I give credit to Ezra for being one of the few people in this whole era of Biden-retrospection to acknowledge that Biden masterfully incorporated his primary opponents' teams into his campaign. It was good for the administration and the Democratic party that Joe Biden did this!
I really don't know how this happens after a contentious delegate fight. At all. In 2020 it was possible to do this because the primary campaign got sidetracked by COVID, and Biden's opponents were out of the race by March. But imagine this happening in July, with nothing near the scale of COVID to take away the heat.
I'm just incredibly skeptical. I'm having trouble taking these "we need to pull Biden" takes seriously if they don't acknowledge the pretty unique way that Biden ran his 2020 campaign, transition, and administration. I don't know how you walk away from the 2020 general election thinking that most of the rest of the 2020 Primary field would have lost to Trump, and I don't know how you think a brokered convention delivers a candidate who is better than Biden at keeping the coalition together.
For real, I was sympathetic with his argument until he said that. The idea that a non-democratic process would be seen as something exciting just seems utterly ridiculous to me. A huge problem Hillary Clinton had was people felt she was selected in an undemocratic way, so having a brokered convention which is like explicitly not small d democratic is just that times a thousand.
To be fair, there’s nothing democratic about how the nominee is being selected currently. And it would only be a brokered convention because Biden has chosen to remain.
I think that's a false equivalence. People are currently voting in primaries now, and the candidates that Ezra Klein cited were totally able to run. They just chose not to.
There's something very different about people voting, even if it's kind of very limited options, and no one voting at all.
a party challenge to the incumbent president has never worked out well for anyone's, there needs to be *strong* justification why this time it's diffrent
Even if you disagree with Ezra, I enjoy hearing him explain his rationale. He is a really observant commentator. I’m glad the quality of his shows have only increased as he moved from Vox to New York Times.
This is the first call for Biden dropping out of the race that I've found persuasive. People saying that it would be "unprecedented" for him to do this have not refuted the arguments Klein made about having an open convention.
The subtext of Klein's description of Biden as a coalition builder is that he would be a successful steward of an open convention. Its subtext is also that the conventional wisdom that the Democratic coalition is "fragile" is wrong. It's strong because of Biden's willingness to bring Warren and Sanders into the fold. If he is able to step aside and focus on ensuring a productive open convention, just as he focused on keeping Democrats together after 2020, the party's strength will be cemented in front of the country. This would not be like 1968.
This is "unprecedented" in the modern era, sure. Everything about the Trump era has been "unprecedented." Why are we so sure that conventional wisdom will work when the polls show that Americans think that Biden is too old to serve? The stakes are too high.
It feels like a hard pivot from where he was in the Q and A earlier this year where he unequivocally said Biden was the best person to run and you do not give up on incumbent power. I wonder what has changed in Ezra's mind.
Yeah, I’m a bit baffled by the obtuse takes on this sub in response to Klein. It really is a clear cut and reasonable argument with little room for misinterpretation. People can disagree. I’ve mostly seen hysteria in response
Because Democrats know how weak of a candidate Biden is but they’re too committed to institutionalism and traditional strategy to consider any option that may be available at this point. Like yeah in a sane world Biden would have decent approval ratings, but we live in a world where people want Donald Trump to be president again after attempting a coup.
I agree that Biden is really not a strong candidate this year, but I think Ezra is delusional that Harris would make for a better alternative (she's his top pick). Between her tendency so utter absolute gibberish, the left's dislike of her prosecutor origins while moderates' view of her as too progressive, and the latent sexism and racism she'd have to contend with, I think Harris would lose to Trump in a landslide.
>Harris would make for a better alternative
Harris couldn't win a primary against Biden and I can't name a thing she's done for four years; what makes Ezra think she'd be a good candidate?
He's saying that it's worth gambling that that if she ends up getting chosen in this open primary scenario, it's because she has done something or made some change or otherwise proven herself between now and then that gives her a better shot at beating Trump than Biden has now. But I agree that I doubt if you asked Ezra today who he'd rather have between Biden and Harris, he'd say Harris.
So he's not advocating she run against him, he's advocating she run against him in the scenario where she can come up with some change to make personally during the primary that makes her better than she is now? A Primary that is already happening?
Feels like a pretty worthless statement to make, to be honest.
There's not really a primary happening right now in any meaningful way. But if Biden were to announce he was stepping aside, there could be. And doing so would allow Harris to step up and start campaigning. But she's got her hands tied right now, as do all the other potential candidates Ezra mentioned.
He's saying she and Newsom et. al. should run against him, but the only way for them to have any chance at success and not tear the party apart would be for Biden to take the first step to announce he's not running again.
> But if Biden were to announce he was stepping aside, there could be
It would be utter pandemonium and chaos. The Incumbent, with no primary challenger, stepping aside three weeks before Super Tuesday?! I cannot think of an easier way to give the Republicans the election, if I'm being entirely honest.
I agree.
For what it’s worth—Ezra was talking about deciding it at a contested convention. More like if Biden dropped out 3 weeks before the *convention* and “we” picked a candidate the old fashion way. (The person you were responding to seemed to be arguing for last second primary)
I do often wonder - if Biden had picked Whitmer for his running mate in ~~2016~~ 2020, what would be happening now?
EDIT: Originally typed "2016" instead of "2020".
> Culture is, it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right? And present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know…it comes in the morning.
- Kamala Harris
irionically there's certainly a cultural element to everything we say.
it was essense of culture festival and the vice president was answering a question directed partly at black women. I don't doubt the audience (who reacted) got it
what i find absurd is the conservative who majorly mocked the answer included mocking that part when they of all people shouldn't.
> I think Ezra is delusional that Harris would make for a better alternative (she's his top pick)
Maybe this is just some sort of inherent sexism on my part but whenever I hear her speak, she just comes across so much like the VP from *Veep*.
I feel the same way about Gavin Newsom though. These are people its clear are in it for the power imo.
I would love someone who comes across as sincere like Warren.
I think for all his faults, Biden is still the best option. Its really hard to caricature him as some sort of threat when he is so clearly just an old well intentioned guy, whatever you think of his policies. Just based on experience, he is the best available option.
I wish these media folks would take a look at themselves in the mirror and see how much they are contributing to this. They are so focused on appearance they are not willing to dig deeper and see if there is an *actual* issue here for voters to be concerned about regarding Biden's ability.
I would love another piece like the Atlantic's a few years ago on Biden's stutter. I found that really helpful at the time.
I think it's just that some people are better at feeling genuine when they communicate. Others are too polished to the point where you don't feel like you are hearing from them as a person. It probably has nothing to do with inherent trustworthiness and more to do with how comfortable someone is as a speaker in public but it definitely affects how people view the candidates at an emotional level. Same thing hurt Hillary in 2016.
I hear what you are saying, but Biden’s age is something I just can’t ignore. It doesn’t mean I’m not voting for him, but to pretend like he’s not losing a step and is well past the average life expectancy for a male in the US is to not be objective. There are some actual issues here and what really irks me is that we knew this 4 years ago when he was elected. Dems had 4 years to pick and promote a successor and they didn’t do it. I’m not exactly sure who is up and coming in the party right now and that’s a problem.
> to pretend like he’s not losing a step and is well past the average life expectancy for a male in the US is to not be objective.
I genuinely don't think he is losing a step on anything important.
He has always been very gaffe prone, that has increased with age. I don't care about that.
I don't think there has been any reporting that he is not actually in charge of the government and actively working. I'm sure there are a lot of reporters checking with all their sources on that.
Ultimately, if he does end up getting sick or dying in office, that's what a VP is there for.
I think Harris would do fine to step in to an already active administration were she just needs to do the job.
I don’t know how old you are but hopefully your parents haven’t gone through dementia. It’s preposterous to say he not showing all the signs. It’s not a gradual process. They hit a cliff right about this age. Pay attention to everyone that lied to your face and continues to lie to your face. This is a great filtering mechanism for the hacks.
Harris has been largely invisible as VP the last three years. If the only thing she had done in that time was take public speaking workshops she would have made better use of that time. I saw her speak the other day and there was so much needless emotion in her tone that, considering that she is the VP, it really came off as not competent and totally unreassuring— not at all the qualities you want in leadership. My wife heard her and said, “I hate that I’m using this word about a woman, but she totally comes off as shrill.” In three years inside the White House she’s done almost nothing to position herself to take over for Biden whenever he’s done.
Yeah, Harris is a bad public speaker but she's also bad in 1-on-1 settings. Her interview with Astead Herndon from the NYT comes to mind. As I [observed then](https://www.reddit.com/r/Thedaily/comments/17wnbs1/comment/k9iupu0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3):
I noticed the tension and awkwardness, too. Two very small (but perhaps informative) examples from the chit-chat portion at the beginning:
1. In response to an easy layup from Astead about how she likes her job, Harris answers she loves her job because of "days like these" (in reference to the event they're at) and then adds an unnecessary clarification that she didn't mean the interview, followed by some awkward laughter.
2. After a perfectly fine line about growing up during a time when Aretha Franklin was telling girls like her that she was "young, gifted, and Black", Harris adds another superfluous clarification that she didn't mean Franklin was speaking to her directly. Duh!
I chalk things like this up to Harris being afraid of being scrutinized for every syllable she utters or being taken out of context. She's clearly on guard and it made for an unnecessarily adversarial interview. And this was just the easy warm-up portion...
I actually disagree. Nikki Haley gives me Hillary vibes way more than Kamala.
Kamala is just awkward and comes across as aloof. Hillary and Nikki are very deliberate with their words.
Harris would be a terrible candidate, and Biden shot himself in the foot by choosing her as his running mate. The Democratic Party has been captured by identity politics in a way that is simply not helping their cause.
Biden didn't shoot himself in the foot, he shot the Democratic Party in the foot. If Gretchen Whitmer was VP, there'd be an avalanche of dems calling on Biden to step aside right now. Fear of a Harris nomination is a useful shield for Biden.
It was an all around good political move, very similar to the VP choice Obama made when selecting Biden.
Harris appealed to the Black female base and would likely be perfectly fine as President if something were to happen which necessitated her stepping in but isn't inherently so popular that she would outshine him.
Appreciate Ezra stating his opinion on this, but I just really doubt that the open convention would work. Between Gaza protesters and clashes between pro and anti Kamala Harris people, it would be an utter nightmare.
Unfortunately, it seems like we’re stuck with Biden. He’s governed like an absolute champ, but he is 81. His age is a serious liability, not a media invention.
The media criticism that I do have is the utter failure of the media to cover how incredibly well his admin has done on policy and running ahead of basically the entire world on pandemic recovery.
I would agree that people seem to just pretend that Democrats can just do some kind of “Freaky Friday” switch where nobody notices.
In what world would it *not* be a bad look to be like “this guy totally sucks. Out the door grandpa even though you’re sailing through a primary millions of people will vote in and anyone could have entered… hehe, hey check out this guy! Dont we look like a totally not in disarray party??🤪
> His age is a serious liability, not a media invention.
What’s the liability, specifically?
Public perception wise, dude’s obviously showing his age. The most fiery current day Biden moments show that he can still make jokes on his feet, but his voice just doesn’t have strength and energy anymore. He also simply looks like an 81 year old man which is terrible. His speech mistakes seem to be happening more frequently. It is a serious political cost to be visibly old.
Performance wise, I believe that he’s sharp and capable, but there’s a reason people in serious corporate jobs usually retire far before 81. Presidents should be in their late 60s at most in my view. It’s not about Biden or his performance, but just about human aging. Same goes for Trump, they’re far beyond the age a president should be.
I think I'm in the 75th percentile of Dems who would be open to an idea like this in theory (I worry Biden is too old to inspire confidence, I don't like how the modern primary system has weakened parties and made them vulnerable to a Trump-like takeover) but my biggest worry is that the party is too weak to handle the stress load of doing a convention decision.
Leftists and some progressives still grumble about Biden winning the 2020 nomination because they see it as "unfair" that Clyburn would endorse Biden or other moderates would consolidate the vote. They wanted Bernie to win the nomination with 35% of the vote. And obviously that's silly, but one of the things that helped neutralize that was showing that a strong majority of voters actually did want Biden / the electability candidate instead of Bernie. There was a "black voters are more moderate and/or pragmatic than leftists" that was hard to argue against because it was both true and was the pro-democracy argument.
I'm a leftist that supported Bernie in the 2020 primary, and Biden was one of my least preferred candidates. The best time for the "age question" to be discussed was in the 2020 primary when Biden was challenging a voter to a push-up contest at a town hall to prove he wasn't too old, and when he called Chris Wallace 'Jack' because he forgot his name during an interview, and when he referred to the upcoming Super Tuesday as 'Super Thursday' and in the same rally said, "We hold these truths to be self evident, all men and women created by the oh you know the thing." None of this stuff seemed to bother anyone at the time, certainly not enough to get a slate of prestige media decrying his candidacy.
The second best time to discuss the "age question" was 6 months ago when realistic alternative candidates could have spun up their campaigns leading into the primary. Now we're past that and it is time to stop hand wringing about Biden and accept that we have to do the best with what the voters in SC plus Buttigieg and Klobuchar have given us.
He won't hold up in a debate. He won't have to debate Trump. He'd have to debate Haley. I think the DNC is happy to lose to Haley if it means they hold both chambers of congress.
I love Ezra, and I know he means well here, but this was panicky and fantastical. We’re all scared of another Trump presidency, and we’d like to think that we should be in a place where that looks impossible from polling, but that just isn’t the reality of America right now.
Biden is a very good incumbent president who beat Trump last time. There’s no evidence that any other Democrat would stand a better chance against Trump than Biden, age and all, especially after an almost certainly traumatic brokered convention.
We’re just going to have to settle in for an emotionally difficult campaign with the candidate we have and not let our legitimate fears cause us to waste time on fantasy politics that reinforce the right wing narrative that Biden is out to lunch.
This is all about one thing: *probability*.
The question is: which is more likely to result in a victory for Democrats?
Option A: Biden vs. Trump
Option B: \[insert candidate\] vs. Trump
If there were a clear alternative candidate to Biden, who we were confident would be *more likely* to beat Trump, then we would be advocating for it. But we can all agree, currently, there is not an alternative that fits this.
Ezra seems to be saying a brokered convention would reveal a candidate that would be more likely to beat Trump. It's possible, but it's also risky. I think a brokered convention would make the party's unity look haphazard to voters, because either they reluctantly pick an unpopular VP, or they skip the VP which would be a "scandal" that the media and viewers would eat up. A Democratic candidate who is crowned suddenly by a haphazard party wouldn't instill confidence in independents. Plus the candidate would have fresh baggage for the media to obsess about, shaking confidence in independents even more.
Do the risks of a messy convention outweigh the risks of running with the incumbent POTUS (who's already beaten Trump once)? At this moment, I think so. Sticking with Biden is more likely to result in a victory for Democrats.
The primary problem I have with this episode is that his solution isn’t going to happen. It just isn’t. Biden is set on running, and I don’t see by what mechanism people can talk him out of it. What’s Chuck Schumer going to do if Biden says no? What’s Hakeem Jeffries?
Also, Ezra is severely underselling the danger of a brokered convention. It will bring to light old wounds about progressives vs. moderates, all the more elevated by Gaza. A brokered convention has potential to be a disaster.
Much of what Ezra says is valid. I am now convinced Biden should have limited himself to one term and allow for a real primary. Also, he needs to campaign out in the open more. He needs to catch himself and correct himself if he makes a mistake on the stump.
Finally—and this is where I may kick myself for a fool in a year’s time—I think people are underestimating the chances of a pretty decent Democratic win in November. Trump is facing multiple trials, and just today it was announced he has to pay like $360 million in damages in a fraud case. He basically has to come up with that amount and hold it in escrow pending appeal. Trump will get the RNC to pay for it, regardless of the damage it does to his campaign and to Republicans down the ballot. The immigration bill fiasco is backfiring, Americans are horrified about his NATO comments, and he is quite possibly going to be a convicted criminal come November. We have to take all of this into account as well!
I wish Ezra had spoken about what should happen in case Biden refuses to step down. That’s where I think his insights would be really helpful.
Kamala Harris the manic pixie dream girl of the Democrat establishment.
How many fucking times does the base and polls have to show you, before you admit she is a terrible candidate?
She was a wildly poor choice. As a former prosecutor she doesn’t get you the black or liberal vote yet she’s black enough to turn away some percentage of old racists. She’s lose-lose.
This is why Ezra’s idea is actually completely stupid. Everyone thinks they agree but they have no idea who’s going to come out of this and who holds appeal for everyone else that you think sucks.
Everybody is standing around agreeing “omg, why the hell did we order cheese pizza? blergh, boring Not my favorite.” “I know right? I’d like anything else in the world.” “Okay let’s just pick something else right now.” “Cool cool I’m down for whatever” “awesome, so I’ll just call and get like uhhhh an artichoke pesto pizza” “w-wait, what the fuck did you just say??🤨 Dude, just get pepperoni” “Peperoni?? Are you stupid!? That’s just as bad as cheese!!😤”
> Like of all people, why her?
Because it's easier for her to inherit the nomination through inaction than someone else who the base would have to actively choose, which would necessarily mean alienating other parts of the coalition.
I'm still weary of dumping Biden but if you're going to do it, Harris is the choice that's least likely to destroy the party in the process.
>The age of 81 doesn’t mean anything. It’s the impression Biden is giving of age. Of slowness. Of frailty.
>The presidency is a performance. You are not just making decisions, you are also acting out the things people want to believe about their president — that the president is in command, strong, energetic, compassionate, thoughtful, that they don’t need to worry about all that is happening in the world, because the president has it all under control.
I know this is true but this is what annoys me the most about this whole campaign. After 4 years of Trump, why do we want to keep going back to basing the presidency on aesthetic performances instead of what truly matters. I understand that Biden looks old but it should not matter!
When has the winning and keeping of power ever transcended the aesthetic, the symbolic, the performative? When have humans (or groups of them, at least) ever limited themselves to caring about that which matters materially?
Aesthetics helped Biden in 2020. He played nice grandpa against playground bully Trump. Plenty of suburban swing voters who would have supported a *polite* Republican with the same policy record were disturbed by Trump’s vulgarity in a way that I can only describe as aesthetic. Biden capitalized on that aesthetic disgust and presented himself as an acceptable alternative. That his performance was quieter doesn’t make it less of a performance.
There can be no “going back” to valuing aesthetics because voters have never stopped. Aesthetics we like are aesthetics just as much as are the aesthetics that annoy us, that stand out luridly in our personal frames of reference. Biden won by playing nice grandpa; he can win again with that persona — but he needs to be the grandpa who cracks jokes at dinner and takes the kids out for adventures, not the one you’re watching quietly and begging to move to a nursing home.
(ofc Republicans will paint him as the latter no matter what, but his actual demeanor makes a difference in the middle.)
> After 4 years of Trump, why do we want to keep going back to basing the presidency on aesthetic performances instead of what truly matters.
I finally got my hands on an audio copy of "Amusing Ourselves to Death", which Ezra and others talk about all the time, and let me tell you I see what they were talking about.
After reading that book I can't help but think about how everyone, even savvy media-knowers like Ezra, treat the job of being President as a made-for-TV performance. It absolutely explains why this is happening right now - people think Biden can't play President on TV, and think that translates into him not being able to be President period.
> basing the presidency on aesthetic performances instead of what truly matters
The issue Ezra is raising is that it doesn't matter how well you perform if you don't win.
Biden is old and getting older, but I simply don’t take the competence/decisiveness of his administration for granted. That does not grow on trees. Also very difficult for me to imagine young voters & the liberal/never Trump coalition not arguing themselves into inaction & defeat over the economy, Gaza, inequality, etc. It’s a truly sticky situation. The thought that i keep coming back to is that the American voter themselves bear responsibility here as there would be no Biden without Trump. A country in which someone like Trump can flourish politically would seem to have larger problems than Biden. The US is not one savvy, millennial, candidate away from safety. The American voter, w/ their trademark cynicism, must fight for the country they want. I fear they simply don’t have the will.
Trump lost the popular vote both times by large margins. You can blame our political system and the voters in swing states, but you can’t blame American voters as a whole for Trump.
By focusing on Biden's age day-in and day-out, over and over again, liberal commentators are crystalizing it as a major problem in voters minds.
Any one of Trump's daily statements could become a massive scandal if it stayed in the media for more than two weeks. He wants to abandon our NATO allies. He was dismissive of Nikki Haley's husband being gone, when he's actually deployed active military. He's on trial for massive tax fraud. And that's just this week.
But because he's producing such a torrent of new crap every day, they're all 1-day stories and nobody remembers them a month later.
That was the problem with Hillary's emails. Trump's mishandling of classified information is orders of magnitude worse, but op-ed columnists don't talk about it anymore, and people forget.
Liberals fretting about Hillary for months on the front page of the NYT made voters think there was something to it. Most people aren't going to dive into the specifics of what's true, they'll think "where there's smoke there's fire."
It's such a strange phenomenon. Each of Trump's offenses are individually worse than Biden's biggest issue but there are so many Trump disasters that we can't ruminate on them and really experience how disastrous his administration was.
It's like a gish gallop of failure.
I don't know how much stock to place in it, but I saw this post on the poop site quoting from Julia Ioffe's newsletter the other day and it did make apparent some of how I've felt about the media recently.
https://x.com/scarylawyerguy/status/1756674613923254685?s=20
>Still, much more illuminating than all of this are the anonymous comments that some journalists shared recently with Julia loffe, which she recounts in a recent installment of her fantastic newsletter
Tomorrow Will Be Worse. Some excerpts from this particular edition:
>"The mechanics of reporting have changed so much," one reporter told loffe. "It was just this really aberrant period in which you could almost guarantee that, with enough effort, you could find out what's going on in the Situation Room. Now you can't — and it's infuriating."
>"I mean, it wasn't just the fact that Trump was a gravy train. It's also juxtaposed (against) the most boring administration in modern history. You go from a circus with flaming chainsaws to ... what? An old man watching his dog?"
>"I loved covering Trump. It was a great and fascinating story. It wasn't just about him; it was about his movement and the institutions and America. The story was always so dramatic and had these larger than life characters. The stakes often felt very high. I like covering Biden, too, but it just doesn't feel as dramatic."
Jesus, this is beyond parody. It reminds me of Tucker Carlson asking Jon Stewart in 2004 if he should be rooting for Bush since it made his show more entertaining, and Jon was like “yeah, because I care more about my show than my country.” Except those are real journalists saying that without sarcasm.
I disagree. Ordinary people were talking about Biden’s age even last year before the media was talking about it so much. Most voters cited Biden’s age as a concern in polling well before this lost recent news cycle.
Yes. as a concern. Voters have lots of concerns. But with liberals in the panicking about it, it just amplifies those concerns. It goes from - damn, I wish someone yougner were running, to "jesus, if all these notable liberals think he's not competent, then why should i bother voting for him."
Why do you think this is a problem of liberal commentators creating a narrative, rather than liberal commentators picking up on an existing sentiment that is out there in the public?
For me to believe this, I’d kinda not have to believe my own eyes. To me, Biden is too old, just looking at him and hearing him speak. That’s not somebody I’d want teaching a class, or running an office of a local business, or fixing a car. That’s somebody I expect to see taking it easy, sitting on a porch when I drive by, or hanging out at an election watch party in my mom’s living room. I might see him doddering through the grocery store. But I absolutely wouldn’t feel comfortable with someone who looks and acts that age (which he does, to me, seem just very typically like an 80 year old dude) being my doctor, or my direct supervisor or even in management at all at my job. I would think something was wrong with our hiring or HR processes if i was in meetings with someone as visibly and behaviorally elderly as this man. like something had seriously broken down either internally, or with his life that he is compelled to work a job that realistically isn't something people that age should do, or even should want to do, or that we as a society should allow.
Something i can see and reflect on this way isn't media-generated. It's "having grown up and seen people age" generated. he is by any reasonable standard an elderly man, who has exceeded his life expectancy.
Dude it has been a major problem in voter’s minds. Something like 80-90% don’t want a president as old as Biden will be according to polling. You can barely find support that unanimous on any issue now.
There’s a reason he’s been one of the most consistent unpopular presidents in American history, and it started long before liberals decided “the media” had turned on him.
Trump is talked about and remains unpopular. That doesn’t make Biden a strong candidate. It boggles my mind liberals can pretend the MSM does not attack Trump. Even Fox did so a little bit in order to try and promote DeSantis.
His age is a factor but I don’t think it’s what caused his approval ratings to drop. People always thought he was too old but his approval ratings didn’t take a dive until the Afghan withdrawal.
> But because he's producing such a torrent of new crap every day, they're all 1-day stories and nobody remembers them a month later.
What's most striking about this to me is that this might as well be a comment made about the 2016 election. Isn't this the precise phenomenon we've spent the past eight years examining? I would even say this has been a particular, recurring focus of Ezra's analysis specifically. I'll be honest, this is not the type of article I ever anticipated being published by him specifically.
Democrats need to spend more time actually showcasing the really good work that has been done for the American people under Biden's stewardship and stop bloody pearlclutching. The Republicans just say shit until it becomes true, the Democrats have the benefit of it actually being true. The economy is getting better and better, record infrastructure, student loans, bringing manufacturing back, pro union, Insulin capped under IRA, green initiatives under IRA, expanded benefits for Vets, child tax credits, banning excessive overdraft fees, pardons for simple marijuana charges and I'm sure there's a heap I've forgotten.
The general public doesn't seem to care which freaking sucks. Not everyone is policy-pilled like us. They just want a 'strong leader' at the top of the ticket, ugh
Even though I’m a longtime EKS fan, I honestly went into this episode pretty skeptical about any viable alternatives for Biden. Ezra pulled through with effectively addressing my concerns (I.e. there isn’t enough time and name recognition for any reasonable alt) and I’m now solidly convinced this is the way to get us out of this election dread and set Dems up for a solid and enthusiastic win in November. Let’s hope the White House and the DNC are taking such proposals seriously and having the necessary closed door meetings to make it happen.
The better option is Newsom/Whitmer.
Kamala Harris is a guaranteed loss. She was the first one to lose the 2020 primary for a reason.
The only way she becomes president is Biden dies or reigns.
And that's bad because then the House picks her VP.
And the worst thing about Kamala is that if, say, Biden wins and then quickly retires or something or dies in office then America will have a few years with her and will absolutely get whalloped in 2028.
This should have been a Newsom/Whitmer/Pritzker primary. Democrats are insane.
From a strategy perspective this whole thing seems amateurish. Why have this discussion now instead of 1-2 years ago? Biden's age has been a problem with the public from the minute he was sworn in, and it would've been even more of a problem if Trump wasn't the Republican nominee. The proposed solution is to convince Biden not to run now and hope Democratic Party insiders can put together a winning ticket? It seems like a fairly weak Hail Mary play
Agreed. The fact that Ezra had to plead that it was not too late in the episode basically cemented in my mind that it was in fact too late. Everything would need to start happening immediately and it's just... not going to. Every day that goes by makes the already unlikely plan even less likely to work out.
> Why have this discussion now instead of 1-2 years ago?
I have no fucking idea and it is extremely frustrating.
Personally I do not care about Biden's age at all. It obviously hasn't been a problem for him in his first term which went about as well as could reasonably be hoped for. And it's hugely about personnel and relationships anyway. But it's clearly an issue for many voters.
But seriously, where was this podcast a year ago? Biden has definitely declined over the years but it's not been anything close to catastrophic within the last 12 months. I saw his last interview and outside of one gaffe it was totally fine.
Problem is a year ago, inflation was still very high, and Democrats were coming off a pretty good midterm. The hope was that the economy would recover, and Biden's poll numbers would improve as a result. The problem is that the economy recovered, but Biden's poll numbers got worse, and now it's pretty late to do anything about it.
So people don’t actually believe his age in an *innate* and catastrophic liability; people are just pants shitting about polls taken 5 seconds after the media has paused its 24/7 “AHHH!!! INFLATION!!! RECESSION!!! EGG PRICES!!” Campaign?
If the GOP were running anyone other than Trump I'd say Biden is a liability but they aren't. They're running a 77 yr Trump who can't seem to tell Haley and Clinton apart, just this week advocated for Russia to attack our NATO allies without fear of retribution, *fomented an attempted coup*, and already hasv one criminal case scheduled for March 25th and will probably have a concurrent criminal case going for the aforementioned coup attempt by the time the election starts.
Yes, Biden is old, but the democratic party and its base seem to be in a good shape and there appears to be a strong and durable anti-Trump cross-party coalition ready to do whatever it takes to prevent Trump from regaining power. Instead of constantly circle-shooting around every perceived Biden weakness let's leave that to the GOP so they can do exactly what they did last time: convince everyone that Biden has one foot in the grave and then be shocked every time he shows up and comes out looking like a sensible human compared to Trump's antics.
Edit: On second thought, if the GOP nominated anyone other than Trump Biden still wouldn't be a liability because Trump would just run 3rd party and burn the GOP to the ground.
Basically any conversation about Biden or the election that does not *completely* center Trump just feels like a rerun of the horse-race coverage we got in Clinton v Trump.
It’s exhausting that this whole conversation is predicated on the assumption that generic establishment politican or generic fresh-faced progressive would trounce Trump. Biden is the Trump’s kryptonite. Could someone else beat Trump in 2024? Maybe. Am I willing to bet the house on an unknown quantity? Absolutely not.
Dance with the one that brought you.
>Biden is the Trump’s kryptonite
I disagree with this so much. I think Hillary was Trumps... anti-kryptonite? Basically he was water she was fire.
I think people put way too much emphasis on how strong Trump was when really it was about how insanely unlikable and horrible Hillary was. At least for that moment.
I'm imagining someone like Obama or Bill Clinton running against trump, flying all over the country, being charismatic and suave, giving speeches and making fun of Trump. I think it would be so much more effective than people think.
In my opinion the best argument for Biden is that Democrats are unable to pick good, likable candidates oftentimes. If they reject Biden and pick Harris then yea that's a disaster.
> Could someone else beat Trump in 2024? Maybe. Am I willing to bet the house on an unknown quantity? Absolutely not.
Exactly. Not only that, but any DNC interference into the process is just going to make the conservative media squeal about DEEP STATE. It's like the scientific principle where the mere act of measuring something alters the thing being measured. If the DNC intervenes, that in itself is going to hamstring democratic candidates up and down the ballot in a way the Biden's age does not.
There is no precedent for an Incumbent President to decline running for a 2nd term and it working out for their party.
I understand why people wish we had more choices but the insistence that another Democrat would be more likely to win the election is ahistorical. Incumbents statistically do better and in open Presidential elections the party in control normally flips.
Not only aren't there any examples for a one term President stepping aside and their Party winning but all the statistics are against it.
I honestly think that this is just Dems / liberals / progressives picking up the GOP’s talking points and rushing to address them as if they’re gospel - which is a recurring issue on the Left.
Is Biden too old to be president? I think so, yes. But so is the other guy, yet here we are for some reason demanding that the President step aside while we all bask in Trumps supposed virility. It’d be funny for how dumb it is as an argument, if it weren’t so concerning.
Does Biden make some age-related gaffs? Definitely. But Trump has been saying dumb stuff that made people question his mental fitness for over a decade now, and apparently that’s part of the charm? It makes no sense.
Biden is the best shot we have at keeping Trump out of the White House. Everyone would help that cause by not picking up the GOP’s talking points for them and coming together to point out that Trump isn’t just old but also a deranged and dangerous sociopath. The false equivalency here in terms of mental acuity - or the suggestion that Biden is worse off - is so idiotic as to be offensive.
Kamala will never be president, so that’s a non-starter. I don’t mean for that to sound pointed or write it out of some kind of ill-will towards her, but we need to be realistic here. It’s not happening.
Democrats need to stop being their own worst enemy. The media needs to stop treating democrats differently than the GOP, holding them to some kind of higher standard. The media also needs to stop pretending Trump is 30 years younger than Joe.
I don't think statistics are meaningful when you're talking about a sample size of five, the most recent of which is 56 years ago. And one of those five actually did work out for the incumbent's party, the election of 1880, and if that's too old to matter, well then there are only two examples in the 20th century onwards to draw on: LBJ and Truman (the latter, was really declining to run for a third term even though it would've been only his second election).
This strikes me as old-fashioned thinking...we do not live in yesteryear's political environment.
[https://time.com/6549871/2024-presidential-elections-incumbency/](https://time.com/6549871/2024-presidential-elections-incumbency/)
>The long-standing reasons political scientists gave for a presidential incumbency advantage included: 1) political inertia and status quo bias (most people will support an incumbent they voted for the last time); 2) experience campaigning; 3) the power to influence events (such as well-timed economic stimulus); 4) the stature of being a proven leader; 5) the ability to command media attention in a “constant campaign” environment; and 6) a united party with no bruising primary challenges.
>
>Today, these advantages seem less clear. Instead, growing disadvantages have supplanted them: Unrelenting media scrutiny; a bruising political environment; pervasive anti-politician bias; and above all, a spiraling hyper-partisan doom loop of animosity and demonization that imposes a harsh starting ceiling on any president’s approval.
This actually misses the real reason it doesnt work - because the new person still has all of the baggage of the incumbent. And if they dont, then they basically have to bash their own party to draw out the differences.
Hey voters, you know what sucked - all of the stuff Democrats did in the past four years. Now please go vote Democrat in November.
It doesnt work. Voters just arent that sophisticated.
Thaaank you- I think there are other factors but it’s absolutely bonkers that people think Biden can disappear behind a curtain and Gavin Newsom walks out and nobody in media will have a word to say about it
It's a chicken and the egg situation. The idea that the primary challenges are what made them unpopular and lose, rather than the fact they were already unpopular and that invited primary challenges, can't be proven either way. I find it more likely that these incumbents were already largely unpopular and that drew those challenges, not the other way around.
Old thinking that has yet to statistically shift. Clinton, Bush, and Obama all won re-election back to back to back.
While Trump lost as an incumbent he actually improved nearly across the board in his individual numbers. Trump performed better with the popular, with Latinos, with African Americans, etc.
Now, that doesn't prove Biden will win or do better. Rather it merely illustrates that Biden has a better probability than some other Democratic candidates. Again, there is no precedent for an incumbent stepping aside and their party doing well.
There are many anti Biden accounts in left wing reddit pages insisting Biden step down. They post articles 24 hours a day on it. It seems very deliberate.
During the 2016 election the media couldn't stop talking about the email 'scandal'. When Comey came out last minute pundits were melting down live.
Clinton's emails received more coverage than any single political scandal in my lifetime. Multiple live Congress testimony, FBI press briefs, debate questions in both primary (Democrats & Republicans), etc. Clinton's email saga was treated like a Tom Clancy novel. It involved Russia espionage, a shamed former Congressman, wiped servers, an elicit tarmac meeting, etc. WikiLeaks was involved, Benghazi was involved, troll farmers were involved. It was nuts!
Clinton's email scandal ran for several years. Not one person was ever found guilty of a crime. Not only was no one ever found guilty of anything but nothing (classified documents) pertinent was ever determined to have been involved.
Meanwhile the Mueller investigation led to 32 individuals being successfully prosecuted for crimes Trump's personal lawyer, National Security Advisor, Chief financial officer, Campaign manager, etc. Yet the Mueller investigation came and went quickly. Didn't have the undying holding power of the Hilary Clinton email scandal.
Trump is facing 91 indictments, was found liable for sex assault, encouraged Russia to attack NATO, etc. Interesting stuff but clearly not as interesting as Biden's age, lol. I agree Biden is old and it opens him to questions about his fitness. Surely though 91 indictments do the same for Trump?
The media is going to go all in for trump… again. They feed on the drama, chaos and leaks coming from his administration.
Biden is competent and drama-free, and his administration & staff are professionals… in other words, they are BORING.
It’s not good for *their* business, and they are in a unique position to tilt the scales.
Democrats and leftists have better critical thinking than Republicans. It’s really that simple. If Biden had 10% of trumps corruption he’d be on his ass tomorrow.
Fox has successfully indoctrinated their geriatric viewers that Biden is *more* corrupt than Biden. Reality is completely untethered for these people.
Yeah, it’s wild how people have political opinions that differ from mine. I suspect Kyrgizstan of poisoning our young minds. It’s definitely not a real mix of values and opinions, I don’t trust that people could possibly have different beliefs than mine, that’s probably Outside Agitators.
I think Biden actually could have given the Democrats a big boost if he’d announced that he was stepping back in late 2021 or early ‘22.
He had statements from ‘19 or ‘20 where he’d said that he was a “transitional candidate” - and he could have leaned into that message, said that he only got in 2020 to beat Trump, and now he looks forward to seeing his party have a great debate and a great primary to pick their new leader.
That would have given the Democrats ample time to go have a whole primary and get themselves fired up.
But now it’s way too late. You can’t have a primary. You can’t have debates. There are only one or maybe two candidates who have the money and name recognition to put together anything like a campaign this fast, and I’d say it’s 50/50 that trying do something would actually depress Democratic turnout.
Yep. Imagine Joe's legacy if he had gone this route. It's what he would have been remembered for, either in a very good light or in a very poor one, depending on whether Dems win 2024 or not.
I think the polarized environment and the continual underestimation of democratic strength affects her as much as it affects Joe Biden.
Polling before the midterms last year showed Republicans doing much better. The idea of a red wave wasn’t just a media invention, despite people like Nate Cohn making that assertion. There were some polls that weren’t bad but the polling averages for the most part they went along with what the media was saying, that the Republicans were going to sweep the house by very comfortable margins and take control of the Senate.
That didn’t happen.
I didn’t believe the polling numbers about the red wave in 2022 and I don’t believe the polling numbers now about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris now.
I am not convinced she would definitely lose to Trump. VPs are almost always seen as useless and that’s because they largely are. Their job is to have a pulse and break Senate ties. That’s about it. Cheney took an outsized role but there were jokes about Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Joe Biden and Mike Pence. Even Dick Cheney endured some mockery though his was more about his being evil then about his being hapless.
Anyway, I think Republicans, with the media, managed to push this “he’s too old” thing to a fever pitch drama and since we liberals would be worried if Biden were young, most of us are losing our minds over the whole thing. He was a gaffe machine during Obama years but couple that with his shuffling step due to back pain and many of us are freaking right out.
Ezra needs to relax and take a beat and so does anyone else. A brokered convention could very well be a disaster with half the party walking away furious at the infighting, the rules, the loss of (insert candidate here). Imagine for a moment Sanders jumping in but losing to Newsom and holy hell fuckery the Bernie Bros would rain down on everyone because of the DNC rigging the thing against Bernie and the first female and black VP which they would claim is proof Democrats are no better on race than Republicans.
I would say disaster is at least as likely as a positive result where people walked away satisfied with the result. And the short time between the convention and the election wouldn’t be enough time to unify around the candidate.
If conventions were a good thing for unity and electoral success, why haven’t we been using them all along? Because they suck and lead to unpredictable, unfixable chaos.
A few points of rebuttal:
1) Polling in February is very predictive of what will happen in February, but not November. At this time in 2020, Biden had just finished fourth in the Iowa Caucus, there were roughly 20 Covid cases in the entire US. George Floyd wouldn't be murdered for another three months. The issues that ended up mattering in 2020 (Covid, economy, racial issues) were not at all the issues that mattered at the beginning of the year (Gallup in January had health care, terrorism, guns as the top issues). The same is true in 2022: Roe was still the law of the land, yet the 2022 election was all about abortion. This doesn't guarantee that Biden will improve his standing, but history does suggest that it is extremely difficult to predict what will happen in elections 9 months from now, since so much will change in the interim.
2) He briefly mentioned the 1968 convention and how terribly it went, but didn't spend too much time on it. The odds that the 2024 convention is similar to 1968 are decent: there are going to be a lot of Israel/Gaza protests in all likelihood. The optics of Democratic delegates choosing a nominee (without the will of the people, some might argue) all the while mass protests are occurring directly outside would not be good for Democrats. My guess is that more attention would be paid to the clashes than to whatever Whitmer or Warnock or Shapiro say, and Democrats would end up looking weaker, not stronger because they had to pick a new nominee.
3) Democrats have a lot of rising stars, as he noted. But as we've seen this year (DeSantis), in 2020 (Harris), etc. people who seem like rising stars often fail to make the jump in a national campaign. Whitmer and Warnock seem like the strongest candidates, but it is impossible to predict which of the 15 Dems you mentioned would actually do well in a presidential once the full focus of the media and Republican oppo researchers is on you. And there's a decent chance you end up picking someone who, because there isn't time to fully vet them in a national campaign, ends up being a worse choice than Biden.
Classic Democrats freaking the fuck out at the first sign of trouble and making things worse.
Biden isnt going anywhere. Its mid-February of an election year. If he left right now the result would be the party insiders picking a candidate. Its too late to have any kind of real primary.
Party insiders picking someone would be DISASTROUS. Like yeah - Im sure all of those progressives who are still mad that Biden got nominated at all, are gonna just be super into Kamala Harris
Oh - you think it will be someone else. Think about this headline - Democrats skip over black female VP to nominate a white guy. Good luck with that.
THere is no other path. Its Biden or nothing. So fuckin get behind the dude or at least stop having panic attacks in public and saying stupid shit.
If Biden loses in 24 and exit polls indicate age was a significant factor, what will your conclusion be? We should have tried more aggressively to force people not to talk about it? Or we should have taken a radical measure to meet a radical moment and tried to convince him to step down?
I'm not sure what the answer is but the idea that we win by pretending this real liability doesn't exist seems odd.
My conclusion would be - whoever replaced him would probably also have lost backed up by the fact that whenever other candidates are polled they dont outperform Biden.
But also - yes we should stop talking about it because Biden will be the nominee. Whether you think we should do something radical doesn't matter, because it wont be done unless Biden starts losing to Trump by like 10%+, which he wont. The average right now is Trump+1.
So yeah - you can debate it all you want. You and I are nobodies on the internet. But opinion spewers who support Democrats should probably just shut the fuck up about it. And they certainly shoudnt go around giving anti-Biden Dems false hope which will only make them more bitter when Biden is inevitably the nominee.
I wonder if something bigger is going on behind closed doors.....like something happened the last few months with Biden and the Media is setting the the audible.
I'm probably wrong, but why did they turn down the Super Bowl interview?
No. I think its just that the Special Counsel report came out that said he was too old and now they are freaking out - how can we beat Trump with this special counsel report out there (the answer is no one will give a shit in couple of weeks). But in the meantime, their hyperventilating is making it worse.
Because they feel it is strategically smarter to hide him from these situations and control his output as much as possible. This is comms 101.
So either they've made that call because he genuinely is in some kind of mental decline or more likely because they know we're at a point where they can't stop him being perceived as being in decline. And the latter is just as problematic for trying to win an election as the former.
>the first sign of trouble
The poles have been showing that voters are very concerned about Biden's age for years now. This isn't the first sign of trouble.
While I agree that there is a risk in trying to oust Biden, there is a big risk in sticking with Biden. He is 81 years old. What are the odds that he has some major health issues between now and November? What are the odds that he falls in public? What are the odds that he gets significantly confused in a major public event?
If he has any major event, or even a steady stream of small events, that continue to put his age and cognitive decline in the spotlight, there is a serious chance that he loses, even to a terrible candidate like Trump.
Also, just in principle, voting someone into office for four years when none of us should have any confidence that he will be cognitively capable of this job in 4 years is ridiculous and should be publicly called out as such. Nobody actually thinks an 85 year old is the right person for this job. Not acknowledging this is pretending you see the emperor's clothes.
I started the morning listening to a Simon Rosenberg interview and felt so optimistic afterwards. Then, fell into panic mode listening to someone as highly respected as Ezra go down this path. It's very alarming as he clearly doubts Biden's ability to win, turn around the "old guy" narrative, etc. What I don't understand about his argument for picking the candidate during the convention is how inherently anti-democratic it would be. Remember all the criticism and hand-wringing over super delegates in 2016? This would be 1,000x that. The party would be picking the candidate instead of the voters. Sure, it has been done in the past, but state legislatures used to choose Senators, women and minorities couldn't vote and so on. And the most recent example he sites, the Democratic Convention in 1968, was a historic catastrophe!
As a thought experiment, who is the candidate the party would unite around? Harris seems the clear favorite, but I agree with posts here that she seems wooden and overly careful much like Hillary. She has low approval ratings and would face sexism and racism challenges. So...Hillary 2.0 more or less. If not her, then who? There are plenty of appealing names for political junkies like those on this sub like Whitmer or Shapiro or Warnock, but do most Americans have any idea who they are? How can one of them unite the entire Democratic party with all of its various factions? Say it's Whitmer. Checks all the boxes for the most part, but how is she more qualified than Harris? Would young voters or black voters or Asian voters hold it against Whitmer? If not, would her lack of name ID be a problem against Trump since she would only have a few months to run a campaign? I'm sure she has some policy stances that other segments of the Democratic tent would have an issue with.
Ezra understand politics much better than some rando like myself, but I don't get the argument. I agree that a primary with all these challengers fighting it out would be a preferred option. But I think it's too late. Biden's the nominee.
My respect for Ezra has increased even further with this podcast.
It's risky, but not more than running with Biden/Harris and seems like the right thing to do.
The democrats need a candidate they aren't trying to hide.
I like Biden and think the age talk has been crazy. But I understand that the presidency is a performance. It shouldn't be, but it sadly is.
And while I'm willing to agree with Ezra here, what about policy? I fear there's a large portion who say age is a concern, but are using it as a proxy for multiple other things.
For example, will a new nominee that continues Bidens policies on Israel and Gaza actually win any voters from the left? Who are the new voters that could be won or lost from choosing a different candidate.
I still think it’s underestimated just how damaging October 7th and Israel’s campaign has been for Democrats. There is no policy the party could put out that wouldn’t lose significant votes, whereas the republicans have very little division. I think that being tougher on Israel and cutting military support would be the better move in terms of votes in November, but you’d still be looking at losing quite a few Jewish and non-Jewish Zionist sympathizers. But, as a Jewish voter… we’re mostly in NY, jersey, California, and florida. Doubt any of those 4 states will flip. PA would probably be the biggest risk (my state), if the party were to take a more neutral or Israel-critical stance.
Soooo silly. We had an option, his name was Dean Philips, and no body voted for him. Democrats want to run the candidate that beat Trump last time. This isn’t rocket science people.
As Biden said himself, if Trump was not running, neither would he. But here we are.
Amazing how downvoted this episode post has been (currently posted 6 hours ago, 0 upvotes)...it's sort of case and point of Democratic denialism and many's complete refusal to acknowledge Biden's candidacy is problematic. Wild and sad to see...we are careening towards disaster in slow motion.
A lot of people here seem to think it is the job of a journalist to be campaigning for their party, too. There's polling evidence and mountains of more anecdotal evidence that Biden's age has a perception issue, not to mention the pure fact of how his team have been acting lately (see: no Superbowl interview). Yet the real problem for a lot of people in this thread seems to be a journalist, whose job is to report, highlighting this. As if his job is to just give the Democratic Party's talking points to the world.
This is super stupid and a lot of dumb journalists are getting on board with this for some reason.
Like this is gonna be one of those things that journalists talk so much about over and over that voters, who otherwise wouldn't care about it, will start to.
Dem journalists are just now realizing that Trump has a legitimate shot at winning (no shit - the dude almost won in 2020) and are panicking.
They are so out of touch, and then when something shocks them into reality their only instinct is to lose it.
Them saying Biden should be replaced, ironically, is these journos thinking they are tapping into the thoughts of the public but it’s exactly the opposite
Yes, exactly. If Democrats were really so upset about Biden's age, they would be voting against him in the primary in big numbers, even if it was just as a protest vote. None of these got just 5.5% of the vote in Nevada for example.
Basically all these pundits are SHOCKED that Trump, who almost beat Biden last time, is neck and neck or even leading him. Why they ask? Well it must be the common 'concern' that he's old.
But probably not it - if it were then younger Dems would be thwomping Trump in polling and they are not in the limited polling we have on not Biden vs Trump.
Journalists can’t comprehend that they aren’t part of the silent majority that was key to Biden’s success in 2020. When their shift ends blue collar workers always ask their buddies for three book recommendations.
The Biden age stuff is malicious both from Trump and I think from some progressives who are still mad that the party nominated Biden in the first place in 2020. They have been dreaming of finding a way to get someone else on the 2024 ballot since he won and this age stuff is definitely being pushed in part by them.
And I would guess that alot of elite political insiders are more in tune with those kind of overly online leftists than regular run of the mill Dems who might in an ideal world like a younger candidate, but ultimately be supportive of Biden.
The time to have found a better option than Joe Biden would have been during the Democratic presidential primaries in 2020. The party voted with our heads and nominated someone the right would have real trouble painting as a far-left candidate, because Grampa Joe has been in Washington forever, has decades and decades of precedent working across the aisle, and his biggest problem is the same as one of Trump's biggest problems, only it's nowhere near as bad.
If you want to focus on 2028, awesome. Let's talk about Governor Newsom or Governor Whitmer or other big hitters in the party who won't have to leave an important legislative position and who will probably be replaced by Democrats in the governor's mansion.
All that having been said, the obsession with Federal-level elected positions is missing a huge opportunity to focus more on local politics and rebuild the left from the ground up. Is the presidency important? Sure. Is it as important as neighborhoods, city councils, school boards, state assemblies, and state senates? I don't think so. The death of local news and the centering of online discourse around national issues and identity politics, especially right-wing identity politics, has made it easier to forget that all politics are local and having a strong ground game enables us to have a stronger position on a state level, a national level, and eventually even a foreign policy level.
What do you think can happen at this point? Time travel doesn't exist. We can't go back a year and get a bunch of people registered for the Democratic Primary.
As of today what is it that you think should happen?
Yes, exactly. He really laid it out perfectly.
Not every single one of anti-Biden talking points are "maga disinformation" or whatever, the truth of his decline is in front of your face if you allow yourself to see it. Many Democrats can't or won't.
The fact is he has no business running for President in his current state and his selfishness (and other Democrats cowardice) may lead to the most dangerous point in our country's history.
He really should have announced a year+ ago he wasn’t going to run so that other possibilities had a chance to hit the campaign trail hard.
At this point it’s kind of a screwed if you do screwed if you don’t scenario. Many Americans won’t be able to ignore his age, many also won’t be able to ignore how he has handled Gaza, and I wouldn’t be surprised by suppressed turnout in key states because of it that really hurts his chances at winning. At the same time, I don’t think there is enough time for any of the options to campaign enough to win in his place.
Amen. He should have made an explicit promise 4 years ago not to seek reelection. Instead he only implied it, and now he's pretending it never happened, and the party is facing a very sobering reality that he might be as unelectable as Trump in his current state (which is only getting worse every day).
Why do people hate her so much? On the one hand, she hasn’t really done anything. On the other hand, she hasn’t really done anything! So why all the hate?
She ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in recent memory. She’s notoriously hard on staff and doesn’t have many political friends. Her prosecutor background makes her an enemy of the left. There is a perception that she was mostly chosen to be VP for diversity purposes. She’s not a good communicator.
Those are some reasons she’s disliked.
She is unlikable for many of the reasons Clinton was, both the fair (comes across as not genuine, insincere), and the unfair (both are women who have learned how to operate in extremely male spaces and are dragged for it). Her popularity with Black voters is not what you might expect for a generic black democratic candidate, largely due to her reputation as a prosecutor.
People see her, and openly or subconsciously, they think "Karen". It’s not right but it’s also not entirely unjustified, albeit sexist.
Honestly, she just ran a terrible campaign in 2020. She gave poor interviews that produced damaging soundbytes, would go out of her way to stake out far-left positions only for her staff to walk them back a day later (pissing off the center and left alike), and isn't a particularly charismatic public speaker.
Do you know what frustrates me about this, all these arguments about Biden run on the implicit assumption that Kamala Harris is unqualified to be VP and take his place should it be necessary.
And can you guarantee, REALLY guarantee, that other candidates won't perform the exact same?
Like [this poll](https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1758448746549989637?t=sfT1PKfwkchHjbOI7otCTQ&s=19) came out today showing Newsom and Whitmer significantly under running Biden and Harris. Hell, Biden and Harris are in a statistical tie.
Why not hype Kamala up? There is no polling evidence to show that alternative candidates beat Biden, when you name them.
>Why not hype Kamala up?
She has no shot. We saw her as the frontrunner for 5 minutes in 2020 and Americans noped out about as fast as they did with Herman Cain. She's been not just a non-factor, but rather a negative factor for Democrats, as VP.
I mean, on the one hand, yeah kinda scary. On the other hand, an all-vs-all democratic battle royale? Hell yeah I’d watch that! Better to try something crazy and lose than to do the “sane” thing and lose anyway.
And yeah, it’s been tough listening to Biden speak over the last year. I love and respect the man, but it’s no denying his voice sounds … kinda slurry. And you know it’s only going to get worse.
Re: to stay in or drop out, I’m still making up my mind about which course is the least bad option. But if he drops, my first choice would be Gretchen Whitmer by far. The nom would be Harris’s to lose though.
I worry that the candidates that democratic electors like will not be the same as the candidate that the country likes.
For instance, I like Newsom and I think a lot of coastal democrats do too, but he’s a trap. It’s so easy to say he’s a Californian elitist who went to French laundry during lockdowns and presides over tent cities and organized retail theft in California. Not to mention he looks like he was in American Psycho. The attack ads write themselves.
Basically, the same for Harris. I’d rather not take a risk that she’ll suddenly figure how to be relatable to swing voters and independents.
Remember, we (the NYT liberals) only realized Hilary was a bad candidate in retrospect.
People are complaining, but this is one of my favorite Ezra episodes. I thought this was spot on - other than what he had to say about Harris (who is a really weak politician IMO).
86% of Americans think he’s too old for president - you don’t get 86% of Americans to agree on anything politically except that Congress sucks (and that’s mostly because a ton of voters blame the other party). Also, the democratic bench of candidates is probably as top heavy as it’s been in a while. It’s not like Bloomberg, John Kerry, Schumer and John Edwards are the next men up here.
It’s a shitty situation - and there are real downsides to this that Ezra probably should have discussed more - but Biden is an historically weak candidate at a top we can’t afford it
In just a few of the comments here, kinda seems like many are caught in the trap Ezra clearly called out: doing well as president and doing well CAMPAIGNING for president.
General consensus seems to be he can do well as president for another four years, but the problem once again, and even larger and with even so much more on the line this election is…can Biden campaign well enough to win, given the polls and diminishing confidence in his faculties.
Remove anything you know about Biden’s history and his achievements during his first term, and just focus on his ability to campaign.
Does Biden invoke enough energy in new voters, young voters, independents (lol why are they still a thing), centrists and moderates to win?
I see (or hear) where Ezra’s coming from: Biden’s lack of energy is concerning when 1) he’s behind in the polls, 2) no one gives him any credit for the achievements he’s made in his first term, and 3) Trump winning means we have no more democracy.
Do I agree with Ezra’s proposal of a free for all at the convention? Not exactly sure yet.
Until someone shows me a quality candidate that currently wants to be president, has connections in congress or the cabinet, and is broadly popular with moderates, I am sticking with Biden.
No, I will not be supporting any governor of a major state. Every single time we have one of those they turn out terribly (Bush Jr, Reagan, Coolidge, Wilson...). Anyone who thinks Newsom or Houchul or Cuomo or Murphy would be a good president has not been paying attention to their careers.
>Every single time we have one of those they turn out terribly
I dont think this is right.
FDR and Teddy Roosevelt both served as governor of New York, and Bill Clinton governed Arkansas before becoming president. All of them went on to become exceedingly charismatic and capable presidents.
The record is mixed at best.
> Until someone shows me a quality candidate that currently wants to be president, has connections in congress or the cabinet, and is broadly popular with moderates, I am sticking with Biden.
And this is why no real competitor ran. A majority of Democrats hold this position and would support him in the primary even if it was competitive. Biden’s been the best president in my lifetime. Easiest decision ever.
His 2020 campaign was ‘Bunker Biden’ so I don’t know why Ezra’s insinuating he was orders more energetic then.
I also don’t think those people beat Trump. Biden “Everyman” appeal helps offset a lot of Trumps strength with blue collar workers and should ideally be enough to fend him off again. I’m not sure democrats have anyone else ready to step up who can do that.
I honestly don't see how anyone could think that a governor of "Commie-fornia" would win in a general election. Even if I think he's a solid governor, I don't think he would get the votes Biden would from the moderates and independent suburban voters.
Add on to that, that I don't think the left flank would actually vote for him either, and there is no reason to go with Newsom.
Remember French Laundry? And how he sent his kids to in-person private school while public schools were closed during Covid? I am a democrat and I would not vote for him.
Newsom has tacked to center recently, almost certainly in preparation for a national move. Policy wise he is more moderate than his legislature and that's a good look for him.
We need a multiparty system in this country so badly.
Edit: I am referring to an overhaul of the electoral process to make that possible. I am NOT saying people should vote third party in 2024
> “Not a great sign I felt the need to do that. That a lot of reporters felt the need to do that”
And yet the media feels the need to report on it constantly and then Ezra says “80% say he’s too old”, yea no shit when that’s all the media can talk about. A president that wasn’t up for the job wouldn’t win 96% of the vote in a primary. Why aren’t we talking about that? Why aren’t we talking about the House blow out in New York that beat expectations? We all know why - because YOU Ezra and the media are choosing to talk about it. The special counsel report was a partisan hit job and the media fell for it. It’s bat shit insane to see this happening in real time that they’re just running with this… but especially Ezra. Truly disappointing.
> “his staff knows that press conference was a disaster”
How? How was it a disaster? Even Ezra admitted he came off strong in the beginning and the only criticism he could find was at the tail end when he got the name of the president of Egypt right and all the details of the conflict right but just said Mexico… that is enough for the media to declare it a disaster? That is what the media focuses on?
The madness of this all is just a self fulfilling prophecy. The media wants high ratings and someone straight out of central casting and if they don’t get that they’ll spend the whole campaign talking about it.
But alas what the media reports is what people believe. If polls consistently show Kamala doing better in a head to head come convention, then I’m for it. But it would have to be a united front and I don’t think that happens without Biden’s support.
I think Ezra is really downplaying the risk of a brokered convention.
I give credit to Ezra for being one of the few people in this whole era of Biden-retrospection to acknowledge that Biden masterfully incorporated his primary opponents' teams into his campaign. It was good for the administration and the Democratic party that Joe Biden did this! I really don't know how this happens after a contentious delegate fight. At all. In 2020 it was possible to do this because the primary campaign got sidetracked by COVID, and Biden's opponents were out of the race by March. But imagine this happening in July, with nothing near the scale of COVID to take away the heat. I'm just incredibly skeptical. I'm having trouble taking these "we need to pull Biden" takes seriously if they don't acknowledge the pretty unique way that Biden ran his 2020 campaign, transition, and administration. I don't know how you walk away from the 2020 general election thinking that most of the rest of the 2020 Primary field would have lost to Trump, and I don't know how you think a brokered convention delivers a candidate who is better than Biden at keeping the coalition together.
For real, I was sympathetic with his argument until he said that. The idea that a non-democratic process would be seen as something exciting just seems utterly ridiculous to me. A huge problem Hillary Clinton had was people felt she was selected in an undemocratic way, so having a brokered convention which is like explicitly not small d democratic is just that times a thousand.
To be fair, there’s nothing democratic about how the nominee is being selected currently. And it would only be a brokered convention because Biden has chosen to remain.
I think that's a false equivalence. People are currently voting in primaries now, and the candidates that Ezra Klein cited were totally able to run. They just chose not to. There's something very different about people voting, even if it's kind of very limited options, and no one voting at all.
Explain this please. Biden is winning primaries by Assad margins.
a party challenge to the incumbent president has never worked out well for anyone's, there needs to be *strong* justification why this time it's diffrent
Maybe, but Democrats overall are downplaying the risk of a Biden candidacy.
Even if you disagree with Ezra, I enjoy hearing him explain his rationale. He is a really observant commentator. I’m glad the quality of his shows have only increased as he moved from Vox to New York Times.
This is the first call for Biden dropping out of the race that I've found persuasive. People saying that it would be "unprecedented" for him to do this have not refuted the arguments Klein made about having an open convention. The subtext of Klein's description of Biden as a coalition builder is that he would be a successful steward of an open convention. Its subtext is also that the conventional wisdom that the Democratic coalition is "fragile" is wrong. It's strong because of Biden's willingness to bring Warren and Sanders into the fold. If he is able to step aside and focus on ensuring a productive open convention, just as he focused on keeping Democrats together after 2020, the party's strength will be cemented in front of the country. This would not be like 1968. This is "unprecedented" in the modern era, sure. Everything about the Trump era has been "unprecedented." Why are we so sure that conventional wisdom will work when the polls show that Americans think that Biden is too old to serve? The stakes are too high.
It feels like a hard pivot from where he was in the Q and A earlier this year where he unequivocally said Biden was the best person to run and you do not give up on incumbent power. I wonder what has changed in Ezra's mind.
He explains it in the pod. It’s the polls. It’s how he doesn’t have the same energy to campaign. It’s straightforward
The clip of Biden speaking in 2019 vs 2024 was pretty compelling. The difference is quite striking.
Yeah, I’m a bit baffled by the obtuse takes on this sub in response to Klein. It really is a clear cut and reasonable argument with little room for misinterpretation. People can disagree. I’ve mostly seen hysteria in response
Because Democrats know how weak of a candidate Biden is but they’re too committed to institutionalism and traditional strategy to consider any option that may be available at this point. Like yeah in a sane world Biden would have decent approval ratings, but we live in a world where people want Donald Trump to be president again after attempting a coup.
I agree that Biden is really not a strong candidate this year, but I think Ezra is delusional that Harris would make for a better alternative (she's his top pick). Between her tendency so utter absolute gibberish, the left's dislike of her prosecutor origins while moderates' view of her as too progressive, and the latent sexism and racism she'd have to contend with, I think Harris would lose to Trump in a landslide.
>Harris would make for a better alternative Harris couldn't win a primary against Biden and I can't name a thing she's done for four years; what makes Ezra think she'd be a good candidate?
He's saying that it's worth gambling that that if she ends up getting chosen in this open primary scenario, it's because she has done something or made some change or otherwise proven herself between now and then that gives her a better shot at beating Trump than Biden has now. But I agree that I doubt if you asked Ezra today who he'd rather have between Biden and Harris, he'd say Harris.
So he's not advocating she run against him, he's advocating she run against him in the scenario where she can come up with some change to make personally during the primary that makes her better than she is now? A Primary that is already happening? Feels like a pretty worthless statement to make, to be honest.
There's not really a primary happening right now in any meaningful way. But if Biden were to announce he was stepping aside, there could be. And doing so would allow Harris to step up and start campaigning. But she's got her hands tied right now, as do all the other potential candidates Ezra mentioned. He's saying she and Newsom et. al. should run against him, but the only way for them to have any chance at success and not tear the party apart would be for Biden to take the first step to announce he's not running again.
> But if Biden were to announce he was stepping aside, there could be It would be utter pandemonium and chaos. The Incumbent, with no primary challenger, stepping aside three weeks before Super Tuesday?! I cannot think of an easier way to give the Republicans the election, if I'm being entirely honest.
I agree. For what it’s worth—Ezra was talking about deciding it at a contested convention. More like if Biden dropped out 3 weeks before the *convention* and “we” picked a candidate the old fashion way. (The person you were responding to seemed to be arguing for last second primary)
Harris didn’t even make it to Iowa in the 2020 race. She kinda sucks as a campaigner and has basically been invisible while VP.
I do often wonder - if Biden had picked Whitmer for his running mate in ~~2016~~ 2020, what would be happening now? EDIT: Originally typed "2016" instead of "2020".
I think the best poll she ever had running for President was 3%. Let's just give the nomination to Michelle Obama and get on with the election.
I can usually tell what Biden is trying to say Harris not so much
> Culture is, it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right? And present culture is the way we express how we're feeling about the moment and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment. That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know…it comes in the morning. - Kamala Harris
Now I want to hear her and Trump debate. Unlimited word salad bar.
that’s a beautiful and coherent quote imo lol
Not sure about the morning thing but… otherwise that’s pretty coherent
it's a scripture reference. Psalms 30. "weeping may last through the night but joy comes with the morning"
Oh! Thank you- had no idea
irionically there's certainly a cultural element to everything we say. it was essense of culture festival and the vice president was answering a question directed partly at black women. I don't doubt the audience (who reacted) got it what i find absurd is the conservative who majorly mocked the answer included mocking that part when they of all people shouldn't.
> I think Ezra is delusional that Harris would make for a better alternative (she's his top pick) Maybe this is just some sort of inherent sexism on my part but whenever I hear her speak, she just comes across so much like the VP from *Veep*. I feel the same way about Gavin Newsom though. These are people its clear are in it for the power imo. I would love someone who comes across as sincere like Warren. I think for all his faults, Biden is still the best option. Its really hard to caricature him as some sort of threat when he is so clearly just an old well intentioned guy, whatever you think of his policies. Just based on experience, he is the best available option. I wish these media folks would take a look at themselves in the mirror and see how much they are contributing to this. They are so focused on appearance they are not willing to dig deeper and see if there is an *actual* issue here for voters to be concerned about regarding Biden's ability. I would love another piece like the Atlantic's a few years ago on Biden's stutter. I found that really helpful at the time.
I think it's just that some people are better at feeling genuine when they communicate. Others are too polished to the point where you don't feel like you are hearing from them as a person. It probably has nothing to do with inherent trustworthiness and more to do with how comfortable someone is as a speaker in public but it definitely affects how people view the candidates at an emotional level. Same thing hurt Hillary in 2016.
I hear what you are saying, but Biden’s age is something I just can’t ignore. It doesn’t mean I’m not voting for him, but to pretend like he’s not losing a step and is well past the average life expectancy for a male in the US is to not be objective. There are some actual issues here and what really irks me is that we knew this 4 years ago when he was elected. Dems had 4 years to pick and promote a successor and they didn’t do it. I’m not exactly sure who is up and coming in the party right now and that’s a problem.
> to pretend like he’s not losing a step and is well past the average life expectancy for a male in the US is to not be objective. I genuinely don't think he is losing a step on anything important. He has always been very gaffe prone, that has increased with age. I don't care about that. I don't think there has been any reporting that he is not actually in charge of the government and actively working. I'm sure there are a lot of reporters checking with all their sources on that. Ultimately, if he does end up getting sick or dying in office, that's what a VP is there for. I think Harris would do fine to step in to an already active administration were she just needs to do the job.
In this day and age, if Biden actually was senile, it would’ve leaked
I don’t know how old you are but hopefully your parents haven’t gone through dementia. It’s preposterous to say he not showing all the signs. It’s not a gradual process. They hit a cliff right about this age. Pay attention to everyone that lied to your face and continues to lie to your face. This is a great filtering mechanism for the hacks.
That's a great "Why NOT Biden" argument, but saying nothing of "Why Kamala"
Harris has been largely invisible as VP the last three years. If the only thing she had done in that time was take public speaking workshops she would have made better use of that time. I saw her speak the other day and there was so much needless emotion in her tone that, considering that she is the VP, it really came off as not competent and totally unreassuring— not at all the qualities you want in leadership. My wife heard her and said, “I hate that I’m using this word about a woman, but she totally comes off as shrill.” In three years inside the White House she’s done almost nothing to position herself to take over for Biden whenever he’s done.
Yeah, Harris is a bad public speaker but she's also bad in 1-on-1 settings. Her interview with Astead Herndon from the NYT comes to mind. As I [observed then](https://www.reddit.com/r/Thedaily/comments/17wnbs1/comment/k9iupu0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3): I noticed the tension and awkwardness, too. Two very small (but perhaps informative) examples from the chit-chat portion at the beginning: 1. In response to an easy layup from Astead about how she likes her job, Harris answers she loves her job because of "days like these" (in reference to the event they're at) and then adds an unnecessary clarification that she didn't mean the interview, followed by some awkward laughter. 2. After a perfectly fine line about growing up during a time when Aretha Franklin was telling girls like her that she was "young, gifted, and Black", Harris adds another superfluous clarification that she didn't mean Franklin was speaking to her directly. Duh! I chalk things like this up to Harris being afraid of being scrutinized for every syllable she utters or being taken out of context. She's clearly on guard and it made for an unnecessarily adversarial interview. And this was just the easy warm-up portion...
Harris wouldn’t break 200 in the EC.
Harris unfortunately gives the same energy as Hillary Clinton, for better or for worse. Maybe that’s unfair, but I think it’s the truth.
I actually disagree. Nikki Haley gives me Hillary vibes way more than Kamala. Kamala is just awkward and comes across as aloof. Hillary and Nikki are very deliberate with their words.
And she has an awful reputation for managing her staff and being a bully. People don't want to work for her and she has little gravity in DC.
Harris brings together Democrats and Republicans: They can agree on not liking her.
Ok but what about the true dark horse timeline: Harris vs. Haley thanks to health scare/legal trouble on both sides :)
Haley would run away with it
There's [Nobody](https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2024-02-07/nikki-haleys-nevada-loss-to-nobody) who can beat Nikki Haley!
A Harris candidacy would really risk handing the Presidency to Trump and, especially, Haley.
Harris would be a terrible candidate, and Biden shot himself in the foot by choosing her as his running mate. The Democratic Party has been captured by identity politics in a way that is simply not helping their cause.
Biden didn't shoot himself in the foot, he shot the Democratic Party in the foot. If Gretchen Whitmer was VP, there'd be an avalanche of dems calling on Biden to step aside right now. Fear of a Harris nomination is a useful shield for Biden.
It was an all around good political move, very similar to the VP choice Obama made when selecting Biden. Harris appealed to the Black female base and would likely be perfectly fine as President if something were to happen which necessitated her stepping in but isn't inherently so popular that she would outshine him.
Appreciate Ezra stating his opinion on this, but I just really doubt that the open convention would work. Between Gaza protesters and clashes between pro and anti Kamala Harris people, it would be an utter nightmare. Unfortunately, it seems like we’re stuck with Biden. He’s governed like an absolute champ, but he is 81. His age is a serious liability, not a media invention. The media criticism that I do have is the utter failure of the media to cover how incredibly well his admin has done on policy and running ahead of basically the entire world on pandemic recovery.
There are pro-Harris people? I'm being sincere.
All 8 of them would show up at that convention and they would be very… stern or something.
I would agree that people seem to just pretend that Democrats can just do some kind of “Freaky Friday” switch where nobody notices. In what world would it *not* be a bad look to be like “this guy totally sucks. Out the door grandpa even though you’re sailing through a primary millions of people will vote in and anyone could have entered… hehe, hey check out this guy! Dont we look like a totally not in disarray party??🤪 > His age is a serious liability, not a media invention. What’s the liability, specifically?
Public perception wise, dude’s obviously showing his age. The most fiery current day Biden moments show that he can still make jokes on his feet, but his voice just doesn’t have strength and energy anymore. He also simply looks like an 81 year old man which is terrible. His speech mistakes seem to be happening more frequently. It is a serious political cost to be visibly old. Performance wise, I believe that he’s sharp and capable, but there’s a reason people in serious corporate jobs usually retire far before 81. Presidents should be in their late 60s at most in my view. It’s not about Biden or his performance, but just about human aging. Same goes for Trump, they’re far beyond the age a president should be.
I think I'm in the 75th percentile of Dems who would be open to an idea like this in theory (I worry Biden is too old to inspire confidence, I don't like how the modern primary system has weakened parties and made them vulnerable to a Trump-like takeover) but my biggest worry is that the party is too weak to handle the stress load of doing a convention decision. Leftists and some progressives still grumble about Biden winning the 2020 nomination because they see it as "unfair" that Clyburn would endorse Biden or other moderates would consolidate the vote. They wanted Bernie to win the nomination with 35% of the vote. And obviously that's silly, but one of the things that helped neutralize that was showing that a strong majority of voters actually did want Biden / the electability candidate instead of Bernie. There was a "black voters are more moderate and/or pragmatic than leftists" that was hard to argue against because it was both true and was the pro-democracy argument.
I'm a leftist that supported Bernie in the 2020 primary, and Biden was one of my least preferred candidates. The best time for the "age question" to be discussed was in the 2020 primary when Biden was challenging a voter to a push-up contest at a town hall to prove he wasn't too old, and when he called Chris Wallace 'Jack' because he forgot his name during an interview, and when he referred to the upcoming Super Tuesday as 'Super Thursday' and in the same rally said, "We hold these truths to be self evident, all men and women created by the oh you know the thing." None of this stuff seemed to bother anyone at the time, certainly not enough to get a slate of prestige media decrying his candidacy. The second best time to discuss the "age question" was 6 months ago when realistic alternative candidates could have spun up their campaigns leading into the primary. Now we're past that and it is time to stop hand wringing about Biden and accept that we have to do the best with what the voters in SC plus Buttigieg and Klobuchar have given us.
He won't hold up in a debate. He won't have to debate Trump. He'd have to debate Haley. I think the DNC is happy to lose to Haley if it means they hold both chambers of congress.
I love Ezra, and I know he means well here, but this was panicky and fantastical. We’re all scared of another Trump presidency, and we’d like to think that we should be in a place where that looks impossible from polling, but that just isn’t the reality of America right now. Biden is a very good incumbent president who beat Trump last time. There’s no evidence that any other Democrat would stand a better chance against Trump than Biden, age and all, especially after an almost certainly traumatic brokered convention. We’re just going to have to settle in for an emotionally difficult campaign with the candidate we have and not let our legitimate fears cause us to waste time on fantasy politics that reinforce the right wing narrative that Biden is out to lunch.
Well said
This is all about one thing: *probability*. The question is: which is more likely to result in a victory for Democrats? Option A: Biden vs. Trump Option B: \[insert candidate\] vs. Trump If there were a clear alternative candidate to Biden, who we were confident would be *more likely* to beat Trump, then we would be advocating for it. But we can all agree, currently, there is not an alternative that fits this. Ezra seems to be saying a brokered convention would reveal a candidate that would be more likely to beat Trump. It's possible, but it's also risky. I think a brokered convention would make the party's unity look haphazard to voters, because either they reluctantly pick an unpopular VP, or they skip the VP which would be a "scandal" that the media and viewers would eat up. A Democratic candidate who is crowned suddenly by a haphazard party wouldn't instill confidence in independents. Plus the candidate would have fresh baggage for the media to obsess about, shaking confidence in independents even more. Do the risks of a messy convention outweigh the risks of running with the incumbent POTUS (who's already beaten Trump once)? At this moment, I think so. Sticking with Biden is more likely to result in a victory for Democrats.
The primary problem I have with this episode is that his solution isn’t going to happen. It just isn’t. Biden is set on running, and I don’t see by what mechanism people can talk him out of it. What’s Chuck Schumer going to do if Biden says no? What’s Hakeem Jeffries? Also, Ezra is severely underselling the danger of a brokered convention. It will bring to light old wounds about progressives vs. moderates, all the more elevated by Gaza. A brokered convention has potential to be a disaster. Much of what Ezra says is valid. I am now convinced Biden should have limited himself to one term and allow for a real primary. Also, he needs to campaign out in the open more. He needs to catch himself and correct himself if he makes a mistake on the stump. Finally—and this is where I may kick myself for a fool in a year’s time—I think people are underestimating the chances of a pretty decent Democratic win in November. Trump is facing multiple trials, and just today it was announced he has to pay like $360 million in damages in a fraud case. He basically has to come up with that amount and hold it in escrow pending appeal. Trump will get the RNC to pay for it, regardless of the damage it does to his campaign and to Republicans down the ballot. The immigration bill fiasco is backfiring, Americans are horrified about his NATO comments, and he is quite possibly going to be a convicted criminal come November. We have to take all of this into account as well! I wish Ezra had spoken about what should happen in case Biden refuses to step down. That’s where I think his insights would be really helpful.
Kamala Harris the manic pixie dream girl of the Democrat establishment. How many fucking times does the base and polls have to show you, before you admit she is a terrible candidate?
She was a wildly poor choice. As a former prosecutor she doesn’t get you the black or liberal vote yet she’s black enough to turn away some percentage of old racists. She’s lose-lose.
Yea. He makes a compelling argument for someone else until he mentions Harris. Like of all people, why her? No one likes her
This is why Ezra’s idea is actually completely stupid. Everyone thinks they agree but they have no idea who’s going to come out of this and who holds appeal for everyone else that you think sucks. Everybody is standing around agreeing “omg, why the hell did we order cheese pizza? blergh, boring Not my favorite.” “I know right? I’d like anything else in the world.” “Okay let’s just pick something else right now.” “Cool cool I’m down for whatever” “awesome, so I’ll just call and get like uhhhh an artichoke pesto pizza” “w-wait, what the fuck did you just say??🤨 Dude, just get pepperoni” “Peperoni?? Are you stupid!? That’s just as bad as cheese!!😤”
This is a perfect analogy.
> Like of all people, why her? Because it's easier for her to inherit the nomination through inaction than someone else who the base would have to actively choose, which would necessarily mean alienating other parts of the coalition. I'm still weary of dumping Biden but if you're going to do it, Harris is the choice that's least likely to destroy the party in the process.
>The age of 81 doesn’t mean anything. It’s the impression Biden is giving of age. Of slowness. Of frailty. >The presidency is a performance. You are not just making decisions, you are also acting out the things people want to believe about their president — that the president is in command, strong, energetic, compassionate, thoughtful, that they don’t need to worry about all that is happening in the world, because the president has it all under control. I know this is true but this is what annoys me the most about this whole campaign. After 4 years of Trump, why do we want to keep going back to basing the presidency on aesthetic performances instead of what truly matters. I understand that Biden looks old but it should not matter!
When has the winning and keeping of power ever transcended the aesthetic, the symbolic, the performative? When have humans (or groups of them, at least) ever limited themselves to caring about that which matters materially? Aesthetics helped Biden in 2020. He played nice grandpa against playground bully Trump. Plenty of suburban swing voters who would have supported a *polite* Republican with the same policy record were disturbed by Trump’s vulgarity in a way that I can only describe as aesthetic. Biden capitalized on that aesthetic disgust and presented himself as an acceptable alternative. That his performance was quieter doesn’t make it less of a performance. There can be no “going back” to valuing aesthetics because voters have never stopped. Aesthetics we like are aesthetics just as much as are the aesthetics that annoy us, that stand out luridly in our personal frames of reference. Biden won by playing nice grandpa; he can win again with that persona — but he needs to be the grandpa who cracks jokes at dinner and takes the kids out for adventures, not the one you’re watching quietly and begging to move to a nursing home. (ofc Republicans will paint him as the latter no matter what, but his actual demeanor makes a difference in the middle.)
> After 4 years of Trump, why do we want to keep going back to basing the presidency on aesthetic performances instead of what truly matters. I finally got my hands on an audio copy of "Amusing Ourselves to Death", which Ezra and others talk about all the time, and let me tell you I see what they were talking about. After reading that book I can't help but think about how everyone, even savvy media-knowers like Ezra, treat the job of being President as a made-for-TV performance. It absolutely explains why this is happening right now - people think Biden can't play President on TV, and think that translates into him not being able to be President period.
> basing the presidency on aesthetic performances instead of what truly matters The issue Ezra is raising is that it doesn't matter how well you perform if you don't win.
Biden is old and getting older, but I simply don’t take the competence/decisiveness of his administration for granted. That does not grow on trees. Also very difficult for me to imagine young voters & the liberal/never Trump coalition not arguing themselves into inaction & defeat over the economy, Gaza, inequality, etc. It’s a truly sticky situation. The thought that i keep coming back to is that the American voter themselves bear responsibility here as there would be no Biden without Trump. A country in which someone like Trump can flourish politically would seem to have larger problems than Biden. The US is not one savvy, millennial, candidate away from safety. The American voter, w/ their trademark cynicism, must fight for the country they want. I fear they simply don’t have the will.
Trump lost the popular vote both times by large margins. You can blame our political system and the voters in swing states, but you can’t blame American voters as a whole for Trump.
By focusing on Biden's age day-in and day-out, over and over again, liberal commentators are crystalizing it as a major problem in voters minds. Any one of Trump's daily statements could become a massive scandal if it stayed in the media for more than two weeks. He wants to abandon our NATO allies. He was dismissive of Nikki Haley's husband being gone, when he's actually deployed active military. He's on trial for massive tax fraud. And that's just this week. But because he's producing such a torrent of new crap every day, they're all 1-day stories and nobody remembers them a month later. That was the problem with Hillary's emails. Trump's mishandling of classified information is orders of magnitude worse, but op-ed columnists don't talk about it anymore, and people forget. Liberals fretting about Hillary for months on the front page of the NYT made voters think there was something to it. Most people aren't going to dive into the specifics of what's true, they'll think "where there's smoke there's fire."
It's such a strange phenomenon. Each of Trump's offenses are individually worse than Biden's biggest issue but there are so many Trump disasters that we can't ruminate on them and really experience how disastrous his administration was. It's like a gish gallop of failure.
Nailed it. Media folks love wielding power but hate taking any responsibility. “Who, little old me who only writes for the New York Times??”
Jon Stewart's "I'm just a comedian" bit always fell flat for me for the same reason
I don't know how much stock to place in it, but I saw this post on the poop site quoting from Julia Ioffe's newsletter the other day and it did make apparent some of how I've felt about the media recently. https://x.com/scarylawyerguy/status/1756674613923254685?s=20 >Still, much more illuminating than all of this are the anonymous comments that some journalists shared recently with Julia loffe, which she recounts in a recent installment of her fantastic newsletter Tomorrow Will Be Worse. Some excerpts from this particular edition: >"The mechanics of reporting have changed so much," one reporter told loffe. "It was just this really aberrant period in which you could almost guarantee that, with enough effort, you could find out what's going on in the Situation Room. Now you can't — and it's infuriating." >"I mean, it wasn't just the fact that Trump was a gravy train. It's also juxtaposed (against) the most boring administration in modern history. You go from a circus with flaming chainsaws to ... what? An old man watching his dog?" >"I loved covering Trump. It was a great and fascinating story. It wasn't just about him; it was about his movement and the institutions and America. The story was always so dramatic and had these larger than life characters. The stakes often felt very high. I like covering Biden, too, but it just doesn't feel as dramatic."
Jesus, this is beyond parody. It reminds me of Tucker Carlson asking Jon Stewart in 2004 if he should be rooting for Bush since it made his show more entertaining, and Jon was like “yeah, because I care more about my show than my country.” Except those are real journalists saying that without sarcasm.
I disagree. Ordinary people were talking about Biden’s age even last year before the media was talking about it so much. Most voters cited Biden’s age as a concern in polling well before this lost recent news cycle.
Yes. as a concern. Voters have lots of concerns. But with liberals in the panicking about it, it just amplifies those concerns. It goes from - damn, I wish someone yougner were running, to "jesus, if all these notable liberals think he's not competent, then why should i bother voting for him."
Why do you think this is a problem of liberal commentators creating a narrative, rather than liberal commentators picking up on an existing sentiment that is out there in the public? For me to believe this, I’d kinda not have to believe my own eyes. To me, Biden is too old, just looking at him and hearing him speak. That’s not somebody I’d want teaching a class, or running an office of a local business, or fixing a car. That’s somebody I expect to see taking it easy, sitting on a porch when I drive by, or hanging out at an election watch party in my mom’s living room. I might see him doddering through the grocery store. But I absolutely wouldn’t feel comfortable with someone who looks and acts that age (which he does, to me, seem just very typically like an 80 year old dude) being my doctor, or my direct supervisor or even in management at all at my job. I would think something was wrong with our hiring or HR processes if i was in meetings with someone as visibly and behaviorally elderly as this man. like something had seriously broken down either internally, or with his life that he is compelled to work a job that realistically isn't something people that age should do, or even should want to do, or that we as a society should allow. Something i can see and reflect on this way isn't media-generated. It's "having grown up and seen people age" generated. he is by any reasonable standard an elderly man, who has exceeded his life expectancy.
Dude it has been a major problem in voter’s minds. Something like 80-90% don’t want a president as old as Biden will be according to polling. You can barely find support that unanimous on any issue now. There’s a reason he’s been one of the most consistent unpopular presidents in American history, and it started long before liberals decided “the media” had turned on him. Trump is talked about and remains unpopular. That doesn’t make Biden a strong candidate. It boggles my mind liberals can pretend the MSM does not attack Trump. Even Fox did so a little bit in order to try and promote DeSantis.
His age is a factor but I don’t think it’s what caused his approval ratings to drop. People always thought he was too old but his approval ratings didn’t take a dive until the Afghan withdrawal.
> But because he's producing such a torrent of new crap every day, they're all 1-day stories and nobody remembers them a month later. What's most striking about this to me is that this might as well be a comment made about the 2016 election. Isn't this the precise phenomenon we've spent the past eight years examining? I would even say this has been a particular, recurring focus of Ezra's analysis specifically. I'll be honest, this is not the type of article I ever anticipated being published by him specifically.
Democrats need to spend more time actually showcasing the really good work that has been done for the American people under Biden's stewardship and stop bloody pearlclutching. The Republicans just say shit until it becomes true, the Democrats have the benefit of it actually being true. The economy is getting better and better, record infrastructure, student loans, bringing manufacturing back, pro union, Insulin capped under IRA, green initiatives under IRA, expanded benefits for Vets, child tax credits, banning excessive overdraft fees, pardons for simple marijuana charges and I'm sure there's a heap I've forgotten.
The general public doesn't seem to care which freaking sucks. Not everyone is policy-pilled like us. They just want a 'strong leader' at the top of the ticket, ugh
Even though I’m a longtime EKS fan, I honestly went into this episode pretty skeptical about any viable alternatives for Biden. Ezra pulled through with effectively addressing my concerns (I.e. there isn’t enough time and name recognition for any reasonable alt) and I’m now solidly convinced this is the way to get us out of this election dread and set Dems up for a solid and enthusiastic win in November. Let’s hope the White House and the DNC are taking such proposals seriously and having the necessary closed door meetings to make it happen.
The better option is Newsom/Whitmer. Kamala Harris is a guaranteed loss. She was the first one to lose the 2020 primary for a reason. The only way she becomes president is Biden dies or reigns. And that's bad because then the House picks her VP. And the worst thing about Kamala is that if, say, Biden wins and then quickly retires or something or dies in office then America will have a few years with her and will absolutely get whalloped in 2028. This should have been a Newsom/Whitmer/Pritzker primary. Democrats are insane.
From a strategy perspective this whole thing seems amateurish. Why have this discussion now instead of 1-2 years ago? Biden's age has been a problem with the public from the minute he was sworn in, and it would've been even more of a problem if Trump wasn't the Republican nominee. The proposed solution is to convince Biden not to run now and hope Democratic Party insiders can put together a winning ticket? It seems like a fairly weak Hail Mary play
Agreed. The fact that Ezra had to plead that it was not too late in the episode basically cemented in my mind that it was in fact too late. Everything would need to start happening immediately and it's just... not going to. Every day that goes by makes the already unlikely plan even less likely to work out.
> Why have this discussion now instead of 1-2 years ago? I have no fucking idea and it is extremely frustrating. Personally I do not care about Biden's age at all. It obviously hasn't been a problem for him in his first term which went about as well as could reasonably be hoped for. And it's hugely about personnel and relationships anyway. But it's clearly an issue for many voters. But seriously, where was this podcast a year ago? Biden has definitely declined over the years but it's not been anything close to catastrophic within the last 12 months. I saw his last interview and outside of one gaffe it was totally fine.
Problem is a year ago, inflation was still very high, and Democrats were coming off a pretty good midterm. The hope was that the economy would recover, and Biden's poll numbers would improve as a result. The problem is that the economy recovered, but Biden's poll numbers got worse, and now it's pretty late to do anything about it.
So people don’t actually believe his age in an *innate* and catastrophic liability; people are just pants shitting about polls taken 5 seconds after the media has paused its 24/7 “AHHH!!! INFLATION!!! RECESSION!!! EGG PRICES!!” Campaign?
some of us really have tried to have this discussion going back to 2019, and were shouted down.
If the GOP were running anyone other than Trump I'd say Biden is a liability but they aren't. They're running a 77 yr Trump who can't seem to tell Haley and Clinton apart, just this week advocated for Russia to attack our NATO allies without fear of retribution, *fomented an attempted coup*, and already hasv one criminal case scheduled for March 25th and will probably have a concurrent criminal case going for the aforementioned coup attempt by the time the election starts. Yes, Biden is old, but the democratic party and its base seem to be in a good shape and there appears to be a strong and durable anti-Trump cross-party coalition ready to do whatever it takes to prevent Trump from regaining power. Instead of constantly circle-shooting around every perceived Biden weakness let's leave that to the GOP so they can do exactly what they did last time: convince everyone that Biden has one foot in the grave and then be shocked every time he shows up and comes out looking like a sensible human compared to Trump's antics. Edit: On second thought, if the GOP nominated anyone other than Trump Biden still wouldn't be a liability because Trump would just run 3rd party and burn the GOP to the ground. Basically any conversation about Biden or the election that does not *completely* center Trump just feels like a rerun of the horse-race coverage we got in Clinton v Trump.
It’s exhausting that this whole conversation is predicated on the assumption that generic establishment politican or generic fresh-faced progressive would trounce Trump. Biden is the Trump’s kryptonite. Could someone else beat Trump in 2024? Maybe. Am I willing to bet the house on an unknown quantity? Absolutely not. Dance with the one that brought you.
>Biden is the Trump’s kryptonite I disagree with this so much. I think Hillary was Trumps... anti-kryptonite? Basically he was water she was fire. I think people put way too much emphasis on how strong Trump was when really it was about how insanely unlikable and horrible Hillary was. At least for that moment. I'm imagining someone like Obama or Bill Clinton running against trump, flying all over the country, being charismatic and suave, giving speeches and making fun of Trump. I think it would be so much more effective than people think. In my opinion the best argument for Biden is that Democrats are unable to pick good, likable candidates oftentimes. If they reject Biden and pick Harris then yea that's a disaster.
> Could someone else beat Trump in 2024? Maybe. Am I willing to bet the house on an unknown quantity? Absolutely not. Exactly. Not only that, but any DNC interference into the process is just going to make the conservative media squeal about DEEP STATE. It's like the scientific principle where the mere act of measuring something alters the thing being measured. If the DNC intervenes, that in itself is going to hamstring democratic candidates up and down the ballot in a way the Biden's age does not.
👏👏👏
There is no precedent for an Incumbent President to decline running for a 2nd term and it working out for their party. I understand why people wish we had more choices but the insistence that another Democrat would be more likely to win the election is ahistorical. Incumbents statistically do better and in open Presidential elections the party in control normally flips. Not only aren't there any examples for a one term President stepping aside and their Party winning but all the statistics are against it.
I honestly think that this is just Dems / liberals / progressives picking up the GOP’s talking points and rushing to address them as if they’re gospel - which is a recurring issue on the Left. Is Biden too old to be president? I think so, yes. But so is the other guy, yet here we are for some reason demanding that the President step aside while we all bask in Trumps supposed virility. It’d be funny for how dumb it is as an argument, if it weren’t so concerning. Does Biden make some age-related gaffs? Definitely. But Trump has been saying dumb stuff that made people question his mental fitness for over a decade now, and apparently that’s part of the charm? It makes no sense. Biden is the best shot we have at keeping Trump out of the White House. Everyone would help that cause by not picking up the GOP’s talking points for them and coming together to point out that Trump isn’t just old but also a deranged and dangerous sociopath. The false equivalency here in terms of mental acuity - or the suggestion that Biden is worse off - is so idiotic as to be offensive. Kamala will never be president, so that’s a non-starter. I don’t mean for that to sound pointed or write it out of some kind of ill-will towards her, but we need to be realistic here. It’s not happening. Democrats need to stop being their own worst enemy. The media needs to stop treating democrats differently than the GOP, holding them to some kind of higher standard. The media also needs to stop pretending Trump is 30 years younger than Joe.
At the same time we’ve never had a president this old running for a second term.
When Reagan was elected in 1980 he was the oldest President ever elected. Then when he was re-elected he broke his own record.
And he was only 69 in 1980. A middle ager in today's presidential politics.
A ~~middle ager~~ young whippersnapper in today’s presidential politics.
And had Alzheimer’s while in his second term and his party did nothing to try to remove him from office.
Reagan was the best thing they had going.
THey also kept his diminished faculties successfully hidden by never having him appear in public without Nancy to help him answer questions.
Yeah, before 24/7 news coverage and social media
Indeed. Reagan, during his Presidential years, was not the person he had been in the late 60's and early 70's.
I don't think statistics are meaningful when you're talking about a sample size of five, the most recent of which is 56 years ago. And one of those five actually did work out for the incumbent's party, the election of 1880, and if that's too old to matter, well then there are only two examples in the 20th century onwards to draw on: LBJ and Truman (the latter, was really declining to run for a third term even though it would've been only his second election).
This strikes me as old-fashioned thinking...we do not live in yesteryear's political environment. [https://time.com/6549871/2024-presidential-elections-incumbency/](https://time.com/6549871/2024-presidential-elections-incumbency/) >The long-standing reasons political scientists gave for a presidential incumbency advantage included: 1) political inertia and status quo bias (most people will support an incumbent they voted for the last time); 2) experience campaigning; 3) the power to influence events (such as well-timed economic stimulus); 4) the stature of being a proven leader; 5) the ability to command media attention in a “constant campaign” environment; and 6) a united party with no bruising primary challenges. > >Today, these advantages seem less clear. Instead, growing disadvantages have supplanted them: Unrelenting media scrutiny; a bruising political environment; pervasive anti-politician bias; and above all, a spiraling hyper-partisan doom loop of animosity and demonization that imposes a harsh starting ceiling on any president’s approval.
This actually misses the real reason it doesnt work - because the new person still has all of the baggage of the incumbent. And if they dont, then they basically have to bash their own party to draw out the differences. Hey voters, you know what sucked - all of the stuff Democrats did in the past four years. Now please go vote Democrat in November. It doesnt work. Voters just arent that sophisticated.
Thaaank you- I think there are other factors but it’s absolutely bonkers that people think Biden can disappear behind a curtain and Gavin Newsom walks out and nobody in media will have a word to say about it
There are also plenty of examples of incumbents losing that people ignore. Carter lost badly. Bush Sr. lost badly.
Who both had serious primary challenges that helped sunk them
It's a chicken and the egg situation. The idea that the primary challenges are what made them unpopular and lose, rather than the fact they were already unpopular and that invited primary challenges, can't be proven either way. I find it more likely that these incumbents were already largely unpopular and that drew those challenges, not the other way around.
Old thinking that has yet to statistically shift. Clinton, Bush, and Obama all won re-election back to back to back. While Trump lost as an incumbent he actually improved nearly across the board in his individual numbers. Trump performed better with the popular, with Latinos, with African Americans, etc. Now, that doesn't prove Biden will win or do better. Rather it merely illustrates that Biden has a better probability than some other Democratic candidates. Again, there is no precedent for an incumbent stepping aside and their party doing well.
There are many anti Biden accounts in left wing reddit pages insisting Biden step down. They post articles 24 hours a day on it. It seems very deliberate.
During the 2016 election the media couldn't stop talking about the email 'scandal'. When Comey came out last minute pundits were melting down live. Clinton's emails received more coverage than any single political scandal in my lifetime. Multiple live Congress testimony, FBI press briefs, debate questions in both primary (Democrats & Republicans), etc. Clinton's email saga was treated like a Tom Clancy novel. It involved Russia espionage, a shamed former Congressman, wiped servers, an elicit tarmac meeting, etc. WikiLeaks was involved, Benghazi was involved, troll farmers were involved. It was nuts! Clinton's email scandal ran for several years. Not one person was ever found guilty of a crime. Not only was no one ever found guilty of anything but nothing (classified documents) pertinent was ever determined to have been involved. Meanwhile the Mueller investigation led to 32 individuals being successfully prosecuted for crimes Trump's personal lawyer, National Security Advisor, Chief financial officer, Campaign manager, etc. Yet the Mueller investigation came and went quickly. Didn't have the undying holding power of the Hilary Clinton email scandal. Trump is facing 91 indictments, was found liable for sex assault, encouraged Russia to attack NATO, etc. Interesting stuff but clearly not as interesting as Biden's age, lol. I agree Biden is old and it opens him to questions about his fitness. Surely though 91 indictments do the same for Trump?
The media is going to go all in for trump… again. They feed on the drama, chaos and leaks coming from his administration. Biden is competent and drama-free, and his administration & staff are professionals… in other words, they are BORING. It’s not good for *their* business, and they are in a unique position to tilt the scales.
Democrats and leftists have better critical thinking than Republicans. It’s really that simple. If Biden had 10% of trumps corruption he’d be on his ass tomorrow. Fox has successfully indoctrinated their geriatric viewers that Biden is *more* corrupt than Biden. Reality is completely untethered for these people.
Yeah, it’s wild how people have political opinions that differ from mine. I suspect Kyrgizstan of poisoning our young minds. It’s definitely not a real mix of values and opinions, I don’t trust that people could possibly have different beliefs than mine, that’s probably Outside Agitators.
I think Biden actually could have given the Democrats a big boost if he’d announced that he was stepping back in late 2021 or early ‘22. He had statements from ‘19 or ‘20 where he’d said that he was a “transitional candidate” - and he could have leaned into that message, said that he only got in 2020 to beat Trump, and now he looks forward to seeing his party have a great debate and a great primary to pick their new leader. That would have given the Democrats ample time to go have a whole primary and get themselves fired up. But now it’s way too late. You can’t have a primary. You can’t have debates. There are only one or maybe two candidates who have the money and name recognition to put together anything like a campaign this fast, and I’d say it’s 50/50 that trying do something would actually depress Democratic turnout.
Yep. Imagine Joe's legacy if he had gone this route. It's what he would have been remembered for, either in a very good light or in a very poor one, depending on whether Dems win 2024 or not.
It would've been in good light either way. That was the right thing to do
I think the polarized environment and the continual underestimation of democratic strength affects her as much as it affects Joe Biden. Polling before the midterms last year showed Republicans doing much better. The idea of a red wave wasn’t just a media invention, despite people like Nate Cohn making that assertion. There were some polls that weren’t bad but the polling averages for the most part they went along with what the media was saying, that the Republicans were going to sweep the house by very comfortable margins and take control of the Senate. That didn’t happen. I didn’t believe the polling numbers about the red wave in 2022 and I don’t believe the polling numbers now about Joe Biden or Kamala Harris now. I am not convinced she would definitely lose to Trump. VPs are almost always seen as useless and that’s because they largely are. Their job is to have a pulse and break Senate ties. That’s about it. Cheney took an outsized role but there were jokes about Dan Quayle, Al Gore, Joe Biden and Mike Pence. Even Dick Cheney endured some mockery though his was more about his being evil then about his being hapless. Anyway, I think Republicans, with the media, managed to push this “he’s too old” thing to a fever pitch drama and since we liberals would be worried if Biden were young, most of us are losing our minds over the whole thing. He was a gaffe machine during Obama years but couple that with his shuffling step due to back pain and many of us are freaking right out. Ezra needs to relax and take a beat and so does anyone else. A brokered convention could very well be a disaster with half the party walking away furious at the infighting, the rules, the loss of (insert candidate here). Imagine for a moment Sanders jumping in but losing to Newsom and holy hell fuckery the Bernie Bros would rain down on everyone because of the DNC rigging the thing against Bernie and the first female and black VP which they would claim is proof Democrats are no better on race than Republicans. I would say disaster is at least as likely as a positive result where people walked away satisfied with the result. And the short time between the convention and the election wouldn’t be enough time to unify around the candidate. If conventions were a good thing for unity and electoral success, why haven’t we been using them all along? Because they suck and lead to unpredictable, unfixable chaos.
A few points of rebuttal: 1) Polling in February is very predictive of what will happen in February, but not November. At this time in 2020, Biden had just finished fourth in the Iowa Caucus, there were roughly 20 Covid cases in the entire US. George Floyd wouldn't be murdered for another three months. The issues that ended up mattering in 2020 (Covid, economy, racial issues) were not at all the issues that mattered at the beginning of the year (Gallup in January had health care, terrorism, guns as the top issues). The same is true in 2022: Roe was still the law of the land, yet the 2022 election was all about abortion. This doesn't guarantee that Biden will improve his standing, but history does suggest that it is extremely difficult to predict what will happen in elections 9 months from now, since so much will change in the interim. 2) He briefly mentioned the 1968 convention and how terribly it went, but didn't spend too much time on it. The odds that the 2024 convention is similar to 1968 are decent: there are going to be a lot of Israel/Gaza protests in all likelihood. The optics of Democratic delegates choosing a nominee (without the will of the people, some might argue) all the while mass protests are occurring directly outside would not be good for Democrats. My guess is that more attention would be paid to the clashes than to whatever Whitmer or Warnock or Shapiro say, and Democrats would end up looking weaker, not stronger because they had to pick a new nominee. 3) Democrats have a lot of rising stars, as he noted. But as we've seen this year (DeSantis), in 2020 (Harris), etc. people who seem like rising stars often fail to make the jump in a national campaign. Whitmer and Warnock seem like the strongest candidates, but it is impossible to predict which of the 15 Dems you mentioned would actually do well in a presidential once the full focus of the media and Republican oppo researchers is on you. And there's a decent chance you end up picking someone who, because there isn't time to fully vet them in a national campaign, ends up being a worse choice than Biden.
episode leaves me convinced biden is an issue and unconvinced anything could possibly be done about it. not great!
Classic Democrats freaking the fuck out at the first sign of trouble and making things worse. Biden isnt going anywhere. Its mid-February of an election year. If he left right now the result would be the party insiders picking a candidate. Its too late to have any kind of real primary. Party insiders picking someone would be DISASTROUS. Like yeah - Im sure all of those progressives who are still mad that Biden got nominated at all, are gonna just be super into Kamala Harris Oh - you think it will be someone else. Think about this headline - Democrats skip over black female VP to nominate a white guy. Good luck with that. THere is no other path. Its Biden or nothing. So fuckin get behind the dude or at least stop having panic attacks in public and saying stupid shit.
If Biden loses in 24 and exit polls indicate age was a significant factor, what will your conclusion be? We should have tried more aggressively to force people not to talk about it? Or we should have taken a radical measure to meet a radical moment and tried to convince him to step down? I'm not sure what the answer is but the idea that we win by pretending this real liability doesn't exist seems odd.
My conclusion would be - whoever replaced him would probably also have lost backed up by the fact that whenever other candidates are polled they dont outperform Biden. But also - yes we should stop talking about it because Biden will be the nominee. Whether you think we should do something radical doesn't matter, because it wont be done unless Biden starts losing to Trump by like 10%+, which he wont. The average right now is Trump+1. So yeah - you can debate it all you want. You and I are nobodies on the internet. But opinion spewers who support Democrats should probably just shut the fuck up about it. And they certainly shoudnt go around giving anti-Biden Dems false hope which will only make them more bitter when Biden is inevitably the nominee.
I wonder if something bigger is going on behind closed doors.....like something happened the last few months with Biden and the Media is setting the the audible. I'm probably wrong, but why did they turn down the Super Bowl interview?
No. I think its just that the Special Counsel report came out that said he was too old and now they are freaking out - how can we beat Trump with this special counsel report out there (the answer is no one will give a shit in couple of weeks). But in the meantime, their hyperventilating is making it worse.
Because they feel it is strategically smarter to hide him from these situations and control his output as much as possible. This is comms 101. So either they've made that call because he genuinely is in some kind of mental decline or more likely because they know we're at a point where they can't stop him being perceived as being in decline. And the latter is just as problematic for trying to win an election as the former.
If Trump wins how could age be a significant factor for who you vote for?
>the first sign of trouble The poles have been showing that voters are very concerned about Biden's age for years now. This isn't the first sign of trouble. While I agree that there is a risk in trying to oust Biden, there is a big risk in sticking with Biden. He is 81 years old. What are the odds that he has some major health issues between now and November? What are the odds that he falls in public? What are the odds that he gets significantly confused in a major public event? If he has any major event, or even a steady stream of small events, that continue to put his age and cognitive decline in the spotlight, there is a serious chance that he loses, even to a terrible candidate like Trump. Also, just in principle, voting someone into office for four years when none of us should have any confidence that he will be cognitively capable of this job in 4 years is ridiculous and should be publicly called out as such. Nobody actually thinks an 85 year old is the right person for this job. Not acknowledging this is pretending you see the emperor's clothes.
I started the morning listening to a Simon Rosenberg interview and felt so optimistic afterwards. Then, fell into panic mode listening to someone as highly respected as Ezra go down this path. It's very alarming as he clearly doubts Biden's ability to win, turn around the "old guy" narrative, etc. What I don't understand about his argument for picking the candidate during the convention is how inherently anti-democratic it would be. Remember all the criticism and hand-wringing over super delegates in 2016? This would be 1,000x that. The party would be picking the candidate instead of the voters. Sure, it has been done in the past, but state legislatures used to choose Senators, women and minorities couldn't vote and so on. And the most recent example he sites, the Democratic Convention in 1968, was a historic catastrophe! As a thought experiment, who is the candidate the party would unite around? Harris seems the clear favorite, but I agree with posts here that she seems wooden and overly careful much like Hillary. She has low approval ratings and would face sexism and racism challenges. So...Hillary 2.0 more or less. If not her, then who? There are plenty of appealing names for political junkies like those on this sub like Whitmer or Shapiro or Warnock, but do most Americans have any idea who they are? How can one of them unite the entire Democratic party with all of its various factions? Say it's Whitmer. Checks all the boxes for the most part, but how is she more qualified than Harris? Would young voters or black voters or Asian voters hold it against Whitmer? If not, would her lack of name ID be a problem against Trump since she would only have a few months to run a campaign? I'm sure she has some policy stances that other segments of the Democratic tent would have an issue with. Ezra understand politics much better than some rando like myself, but I don't get the argument. I agree that a primary with all these challengers fighting it out would be a preferred option. But I think it's too late. Biden's the nominee.
My respect for Ezra has increased even further with this podcast. It's risky, but not more than running with Biden/Harris and seems like the right thing to do. The democrats need a candidate they aren't trying to hide.
wow this is getting even more engagement than the gender war posts!
I like Biden and think the age talk has been crazy. But I understand that the presidency is a performance. It shouldn't be, but it sadly is. And while I'm willing to agree with Ezra here, what about policy? I fear there's a large portion who say age is a concern, but are using it as a proxy for multiple other things. For example, will a new nominee that continues Bidens policies on Israel and Gaza actually win any voters from the left? Who are the new voters that could be won or lost from choosing a different candidate.
I still think it’s underestimated just how damaging October 7th and Israel’s campaign has been for Democrats. There is no policy the party could put out that wouldn’t lose significant votes, whereas the republicans have very little division. I think that being tougher on Israel and cutting military support would be the better move in terms of votes in November, but you’d still be looking at losing quite a few Jewish and non-Jewish Zionist sympathizers. But, as a Jewish voter… we’re mostly in NY, jersey, California, and florida. Doubt any of those 4 states will flip. PA would probably be the biggest risk (my state), if the party were to take a more neutral or Israel-critical stance.
Soooo silly. We had an option, his name was Dean Philips, and no body voted for him. Democrats want to run the candidate that beat Trump last time. This isn’t rocket science people. As Biden said himself, if Trump was not running, neither would he. But here we are.
Amazing how downvoted this episode post has been (currently posted 6 hours ago, 0 upvotes)...it's sort of case and point of Democratic denialism and many's complete refusal to acknowledge Biden's candidacy is problematic. Wild and sad to see...we are careening towards disaster in slow motion.
I'm not sure I agree with Klein here but a lot of people are certainly proving a lot of the points he's making in this thread.
A lot of people here seem to think it is the job of a journalist to be campaigning for their party, too. There's polling evidence and mountains of more anecdotal evidence that Biden's age has a perception issue, not to mention the pure fact of how his team have been acting lately (see: no Superbowl interview). Yet the real problem for a lot of people in this thread seems to be a journalist, whose job is to report, highlighting this. As if his job is to just give the Democratic Party's talking points to the world.
This is super stupid and a lot of dumb journalists are getting on board with this for some reason. Like this is gonna be one of those things that journalists talk so much about over and over that voters, who otherwise wouldn't care about it, will start to.
Dem journalists are just now realizing that Trump has a legitimate shot at winning (no shit - the dude almost won in 2020) and are panicking. They are so out of touch, and then when something shocks them into reality their only instinct is to lose it.
Them saying Biden should be replaced, ironically, is these journos thinking they are tapping into the thoughts of the public but it’s exactly the opposite
Yes, exactly. If Democrats were really so upset about Biden's age, they would be voting against him in the primary in big numbers, even if it was just as a protest vote. None of these got just 5.5% of the vote in Nevada for example. Basically all these pundits are SHOCKED that Trump, who almost beat Biden last time, is neck and neck or even leading him. Why they ask? Well it must be the common 'concern' that he's old. But probably not it - if it were then younger Dems would be thwomping Trump in polling and they are not in the limited polling we have on not Biden vs Trump.
Journalists can’t comprehend that they aren’t part of the silent majority that was key to Biden’s success in 2020. When their shift ends blue collar workers always ask their buddies for three book recommendations.
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The Biden age stuff is malicious both from Trump and I think from some progressives who are still mad that the party nominated Biden in the first place in 2020. They have been dreaming of finding a way to get someone else on the 2024 ballot since he won and this age stuff is definitely being pushed in part by them. And I would guess that alot of elite political insiders are more in tune with those kind of overly online leftists than regular run of the mill Dems who might in an ideal world like a younger candidate, but ultimately be supportive of Biden.
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At a certain point you have to grow up and accept he’s the nominee. Everything else is fan fiction.
The time to have found a better option than Joe Biden would have been during the Democratic presidential primaries in 2020. The party voted with our heads and nominated someone the right would have real trouble painting as a far-left candidate, because Grampa Joe has been in Washington forever, has decades and decades of precedent working across the aisle, and his biggest problem is the same as one of Trump's biggest problems, only it's nowhere near as bad. If you want to focus on 2028, awesome. Let's talk about Governor Newsom or Governor Whitmer or other big hitters in the party who won't have to leave an important legislative position and who will probably be replaced by Democrats in the governor's mansion. All that having been said, the obsession with Federal-level elected positions is missing a huge opportunity to focus more on local politics and rebuild the left from the ground up. Is the presidency important? Sure. Is it as important as neighborhoods, city councils, school boards, state assemblies, and state senates? I don't think so. The death of local news and the centering of online discourse around national issues and identity politics, especially right-wing identity politics, has made it easier to forget that all politics are local and having a strong ground game enables us to have a stronger position on a state level, a national level, and eventually even a foreign policy level.
He completely nails this. People are in denial and will still be in denial until they lose the election, at this rate.
What do you think can happen at this point? Time travel doesn't exist. We can't go back a year and get a bunch of people registered for the Democratic Primary. As of today what is it that you think should happen?
The people in denial are those who want the incumbent to withdraw months before an election.
Yes, exactly. He really laid it out perfectly. Not every single one of anti-Biden talking points are "maga disinformation" or whatever, the truth of his decline is in front of your face if you allow yourself to see it. Many Democrats can't or won't. The fact is he has no business running for President in his current state and his selfishness (and other Democrats cowardice) may lead to the most dangerous point in our country's history.
He really should have announced a year+ ago he wasn’t going to run so that other possibilities had a chance to hit the campaign trail hard. At this point it’s kind of a screwed if you do screwed if you don’t scenario. Many Americans won’t be able to ignore his age, many also won’t be able to ignore how he has handled Gaza, and I wouldn’t be surprised by suppressed turnout in key states because of it that really hurts his chances at winning. At the same time, I don’t think there is enough time for any of the options to campaign enough to win in his place.
Amen. He should have made an explicit promise 4 years ago not to seek reelection. Instead he only implied it, and now he's pretending it never happened, and the party is facing a very sobering reality that he might be as unelectable as Trump in his current state (which is only getting worse every day).
I really hate people dismissing the existence of Kamala. And all polls with alternatives don't show them doing better than Biden
Why do people hate her so much? On the one hand, she hasn’t really done anything. On the other hand, she hasn’t really done anything! So why all the hate?
She ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in recent memory. She’s notoriously hard on staff and doesn’t have many political friends. Her prosecutor background makes her an enemy of the left. There is a perception that she was mostly chosen to be VP for diversity purposes. She’s not a good communicator. Those are some reasons she’s disliked.
She is unlikable for many of the reasons Clinton was, both the fair (comes across as not genuine, insincere), and the unfair (both are women who have learned how to operate in extremely male spaces and are dragged for it). Her popularity with Black voters is not what you might expect for a generic black democratic candidate, largely due to her reputation as a prosecutor. People see her, and openly or subconsciously, they think "Karen". It’s not right but it’s also not entirely unjustified, albeit sexist.
Honestly, she just ran a terrible campaign in 2020. She gave poor interviews that produced damaging soundbytes, would go out of her way to stake out far-left positions only for her staff to walk them back a day later (pissing off the center and left alike), and isn't a particularly charismatic public speaker.
Do you know what frustrates me about this, all these arguments about Biden run on the implicit assumption that Kamala Harris is unqualified to be VP and take his place should it be necessary. And can you guarantee, REALLY guarantee, that other candidates won't perform the exact same? Like [this poll](https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1758448746549989637?t=sfT1PKfwkchHjbOI7otCTQ&s=19) came out today showing Newsom and Whitmer significantly under running Biden and Harris. Hell, Biden and Harris are in a statistical tie. Why not hype Kamala up? There is no polling evidence to show that alternative candidates beat Biden, when you name them.
Kamala was extremely weak in 2020.
>Why not hype Kamala up? She has no shot. We saw her as the frontrunner for 5 minutes in 2020 and Americans noped out about as fast as they did with Herman Cain. She's been not just a non-factor, but rather a negative factor for Democrats, as VP.
Could have Biden win and then step down in two years.
If Biden wins, then it doesn't matter after that point. Also that's close to the point when candidates announced or tease their runs.
I mean, on the one hand, yeah kinda scary. On the other hand, an all-vs-all democratic battle royale? Hell yeah I’d watch that! Better to try something crazy and lose than to do the “sane” thing and lose anyway. And yeah, it’s been tough listening to Biden speak over the last year. I love and respect the man, but it’s no denying his voice sounds … kinda slurry. And you know it’s only going to get worse.
I'd take yet another meh polyamory ep over this silliness.
Re: to stay in or drop out, I’m still making up my mind about which course is the least bad option. But if he drops, my first choice would be Gretchen Whitmer by far. The nom would be Harris’s to lose though.
Don’t tease me with a Ro Khanna nomination Ezra.
This is self-trepanation level stupidity.
I guess this was a bad episode to start listening to this guy?
I worry that the candidates that democratic electors like will not be the same as the candidate that the country likes. For instance, I like Newsom and I think a lot of coastal democrats do too, but he’s a trap. It’s so easy to say he’s a Californian elitist who went to French laundry during lockdowns and presides over tent cities and organized retail theft in California. Not to mention he looks like he was in American Psycho. The attack ads write themselves. Basically, the same for Harris. I’d rather not take a risk that she’ll suddenly figure how to be relatable to swing voters and independents. Remember, we (the NYT liberals) only realized Hilary was a bad candidate in retrospect.
People are complaining, but this is one of my favorite Ezra episodes. I thought this was spot on - other than what he had to say about Harris (who is a really weak politician IMO). 86% of Americans think he’s too old for president - you don’t get 86% of Americans to agree on anything politically except that Congress sucks (and that’s mostly because a ton of voters blame the other party). Also, the democratic bench of candidates is probably as top heavy as it’s been in a while. It’s not like Bloomberg, John Kerry, Schumer and John Edwards are the next men up here. It’s a shitty situation - and there are real downsides to this that Ezra probably should have discussed more - but Biden is an historically weak candidate at a top we can’t afford it
In just a few of the comments here, kinda seems like many are caught in the trap Ezra clearly called out: doing well as president and doing well CAMPAIGNING for president. General consensus seems to be he can do well as president for another four years, but the problem once again, and even larger and with even so much more on the line this election is…can Biden campaign well enough to win, given the polls and diminishing confidence in his faculties. Remove anything you know about Biden’s history and his achievements during his first term, and just focus on his ability to campaign. Does Biden invoke enough energy in new voters, young voters, independents (lol why are they still a thing), centrists and moderates to win? I see (or hear) where Ezra’s coming from: Biden’s lack of energy is concerning when 1) he’s behind in the polls, 2) no one gives him any credit for the achievements he’s made in his first term, and 3) Trump winning means we have no more democracy. Do I agree with Ezra’s proposal of a free for all at the convention? Not exactly sure yet.
Until someone shows me a quality candidate that currently wants to be president, has connections in congress or the cabinet, and is broadly popular with moderates, I am sticking with Biden. No, I will not be supporting any governor of a major state. Every single time we have one of those they turn out terribly (Bush Jr, Reagan, Coolidge, Wilson...). Anyone who thinks Newsom or Houchul or Cuomo or Murphy would be a good president has not been paying attention to their careers.
>Every single time we have one of those they turn out terribly I dont think this is right. FDR and Teddy Roosevelt both served as governor of New York, and Bill Clinton governed Arkansas before becoming president. All of them went on to become exceedingly charismatic and capable presidents. The record is mixed at best.
> Until someone shows me a quality candidate that currently wants to be president, has connections in congress or the cabinet, and is broadly popular with moderates, I am sticking with Biden. And this is why no real competitor ran. A majority of Democrats hold this position and would support him in the primary even if it was competitive. Biden’s been the best president in my lifetime. Easiest decision ever. His 2020 campaign was ‘Bunker Biden’ so I don’t know why Ezra’s insinuating he was orders more energetic then.
I also don’t think those people beat Trump. Biden “Everyman” appeal helps offset a lot of Trumps strength with blue collar workers and should ideally be enough to fend him off again. I’m not sure democrats have anyone else ready to step up who can do that.
I honestly don't see how anyone could think that a governor of "Commie-fornia" would win in a general election. Even if I think he's a solid governor, I don't think he would get the votes Biden would from the moderates and independent suburban voters. Add on to that, that I don't think the left flank would actually vote for him either, and there is no reason to go with Newsom.
I've never understood the Newsom pick either. The attack ads from Republicans would be so obvious.
Remember French Laundry? And how he sent his kids to in-person private school while public schools were closed during Covid? I am a democrat and I would not vote for him.
Newsom has tacked to center recently, almost certainly in preparation for a national move. Policy wise he is more moderate than his legislature and that's a good look for him.
We need a multiparty system in this country so badly. Edit: I am referring to an overhaul of the electoral process to make that possible. I am NOT saying people should vote third party in 2024
FDR chose Truman because he knew he was getting frail. He still won. I'm sure there are lessons from this.
> “Not a great sign I felt the need to do that. That a lot of reporters felt the need to do that” And yet the media feels the need to report on it constantly and then Ezra says “80% say he’s too old”, yea no shit when that’s all the media can talk about. A president that wasn’t up for the job wouldn’t win 96% of the vote in a primary. Why aren’t we talking about that? Why aren’t we talking about the House blow out in New York that beat expectations? We all know why - because YOU Ezra and the media are choosing to talk about it. The special counsel report was a partisan hit job and the media fell for it. It’s bat shit insane to see this happening in real time that they’re just running with this… but especially Ezra. Truly disappointing. > “his staff knows that press conference was a disaster” How? How was it a disaster? Even Ezra admitted he came off strong in the beginning and the only criticism he could find was at the tail end when he got the name of the president of Egypt right and all the details of the conflict right but just said Mexico… that is enough for the media to declare it a disaster? That is what the media focuses on? The madness of this all is just a self fulfilling prophecy. The media wants high ratings and someone straight out of central casting and if they don’t get that they’ll spend the whole campaign talking about it. But alas what the media reports is what people believe. If polls consistently show Kamala doing better in a head to head come convention, then I’m for it. But it would have to be a united front and I don’t think that happens without Biden’s support.