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If ink and bytes were a commodity, their values would have soared this week with all their spillage about the question of President Biden’s fate. I already tried to address a lot of questions about whether he should let someone else run for president but I have had a few more thoughts that I need to get off my chest.
One of the first articles I read after the debate made two points I want to address. First, there was this quote: “Many insiders have said that preserving the donor base will be key to the president staying in the race.”
This quote highlights who “many insiders” see as the most important part of the electorate. It isn’t what Democrats generally want, or what the polity needs, it’s what the donors want. I get that elections cost money and fundraising drives a huge part of the public persona, but “many insiders” might consider that the effectiveness of their fundraising isn’t linked to actual popular sentiment, and should look to other places to inform the decision about staying in the race.
The second fact in that article is the “Biden Family Is All In,” with grandchildren offering to take on social media to spread support for Biden. This isn’t Empire or Succession, where the family puts aside their bickering and personal issues to make their company number one again. This is Presidency of the United States. We do not need Hunter and Naomi Bidens’ expertise this matter. The fact is, if we are relying on the Gen Z grandchildren of the Biden clan to save the day, maybe we do need to start from scratch.
In other articles, there is also rhetoric accusing Democrats of being fantastists in wishing that Biden would step aside for a more able candidate. Ezra Klein is fond of saying that he’s been accused of living in an “Aaron Sorkin inspired fever dream” because he’d like to see a floor vote at the convention. I addressed last week why I think this is a reasonable outcome. Meanwhile there are others who are absolutely spinning Democratic Party fan fiction. I heard a rumored hope that Sotomayor will retire and Biden will appoint Kamala Harris to the Supreme Court, thus opening a spot on the ticket for (insert your favored candidate here).
For almost ten years, those of us who dislike Trump have been hoping he would have an “emperor has no clothes” moment with his followers, but that hasn’t happened yet, and we haven’t figured out what that Kryptonite would be. Instead, Biden has now had his “emperor/no clothes” moment where we all are starting to admit that he may not have the capacity to continue for another four years as the leader we need.
Here’s why that might be a good thing. It’s time to stop living in the fantasy land where Robert Mueller and Jack Smith save us. Maybe it’s time to stop putting personalities first and start training voters to think about policies and who they affect.
Whether Biden is the candidate or someone else is, the message needs to be the same: We are the party whose policies help real people.
Biden has been saying “Democracy is on the ballot,” but that “values” statement doesn’t hit close enough to home for most voters. We need women whose lives and livelihoods are imperiled by Dobbs to explain that they’ve lost their freedom. Men and women who can explain why “no-fault” divorce should be protected. Workers who can explain why OSHA protects them at work. Children who can explain why clean air and water help them grow. Scientists whose vital medical and environmental research is endangered by a Trump administration. Take literally any page from Project 2025 and explain how it hurts each of us personally.
I think We the People need to make the case for one party over another, not one person over another. It helps that I’m in England at the moment, and Labour seems poised to make huge political gains in the election tomorrow. No one is refusing to vote Labour because they don’t like Starmer. They just want the country to change direction and Labour has done a better job explaining how they will do that after so many years of Tory disasters.
There is no reason for this dispute about Biden to split the Democratic Party if we all agree that it’s the party platform we want to advertise as the better option. And we need to use real people to sell that message. Biden can be Grandpa Simpson and it won’t matter if everyone in the party is making explicit how our policies are simply better for people.
There’s a scene in Milk, the biopic about Harvey Milk, where he has a monologue about just showing voters that a gay man can be a county supervisor not by talking about gay rights but by getting the dog shit cleaned up at the park. At the same time, he thinks people just needed to be showed that gay men and women live and love one another just as straight people do so that they could stop thinking “GAY” and start voting for gay men and women. We need to SHOW the impact of Trump’s policies, not just TELL people Biden or Harris or Newsom or Shapiro or Moore will “save Democracy.”
I’ve said my piece. If you know anyone who has any impact on political messaging in the Democratic Party, please share this with them. I’m hopeful they’ll think of it on their own, but right now, there’s a lot of noise that is distracting us from telling the whole story. When the hubbub dies down, we need to be ready with a new message.
Good piece. The "democracy" issue is especially abstract, even for me. Nobody is afraid they'll lose their right to vote. Nobody is terribly enthusiastic about how democracy is working now! If democracy is good, then why did we coronate Biden for another term without a competitive primary?
What the Democrats need is a candidate who can show their vision for how they're going to make people's hard lives easier, protect America from threats, and describe the stakes of Trump II, especially after SCOTUS just transformed the powers of the office forever.
Thank you!