Like soldiers in a winter’s night with a vow to defend
By 
As a follow-up to Paul’s posts about yet more polling showing Biden both losing and (where applicable) running far behind Democratic Senate candidates in swing states and against fatalism, there’s one top-level Democratic politician who doesn’t believe that they SKEWED the polls against Biden but forgot to do it for the Senate races or that a Trump victory is something that Democrats should just accept:
“‘You will never forgive yourself for not doing what you could when you had the chance,’” is how Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, told me he’s addressing those colleagues reluctant to join his calls for Biden to drop out. “Everybody knows that this has to happen.”
It’s worth taking a step back to consider this extraordinary moment. Biden’s own congressional allies are attempting to oust him from their ticket and the backstage campaign has been orchestrated in part by the most successful legislator of the era, the president’s longtime ally and the person he called “my Catholic sister.”
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, convinced Biden will lose, has been working the phones since June 27 in hopes of finding a way to ease him off the ticket.
One of her colleagues was struck to see her chatting, furtively but openly, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last week in a corner of the House Democratic cloakroom in plain sight of a dozen lawmakers.
The extent of Pelosi’s behind-the-scenes role hasn’t been fully revealed and may never be if the former speaker has her way. But I’m told by people familiar with the exchanges that she’s stage-managed phone calls to Jeffries, plotted strategy with the biggest names in Democratic politics and told one former elected official bluntly that Biden’s legacy can’t be destroying their party.
Pelosi, whatever her faults, has always been serious about obtaining and exercising power, and it’s not surprising that she’s unwilling either to lie to herself or just accept an extremely long-odds gamble with the fate of American democracy at stake.
The argument against fatalism also means that once the Democratic convention chooses a nominee, then the party must be united behind that nominee. But until then, powerful Democrats who think that running Biden is an unacceptable risk need to be doing what they can to get this message to him. And certainly, the idea that the attempted assassination of Trump means that Democrats should just give up is grossly stupid and irresponsible. Trump choosing a creepy misogynist admirer of authoritarians home and abroad to join his ticket should make the stakes very, very clear.