We’ll probably learn within a week or two whether President Joe Biden’s vow to persist in his 2024 candidacy will hold, or whether he’ll yield to what Democrats urging him to step aside see as political reality. If previous Democratic presidents are keeping their counsel, their best-known political advisers are not.
Writing in The New York Times, former Clinton campaign guru James Carville posits that whether he admits it or not, Biden’s candidacy is on life support. “The jig is up,” he believes, “and the sooner Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders accept this, the better. We need to move forward.”
Carville proposes a series of regional town hall events and an open Democratic convention to choose a new nominee. He suggests that former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama be drafted to choose eight candidates to compete.
Carville believes such an effort would awaken a confused and despondent electorate: “Town halls — high-stakes job interviews for the toughest job in the world — would surely attract television and cable partners and generate record numbers of viewers.”
Obama’s one-time political adviser David Axelrod also believes Biden is in extreme denial. On CNN’s “Inside Politics,” Axelrod argued, “There are certain immutable facts of life — and those were painfully obvious on that debate stage — and the president just ... hasn’t come to grips with it.
“If you just look at the data and talk to ... political people around the country,” he added, “it’s more likely that he’ll lose by a landslide than win narrowly this race.”
My old friend James Fallows, a speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter back in his boy-wonder days, has even drafted a concession speech for Biden to be delivered after this week’s NATO summit, dramatizing one of his most notable achievements: pulling America’s European allies together to resist Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
“I believe the record shows that I and my team were the right people, at the right time, for the challenges of the past four years,” Fallows thinks Biden should say. “We did our duty, and I believe historians will say that we met the moment well. But I have come to realize that I can now best fulfill my duty in the fight for American values by passing the torch ...
“Therefore, I am tonight sharing with you my conclusion that I should no longer be a candidate in the coming election. I will remain on duty through every moment of my first term as your president. But I do not seek reelection to a second.”
As I write, it appears unlikely Biden can be persuaded to give such an address. He sees the contest in distressingly personal terms. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “If you stay in and Trump is elected and everything you’re warning about comes to pass, how will you feel in January?”
“I’ll feel as long as I gave it my all and I did the good as job as I know I can do,” Biden answered, “that’s what this is about.”
No, Mr. President, that’s not what it’s about. The 2024 presidential election is not a ballgame or a “Rocky” movie. Giving it your all is not good enough. Biden also said he didn’t think he’d watched a video of his catastrophically bad debate performance.
I think we’d all feel better if he was sure about whether he’d watched the accursed thing, although it’s understandable why he wouldn’t want to. The shrewd political realist in him couldn’t help but recognize the wavering shadow of himself he’d become.
It’s also clear enough why those closest to Biden, whose loyalties to the president are personal and emotional — first lady Jill Biden, for example — might not encourage a cold-eyed look at the mess the president has made for himself.
Should he persist in this folly, Biden will be in the position of a trapeze artist working without a net. One more performance even remotely like his outing against the scowling, relentlessly lying Republican nominee, and Biden’s campaign would come crashing to Earth in a crumpled heap. There would be no reviving it.
To win this election, the Democratic nominee needs to make it about Donald Trump, Trumpism and right-wing extremism generally. The GOP candidate has worked at mollifying voters with a less belligerent stance. Where he recently called for televised military tribunals to try former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney for treason, Trump now masquerades as a reasonable statesman.
Why, he knows nothing about Project 2025, the radical proposal put together by an all-star team of former Trump aides and the Heritage Foundation. Think Confederate States of America, circa 1855.
Never heard of them, Trump claims, adding that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”
Can he get away with that?
If he’s running against the diminished shadow of Joe Biden, Trump can probably get away with anything.
Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of “The Hunting of the President.”
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