I will not pretend here to have the wundertake that everyone else has missed that shows we must dump Biden- I generally distrust such arguments. Rather, I think there is an enormous cumulative case against Biden, most of which has already been made, but in fragments. I will lay out my conception of that case here.
Biden must go because…
Because you can’t get an is from an ought
Many people have suggested that demanding Biden step down is unfair because Biden is clearly a superior candidate to Trump. Even in the worst-case scenario- where Biden has full-blown dementia- better mad than bad. Better government by advisors than government by the guy who tried to bully the Georgia secretary of state into changing the results. Why am I asking Biden to step down then, and not Trump?
It is true that Biden is a clearly superior candidate to Trump, but the public, taken as a whole, is not convinced of this. Candidates are selected on the basis of their strength, not the strength they should justly have. Politics starts with what is, and tries to make it more like what should be, not by thumping the table about how the public is being unfair.
More generally, an individual’s feelings and what an individual deserves has no relevance to selecting presidents. Anyone who doesn’t grasp this intuitively is not a serious person.
Because when the best your own team can say for you is “He’s pretty sharp 6 hours of the day” things are dire
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/29/two-bidens-trump-debate-2024-president
We’re at the point where “he sundowns” is considered a defence.
Because all the incentives say senior Democrats should be silent, so the fact senior Democrats are talking shows the case must be really compelling
All the incentives are stacked up against individual senior Democrats speaking out- even off the record. Even if it will be 10x better for the Democrats if Biden steps down, it is better and safer to wait for someone else to say it. That people are speaking out despite this structural bias is extraordinary.
Even aside from incentives “we need to perform a desperate maneuver to replace the leader of the party” is not something that is said lightly in a system like America’s. The fact that serious people are saying this shows the gravity.
Because voters do not like Biden’s age
The headline figure is that 73% of voters agree or somewhat agree that Biden is too old, but I think it’s worse than that. When people only “somewhat disagree” that you are too old to be president- that isn’t good! Only 11% of Americans, according to this poll, are vigorously unconcerned with Biden’s age.
You might say “Ahh but polls can be in error”. This is true- polls can say it’s 55-45 when it’s actually 50-50. In exceptional circumstances, polls can even say things are 60-40 when they are really 40-60. Polls do not say only 11% of the population are wholly unconcerned about your age if there is no problem.
Because if we get rid of Biden, we can make Trump’s age a problem.
“Remember how you weren’t happy with Biden’s age at the end of his term? Trump will also be 81 when he finishes his term!”. Trump has his own signs of cognitive decline setting in. In truth, he wasn’t much more lucid than Biden in the debate, just much more vigorous. Yet until the Democrats have a plainly more lucid candidate, this will not tell.
Because all the smartest people are saying he needs to go, and it’s mostly the rusted-on hacks saying he should stay
I don’t want to spell this out with examples for obvious reasons, but across the Democratic political spectrum, it’s the smartest people saying he needs to go, and the fanatic foot-soldier loyalists saying he should stay. This is a bad sign!
Because the markets show aggregate opinion is that he reduces the chances of the Democrats winning
At the time of writing, Manifold gives a 70% chance of Biden being the nominee, a 20% chance of Biden winning the election and a 15% chance of another Democrat winning the election. This implies candidates other than Biden have, in aggregate, about a 50% chance of winning conditional on one of them being chosen, and Biden has about a 29% chance of winning conditional on being chosen.
You can say- and I’m sure many will- that you trust your own judgment over prediction markets. However, if this is the case why aren’t you making tonnes of money by playing the prediction markets? I agree these markets have biases enabled by barriers to access etc., but in most circumstances, I trust the aggregated opinion of those with money in the game over the opinion of this or that individual.
Because either the domestic fundamentals aren’t sound, in which case Biden definitely needs to go, or they are sound, in which case Joe definitely needs to go
Joe Biden has an approval rating of 37%.
Either this is because:
He has done a particularly bad job at running the country OR
This is because he has done a bad job of winning popularity
Now I don’t think 1 is true- I don’t think Biden has done an exceptionally bad job on domestic policy. In fact I think he’s done a pretty good job on domestic policy, graded according to a curve. However, if 1 is true he definitely must go, both because he’ll be a terrible candidate, and because he’ll presumably keep doing a bad job of running the country.
If 2 is true, then we have prima facie evidence that he is a historic failure at the second most important job of the president- convincing people he’s a good president. He has been getting some of the worst results a first-term president can get off the back of pretty good economic performance despite a shaky global economic situation. This suggests that, at this stage of his life, he’s not doing so good at this politics game!
Because changing candidates typically leads to a bounce, as experience elsewhere has shown, and the status quo is unacceptable
From the UK to Australia to Canada, there is a lot of evidence from Anglophone countries that swapping out leaders can strengthen one’s arm.
Current polling is bad. Biden needs to win by about 3% given the structural biases in the electoral college. At the moment he’s losing by about 2%. He’s 5% behind. It’s not just that the Democrats can’t afford for things to get worse- it’s that they need things to get much better. A polling bounce would be needed even without the awful debate performance.
Because it genuinely is a problem if the president- the guy with the nuclear codes- is cognitively impaired
Obviously. Especially since he has a history of being a war hawk.
Because Hunter acting as a close advisor to the president in this new phase means “my opponent is a convicted felon” is no longer a clear point of difference
Hunter has allegedly become a key advisor to Biden post-debate. Imagine:
“You’re a convicted felon”
“They tried to get me with politically motivated charges, totally unfair, but your son, who’s your closest political advisor, he’s got real convictions against him, serious ones. If you're so worried about felons being close to power, why do you let your son, who’s got all these charges, lead you around? It’s ridiculous, folks."
Because there is no coming back from senior democrats saying you must go
The public criticism by those who should be in the tank has gone too far. If it doesn’t knock him out, it will weaken him greatly in the general election. Things have been said that can’t be unsaid.
Because even if he wins, his ongoing decline is going to make 2028 much harder
On the off chance that Biden stays on as a candidate and wins, he’s going to go further downhill. This will be seen as a betrayal of the many promises he will make during the campaign that he is sharp as a tack and not subject to mental decline. The sense of betrayal around the age issue will make 2028 harder.
Because acknowledging the unsustainability of a gerontocracy through self-sacrificing action might get some buy-in from young voters
This is Biden’s chance to do something good- to establish a precedent that there has been enough gerontocracy, that it is time for- at the very least- older boomers and the silent generation- to stand aside. To visibly break with Boomer dogma that they are literally irreplaceable and the universe will blink out the moment the last of them dies. If Biden wants to be a historic president this is his chance.
Boomer Democrats will vote for whoever is on the ticket- but younger voter turnout is much more variable- this kind of self-sacrifice and generational torch passing might inspire them.
Because his response has been so bad
Biden has failed to get out amongst the people and talk sharp without a teleprompter, the only thing that might have reversed the narrative. Instead, he has mostly avoided unscripted public engagements, and those few he has done have not gone well. If the debate was a fluke, or he had a cold or whatever, he missed his opportunity to stamp out the panic while it was a grass fire. Why? Probably, because he can’t.
Because if you honestly believe having a black woman president will change race and gender relations in the US, now is your opportunity
I don’t think breaking the glass ceiling will change things for ordinary black women in America, any more than Obama stopped black poverty and victimization. I believe change starts in policy not representation. However, a lot of Democrats, believe that representation at the top really matters. So now is your opportunity! Put Kamala in.
Because these things generally don’t get better with time, they get worse
Age.
Dementia.
Doubts about a person’s capacities, where that person has been in the public gaze for a long time.
Shaky political cohesion around a candidate going into an election.
Voter disapproval.
Because he has invoked God’s name in vain
I’m deadly serious. I don’t think there could be anything more emblematic of hubris, desperation and a Samsonian determination to bring the roof down on all of us than this:
Biden on Friday was adamant about staying in the race unless there was divine intervention. “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get outta the race,’ I'd get outta the race. The Lord Almighty's not comin' down,” Biden said.
And what enterprise ends well, born in such a spirit? Peevishness and vanity - the scent of resentment from long-gone wars, lingering like the scent of bitter almonds at a murder scene.
As always, I note that I don’t charge for any Philosophy Bear content, but I don’t have a great deal of income and would be very grateful if you voluntarily became a paid supporter.
What does this sentence mean? "Candidates are selected on the basis of their strength, not the strength they should justly have". I might suggest candidates are selected on the basis of their perceived strengths." And what are the strengths they should justly have? I'm unclear what that means altogether. Politicians in truth are never judged by anything they should justly have, were they judged so no one would ever be elected to an office. They are selected on the basis of what party one belongs, name recognition, the advertised projection of what strengths the politician might have, but more commonly on what failings the other candidate, and whether or not the last month before the election has made them positively or negatively about a candidate,
Editorialists may tell us what strengths politicians should have in their opinion, but at least in America editorialists are not read or seldom viewed , although if the can be outrageously negative or positive commentators might be viewed for their entertainment appeal might be persuasive by constant reiteration.
No matter what editorialists may think of their own superior opinion of the strengths a candidate should have, people are more influenced by their drinking buddies that any pundits.
And people never care about the issues a politician supports even they do care about the issues. If I tell my brother-in-law, my mother or by old buddies what so and so may send them links, they don't care to have their notions clarified. I live in a family of Trump supporters who tell me Trump did not say he was going to put illegal immigrants in camps even though they were at a rally where he did say it.All they heard was he's going to give them better jobs and a better lives; and the same goes for my mostly democratic friends who think Trump was repetitive and senile and Biden was strong and truthful.
It is only the pundits and politicians who found Biden's performance wanting?
Do you know any people or only "intellectuals" who might try to consider what strengths a candidate should justly have?'