisan lens. That means that when the guy on my side is doing something, I consider how I would feel if a guy on the other side was doing it. And I think if most people applied this lens to Joe Biden right now, they would conclude that if a Republican had acted the same way on that debate stage in Atlanta, they would be tripping over themselves to declare that person unfit to be the president.
And I don’t just mean unfit to maybe be president in seven months’ time. I mean unfit to be president right now.
Like many other people, I have spent eight years making the same point about Donald Trump. Along the way, I’ve frequently pointed out that the presidency is a position which requires curiosity, quick thinking, nuance, and energy. I’ve pointed out that in times of international conflict, presidents have to be able to make smart decisions under enormous pressure and on terrifyingly short timelines. I’ve said that being president is not some entitlement or salve for your ego. It’s a stewardship that you hold in sacred trust for a nation that I love - indeed, given America’s tremendous might and influence, for the entire world.
I have always found and continue to find Donald Trump to be a failure according to these criteria. But after his performance in the presidential debate last week and in light of further information that has been revealed since then, I have to judge Biden to be a failure too. And I feel that I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t react the same way - by saying that him continuing to be president is actively dangerous to the world and he should hand over the reins to someone else.
Perhaps most shocking to me in the post-debate spin wars has been this report by Axios, in which White House sources speaking off the record say that Biden is “dependably engaged” from 10am to 4pm but prone to acting like he did at the debate outside of those hours. Bear in mind that when White House sources speak off the record, they are generally trying to put a positive spin on the situation and paint it in as favorable a light as possible. But “he’s generally fine for six hours a day” is apparently the best they have to offer.
For a president, that’s not good enough. Any day now, war is likely to break out between Hezbollah and Israel. It might eventually suck in Iran, and there is a high likelihood that the United States will eventually get directly involved as well. What if that war starts at 2am?
What if Vladimir Putin, an unstable dictator with ageing problems of his own, launches a tactical nuclear strike on Ukraine before breakfast?
What if there is a technical malfunction and some intelligence operator mistakenly detects an incoming nuclear strike, but it happens at 6pm?
The list goes on. And if it was a Republican in the White House who was apparently only able to deal with these scenarios during about half of business hours, never mind outside of them, I think I know what we would all say.
There are other reasons, too. Biden should certainly not be the candidate in November, because the issue is not just how he is performing now - it’s how he will be performing four years from now. Unless the Democratic Party can stand up and claim with a straight face that this man will be capable of being president not just now but also in 2027, they have no business running him for president. And if they’re not going to run him, they need to run someone else.
That person is most likely to be Vice President Kamala Harris. I have complicated feelings about Harris, who I was an early supporter of but whose political skills I came to doubt. But unless she voluntarily steps aside, she is probably who we’ve got. At this point, she’s a better option than Biden, even if she might not be the best option in the country. Let her, then, have the benefit of incumbency. Make her the president now.
Over the past 12 months, Democrats have become beholden to a kind of tyranny of low expectations. The White House decided early on that Biden’s energy levels and mental acuity would not enable him to run a normal campaign, so he’s largely stayed out of the media spotlight. He does few events and certainly raises few roofs. It’s one of the major reasons that he’s still trailing Trump, a flawed and eminently beatable foe. Harris is young, energetic, and not a terrible campaigner. If President Harris was out there, week after week, hammering Trump and MAGA and all of their minions, she could turn this race around. She could hardly make it any worse.
There’s a final reason to do this, and that is to not appear hypocritical and craven in the eyes of the country. For years, Democrats have rightly assailed Republicans for having become a reality-denying cult, one which will say that night is day if that’s what Donald Trump demands of them. They’ve talked about duty, and about responsibility, and of how tremendously seriously they take the future of the country and the office of the presidency. Continuing this campaign with Biden as the nominee - or even as the president - would undo all of that in an instant. And by guaranteeing defeat, it would throw away the tremendous legacy that Biden has built - the progressive accomplishments he achieved, the international alliances he built, and the way of beating MAGA that he pioneered.
I love ya, Joe Biden. Please resign.