President Joe Biden had one job Thursday, one job only—prove to America that he still has what’s needed to be president, despite rampant questions about his age. He didn’t do that. Instead, he validated the worst criticisms.
This is a problem of his own making—this debate was his idea. The rules were his rules. People who want to make excuses for him are not doing anyone any favors. You mean to tell me that Biden’s debate-prep team didn’t know that Donald Trump would lie constantly?
Now Biden has to fix things, and it’s not as easy as dropping out.
All the focus is now on the Democrats. And it’s not the good kind of focus. We have a little over four months before the election, one in which we must center Trump as an existential threat to our nation’s future. And what happens if Biden drops out, as many pundits are suggesting he do?
Some assume Vice President Kamala Harris would get anointed the nomination, but she doesn’t inspire much confidence in much of the establishment. She ran a godawful primary campaign in 2019 and 2020 (with such obvious and glaring mistakes as having her sister run the operation). Her approval ratings are in the high 30s. Her smartest campaign strategist and advisor, Ace Smith, is now hitched to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Standing up an effective campaign infrastructure in a matter of months isn’t just hard; it’s likely impossible, and it’s not like you could slot Harris into the Biden template. They are very different candidates, with different strengths and weaknesses.
Beyond Harris, you have a bevy of other ambitious potential candidates floating around—Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and others—all of whom are likely ready to jump in. The governors, in particular, would have their campaign apparatuses ready to deploy. But the optics of casting aside Harris would be brutal and surely lead to harsh feelings—and, again, just months before facing off against Trump in an absolutely critical election.
Then there’s the fact that ballot-access laws require the Democrats to have their candidate pretty darn soon. The Democratic National Committee will officially nominate Biden before the convention, to ensure that he’s on the ballot in Ohio before their Aug. 7 deadline. In other words, there isn’t a lot of time to work through the drama.
Biden has said he won’t drop out, which in itself isn’t that noteworthy. What else is he supposed to say? There will be a great deal of soul-searching and polling the next couple of weeks. But as of now, Biden is sounding appropriately defiant.
The cold reality is that the advantages of incumbency are real, and the chaos that would ensue if Biden dropped out would be dangerously distracting and potentially ruinous inside the party.
Yet Biden and his campaign created this mess. Their lack of preparation and Biden’s godawful performance is on them. And it is on them to fix it.
The good news is that from all early indications, not much has shifted in the race. People already assumed Biden was old and believed the “cognitive decline” narrative. The damage was in the lost opportunity to shift that narrative. But “Biden is old” and “Trump lies” are already baked into the current numbers. We’ll see what the polls say in the next few weeks, but I suspect not much will shift. At least, I hope so.
The challenge now is to get the spotlight off Biden and back onto Trump, and the faster we do that, the better. There’s just too much at stake.
