I was reading other news when I noted the following on the online frontpage of the NYT:
I have not read the pieces, so this is pure, uncut headline reaction.
And my first reaction is this: two conservatives have opinions about Biden’s age. Truly stunning stuff.
My more detailed reaction is as follows.
May I note that it is kind of absurd to pretend that one line and some other references from Hur’s report are the tipping point in all of this? This is not the first time anyone has noticed that Biden is old (certainly not the first time the NYT has commented upon it). Moreover, Hur’s report is clearly causing a lot of Democrats to rally around their candidate (i.e., the news isn’t all bad for Biden). And let’s not forget how the news cycle works. We will be on to some other immediately dramatic thing by next weekend, if not by Monday afternoon.
Further, Douthat is simply wrong. For a host of reasons including the fact that Biden is almost certainly the party’s strongest candidate. Except, of course, the ever-popular Hypothetical Candidate. I mean, that guy would crush it!
On this point, I would again note a piece I linked in a tab-clearing post by Matthew Shugart: Would Democrats be better off replacing Biden? Matthew is one of the world’s leading experts on electoral systems and has written extensively on presidentialism. He notes in the post:
It would be hard to find whatever narrow window there is through which Biden himself weighs down the party, but the party could find an alternative who could save it. Maybe the window exists, but good luck locating it, let alone locating the perfect candidate to ride to victory in both a primary and a general.
Basically, in presidential systems and the “presidentialized” parties that result, any election is a referendum on the incumbent–whether he is personally on the ballot or not.
[…]
Bottom line, if he is weak enough that the party should replace him, the party is weak enough that it has bigger problems than Biden.
He goes on to specifically note the problems inherent in a primary challenge (which is no longer on the table, so I will not go down that rabbit hole).
But in other words: if you jettison an incumbent president because they have some negatives, you don’t just jettison the negatives, you jettison the positives as well. A lot of this talk of replacing Biden operates from the incorrect position that a new nominee could simply take Biden’s positives and just replace the negative of his age with youth and vigor. But since being the incumbent president is one of Biden’s positives, that immediately goes away without Biden. Further, without Biden as the head of the ticket, you can’t make any arguments based on any of the good things that have happened during the administration, at least not in the same way you can as the incumbent president.
Given the presidentialized nature of parties in systems such as ours, removing Biden would be an admission by the Democrats that something was wrong with the party–and that would have electoral ramifications. And at this point, if he just stepped down because of age, it would also be an admission of error. Granted, some dramatic event (a major health problem) could upturn the applecart, but that would be true for a 60-year-old.
Put another way, Biden choosing to step down now due to age, or the party forcing him out would be letting a thousand “Dems in Disarray” headline bloom.
So, in many ways, the choices for the Democrats are to 1) find a way to make the argument that they have an old, competent, candidate who isn’t Trump and who has some real successes as president; or 2) demonstrate that they were too stupid to realize that Joe was old and then try and play catch up between now and November in a media environment that would skewer them to death.
It is an utter fantasy that the best way to proceed is to change horses now.
Let me conclude by noting the following from Matthew’s post, as it echoes things I frequently write about:
And finally there is one more problem, which only makes all the above worse for the “change the nominee” crowd. It is not as if there exists a PARTY with authority to order Biden off the ticket. US parties do not work that way. I suspect most presidentialized parties do not have that ability in practice, although there may be exceptions in some other presidential systems. Seeking reelection is, ultimately, his choice, and other actors can only complicate whether he can pull it off, or go along for the ride. That’s presidentialization!
