The politicians want him to go. The big money wants him to go. The media wants him to go. Those three - the politicians, the media and the big money - are all connected. This is how politics works in real time. The question is, do the voters want him to go? I'm not so sure.
The drama of these past few weeks has been good for TV ratings. In general, Biden isn't - good for ratings I mean. He's always been kind of boring. Competent, decent, somewhat self-deprecating, talks softly, often too fast and like a policy-wonk. But every once in a while, and with some increasing frequency, he makes a gaffe. He says Vice-President Trump when he means to say Harris. He says President Putin when he means to say Zelensky. And the media revels in every gaffe as an opportunity to talk about age-related cognitive decline. Trump, on the other hand, has always been great for ratings. He is hyperbolic and insulting, grandiose, lies like a rug, and can't complete a thought without trailing off into some demented fantasy world of dangers that includes an invasion of immigrant rapists and criminals, shark attacks, and the fictional cannibal Hannibal Lechter. Same old, same old.
The panic around Joe got going with his terrible and disoriented debate performance. Everyone expected the worst in the polls, but the worst didn't happen, the polls showed no change in the race. Still, the nervous Democrats continued to fret about Biden's age as he went into public appearance overdrive with more than a dozen events hoping to course-correct, some using a teleprompter, some without one. He made a few more gaffes, which, to the media talking heads confirmed their entirely unsubstantiated belief in an age-related cognitive incapacity. Big name donors and then party leaders started to publicly jump ship, and low and behold the public got the message and Biden's poll numbers did start to show some slippage. What a surprise. I'd call it manufacturing discontent.
What do the voters actually think? Can anyone really know? According to Jen O'Malley Dillon, the Biden Campaign Chair, their workers have knocked on over 100,000 doors in the swing states in the last few days to speak directly with voters, previous Biden supporters and independents. She said 76% said they will vote for Biden. Admittedly this is unscientific, but how much less so than the polls?
This morning there was a report that Biden will announce he is leaving the race this weekend. Another report says that after watching trump's meandering diatribe last night, he is more committed than ever to running. A lot of people are saying that the only way the Democrats can win is with Kamala Harris as the nominee. The party needs to coalesce unanimously behind her with Biden's endorsement and without a contest. Any other scenario risks the party descending into more infighting. Harris as the nominee makes some sense. She'd be hard for Trump to attack without sounding like a racist and misogynist. She's a prosecutor and he's a felon, so one can imagine her prosecuting the case against him effectively. As a woman, she is the perfect representative for the fight for reproductive rights that Trump took away. Imagine the grassroots enthusiasm to elect the first Black woman president. But she also has some glaring vulnerabilities. She was Biden's point person on southern border security, the electorate's top concern, and arguably failed in that portfolio. I remember her campaign for the nomination four years ago, and she performed very poorly.
It looks increasingly like Biden will decide to go. Hard to run a race with all those knives in your back. I sure hope Harris has learned a few things in the past four years.
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