The pundit class needs to get a grip
Politics isn't fantasy football and there's no One Weird Trick to beat Trump.
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After President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week, the punditocracy has gone both apeshit and feral.
The New York Times editorial board and seemingly every columnist at the paper called on Biden to withdraw from the race in pieces with headlines like, “President Biden, I’ve seen enough.” So did the Chicago Tribune editorial board and New Yorker editor David Remnick. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, co-host of Biden’s favorite morning show, urged the president to at last consider stepping aside. And Pod Save America’s response to the debate was so apoplectic that it prompted the Biden campaign to take a shot at “self-important Podcasters.”
The feeding frenzy/panic is to some extent understandable and inevitable. Biden wanted the debate early in order to put to rest fears about his age and to end the conversation about whether he would drop off the ticket. Instead, he sounded confused, and his lifelong stutter was more prominent than it ever has been in his decades-long career. Media figures licking their chops about the incendiary conflicts and clicks of a contested convention started to salivate a river. Democrats nervous about Biden’s ability to wage a forceful campaign became outright fearful.
But amidst all the tearing of garments and vultures circling, the fact is that we’re still pretty much where we were pre-debate. There are two questions: Is Biden fit to serve? And, would Democrats benefit by forcing him off the ticket? The answers remain “he is” and “probably not.”
There’s little evidence Biden is actually in mental decline
The debate about Biden’s debate performance has largely focused on his appearance, suggesting he’s unelectable and finessing the question of whether he’s actually unfit. Some outlets, though, openly asserted that Biden is in cognitive decline, arguing that laypeople watching a debate can instantly assess someone’s mental fitness.
The Chicago Tribune, for example, argued Biden “should announce that he will be a single-term president who now has seen the light when it comes to his own capabilities in the face of the singular demands of being the president of the United States.” They added, “Everyone sees that now.”
But you can’t actually just “see” whether someone is in cognitive decline. Yes, people are often convinced that signs of physical illness or hesitation reflect mental hesitation; that’s why there’s so much prejudice against stutterers. But editorial boards and people with a public platform have a responsibility to inform readers, not just mirror popular prejudices.
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What we know about aging, and about Biden, has not changed since the debate. In May, the Washington Post consulted with experts about the aging process and how likely aging is to affect the decision-making abilities of Biden and Republican challenger Donald Trump, who’s no spring chicken himself.
Those experts uniformly “rejected any suggestion that there should be an upper age limit for the presidency.” They also argued that there were many advantages to older candidates, who were likely to have better judgement and more emotional stability. According to Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at MIT, “Knowledge and experience count for a lot, and that can more than make up for slight losses of memory as a result of aging.”
Experts also pointed out that articulation problems, mixing up words, or using the wrong word were common problems as people aged, but none of them indicate cognitive decline overall. Stutters can also worsen and improve sporadically over a lifetime, but that doesn’t mean someone is impaired.
Also, again, experts insist that you can’t diagnose cognitive decline by watching TV clips, or even by watching a debate.
There are a couple of ways to judge whether Biden is fit to serve. First, you can look at what those who work with him say. It’s especially relevant that Republicans have derided Biden’s mental competence in public, but in private, they generally report that he’s sharp, engaged, well-prepared and well-briefed.
Second, you can look at whether the Biden administration has been effective. And as political scientist Julia Azari writes, the Biden White House seems to function perfectly well in terms of bureaucratic and administrative competence.
“We don’t hear about staffing instability, lack of clarity over who’s in charge, half-baked executive orders, or other things that indicate that management of the executive branch is faltering,” she points out. (By contrast, we heard all of these things about the Trump White House.)
Biden’s old; he’s a shaky public speaker. But before the debate the evidence suggested he’s still perfectly able to do the job of president, and that’s still the case after the debate.
Abandoning Biden has huge risks
The issue then, is not whether Biden is capable of governing — he is. The issue is electability. He’s not too old to govern, but is he too old to win?
Another Trump presidency is an existential threat to the Constitution, to our democracy, and to many marginalized people. Democrats are understandably terrified at the prospect of him returning to power. That’s only exacerbated by the Supreme Court’s decision this week granting the president dictatorial power to commit crimes at will.
Biden’s poll numbers did not shift much after the debate. But that’s small comfort given how mediocre those numbers remain. Currently, 538 has Trump and Biden essentially tied in their prediction model (as they were before the debate). A coin flip to decide whether America keeps its democracy — those aren’t the odds anyone wants.
Panicking pundits believe that someone else — anyone else — would do better against Trump than Biden. Their worries were buttressed by a brutal post-debate poll from Data for Progress which found that 67 percent of voters believed Biden was too old to be president.
So, that seems like an open and shut case for replacing Biden. And yet, that same Data for Progress poll found that most other likely Democratic replacements for Biden — Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and others — poll about the same as Biden against Trump. In the poll, Biden vs. Trump was 45/48; Harris vs. Trump was 45/48; Whitmer vs. Trump was 44/46; Newsom vs. Trump was 44/47.
Of course, it’s possible that Harris or Whitmer would run a better campaign over the next few months and do better raising their numbers than Biden. That’s what the pundits calling for Biden to drop out are gambling on.
The problem is that candidates generally look more appealing when they’re not running. When they’re in the race, people suddenly remember, or discover, all the things they disliked about them.
Another problem is that if Biden were to drop out, you would end up with a contentious battle to replace him, splitting the party and leading to chaos and disarray. Presidents have won reelection after poor debate performances; Reagan did in 1984, and so did Obama in 2012. But no party has won reelection after abandoning its incumbent president.
The one time in the modern era that a president stepped aside from running for another term was Lyndon Johnson in 1968, and to say that that did not go well is an understatement. If Biden dropped out, there would probably be a bitter convention floor fight. Some factions would be alienated; some voters would feel that their primary votes had been ignored. Whoever limped out of the convention could be in much worse shape than Biden.
Chaos might be reduced if Biden waited till after the nomination and resigned for health reasons, leaving Harris to step in. The DNC would at that point probably be empowered to select a presidential candidate (almost certainly Harris) and a running mate.
But that would still be fraught. Would rival candidates accept her ascension? Would the electorate be put off at what could easily be framed as undemocratic collusion to choose a candidate without voter input? Would there be problems with ballot access that Republican state legislatures could exploit? And would Harris, who again is currently polling about the same as Biden, actually perform much better even if the transition goes without a hitch?
Biden’s very unlikely to step down
You can be sure that Biden and Democratic leaders are very aware of the downside risks of switching candidates at this point, even if pundits are not. That’s why it’s extremely unlikely they will abandon Biden, or that Biden will step down voluntarily.
Biden has had a successful first term; he and his party won historic victories in 2022 and 2023. He beat Trump in 2020. The polling is scary; the debate performance was even grimmer. But right now, there’s no easy path to replacing the president, and no obvious candidate who would do much better than him.
Biden knows he’s able to do the job and he can argue plausibly that switching candidates right now would do more harm than good. Given that, it’s extremely unlikely he will take himself out of the race.
Pundits like stuff to happen. Biden stepping down would feel like action; it would be good copy. The media wants dramatic choices and dramatic events. Choosing to stay the course feels boring and insufficiently proactive, especially when the stakes are so high.
The future is difficult to predict. There’s no guarantee Biden will win this election. But there’s no guarantee Harris or some other Democratic replacement would win either. Sometimes the best thing to do is to follow through. Biden’s the nominee. We’d all be better off accepting that rather than indulging in panic, or in fantasies of easy victories with some perfect candidate to be named later.
That’s it for today
We’ll be back with more Friday (we aren’t publishing tomorrow in observance of July 4th).
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Thanks for reading, and to those of you in the States, we hope you have a great 4th of July. Cheers.
I am wary of the groupthink that Biden is unfit. Sorry ALARMED. It worked on our opinion of Hilary, and it works on those who support trump. They will enjoy our casting out of the only one who bested trump. Why else would they target him as they have? And his family. The mobs and gangs go after families. This is who THEY are. Who are you?
I’m not voting for Joe Biden to run a marathon or dig a ditch. His staff and proxies are competent, organized, exceptional. Um. That’s his job. He is not playing the prez on tv.
Joe Biden is our President. Of the United States of America. I would like to exhibit pride of choice. As Joe has stood for our choices.
This is EXACTLY what every single pundit SHOULD be writing, Noah. Thank you.