Is a party that would dump Biden weak or strong?
It's not clear if we're looking at Peer Review or a Pundit's Veto
The Democratic Party has no ability to fire Joe Biden as its nominee, but it is theoretically possible to pressure him into stepping down, and that’s clearly what some folks are trying to do. One question confronting me is whether Biden withdrawing from the presidential race signals a strong Democratic Party or a weak one.
My own impression is that the Democratic Party of 2020 demonstrated a lot of strength. That is, it made a deliberate (and deliberative) decision to go with Joe Biden, seeing him as both the most electable candidate and the one who could most productively work with many influential groups within the party, including Blacks, women, environmentalists, labor, and progressives. This was a strong contrast with the Republican Party of 2016, in which leaders clearly did not want Donald Trump to be their nominee, found themselves powerless to stop him, and then pledged their fealty to him once he was in charge.
But how would we describe a party that forces Biden out?
One area where both parties have demonstrated weakness for decades is their deference to their own presidents. Every sitting president since 1972 has sought re-nomination from his party and won it, and with the notable exceptions of a few strong primary showings from Ronald Reagan in 1976 and Teddy Kennedy in 1980 (and maybe Pat Buchanan in 1992), they have always won that re-nomination easily. This is a form of weakness, in that if parties wanted to try someone new, they haven’t really had the power to do that.
It also underscores an important point about what parties are looking for. The idea that a party will always nominate the most electable candidate or should even strive to is a fairly novel one. Parties are under no obligation to just pick the candidate who polls best against the other party, and indeed that can undermine the party’s goals in other areas. In addition to trying to win office, parties are trying to get things done. They have policy goals. Biden has worked with an ideologically diverse party, from Ilhan Omar to Joe Manchin, to push through a number of major party legislative goals on the economy, climate change mitigation, electric vehicle development, gun control, Ukraine defense, and more. Crafting legislation and managing coalitions are parts of Biden’s skill set, and a lot of people who would seek to replace him just are not as skilled in that area. (Nor were Biden’s recent Democratic predecessors in the White House.)
But, yes, you can’t do statecraft if you’re not in office, and electability is obviously important.
It’s also important to recognize that the means by which one becomes a presidential nominee in the post-1968 world is a recognized process with legitimacy attached to it. It involves a convention, yes, but also many, many primaries and caucuses, debates and speeches, meetings with donors and activists, promises and negotiations with party insiders, and more. This is not necessarily the most efficient or best way for a party to reach a decision (the largely convention-driven one that once existed might have been better), but it is a real process, involving many thousands of people and discussions, and it is one generally (thought not universally) respected within the political system.
Even in 2023, the Democratic Party dissuading other people from challenging Biden was a choice — it was a way of saying that they felt Biden had succeeded at the things they cared about and saw no need to take the risks of picking a less known quantity.
At least historically, the party’s decision after this lengthy process has not been subject to any sort of Pundit’s Veto, where the New York Times editorial desk or an HBO talk show host can decide that the party just made a wrong choice and should pick someone new who would obviously do far better against the other party because we just know it I mean just look at them.
If the collection of journalists, celebrities, pundits, and others who have been fretting since Biden’s weak performance at last week’s debate (and, to be fair, earlier) succeed in pressuring him to withdraw his candidacy, we would have to call that a weak party, one that can be bullied into changing its mind by outsiders.
On the other hand, it’s plausible to see most of that noise as just noise, and to view the real push against Biden as coming from Democratic governors and members of Congress. Regardless of what most of those folks are saying publicly, we have good reason to think that a lot of them privately are pushing Biden to step aside. Yes, they’re worried about having him atop their ticket as they run for reelection this fall, but also they think that a different candidate might run stronger against Trump. And it’s a group of leaders we know Biden, as an institutionalist and a lifelong Democrat, takes seriously.
This is not precisely the form of partisan “peer review” for which Elaine Kamarck and others have advocated — that would generally come before the primaries and caucuses. But if a party’s governors and senators can control who runs for the presidency, regardless of what party voters and convention delegates want and have previously said, and can even screen out a sitting president, that’s actually an impressive form of party strength, one we haven’t seen in quite a while.
Whether it would be a smart call is another issue altogether.
Pundit’s veto. The press said “jump” and every liberal in America said “how high”?
Go back and watch the debate and then reflect on the last week of news coverage. It’s not the debate that is making Biden’s numbers fall. It was bad but not that damaging, and I am sure regular Americans could tell he was giving decent answers, even if the press thinks the average American can’t speak English and communicates with grunts. He lost 1% in that debate at most.
It’s the press BURYING him that is forcing him out of the race. And our pitiful pants-wetting base begged our leaders to do what the smart man in the newspaper said, because we literally inversely trust all of our intuitions since 2016.
There was NO REASON for the press to not wait for the party to begin acting rather than DEMAND action from literally SECONDS after the debate ended. If it was actually as bad as they said - and it WASN’T - then they shouldn’t have needed to perform so much heavy advocacy.
Hope the Times enjoys all their blood money when people open their putrid, stinking pages to read about how a monster is destroying our country.
Very interesting and deeply logical. I certainly will vote for Biden, as I did in 2020, but what concerns me about both parties is that they fail to have a "minor-league system," where they train younger people with the express intent of having them fill the candidacy slots as the elder politicians leave office. I feel that Biden's Presidency should have been prefixed with the promise that he would serve four years in office, but that by 2024, a younger person would be running for Democratic re-election. That could be Kamala Harris, although my personal choice would be Sen. Mark Kelly, Arizona. But, there are many other possibilities, like Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky. Similarly, the Republicans have many younger folks who could replace Trump, Geoff Duncan of Georgia, for one. But. in neither party have these up-and-comers been seriously groomed for bigger roles, and that is a huge fault in the bureaucracy of these parties, and it has led to what we have now, where two embarrassingly old men are all these parties have to represent them. As an old baby-boomer myself, I feel I may level that criticism at these two parties for completely missing the opportunity to introduce fresh, but tested and trained talent to the voters.