Schiff calls for Biden to step down

One of the Democrats who doesn’t think that polls are fuzzy math is going public about it:

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), who is running for U.S. Senate in California, is calling for President Biden to drop out of the presidential race, he said in an exclusive statement Wednesday to The Times.

Schiff, who is heavily favored to win his Senate race, cited “serious concerns” that Biden can beat former President Trump in November.

He is the latest Democrat to call for the incumbent president of their own party to end his campaign amid growing concerns about Biden’s age and mental fitness to do the job — which began in earnest after a disastrous debate performance last month where Biden at times appeared confused.

As Paul said earlier, the legal defenses of trying to get the nomination wrapped up before the convention are bullshit. In 49 states there isn’t the slightest doubt that the nominee chosen by the Democrats will be on the ballot — they do not, in fact, formally have a nominee yet — and Ohio is only a problem if you assume Republicans will ignore black letter law, but of course once you’ve made that assumption by definition no window is safe. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense to base your decisions on it, and at this point it’s evidently not the real reason.

I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that either way the sooner the decision is made the better. But this is a two-way street; if Biden wants to stop the internal rebellion he has to show some recognition that 1)running double digits behind every Democratic Senate candidate* in an applicable swing state despite having a near-monopoly on paid media that is about to vanish is a very serious problem that strongly suggests an alternative candidate would have a better shot, and 2)he has a concrete plan to address this even though he’s plainly incapable of running a normal presidential campaign. What’s happening instead, however, is that Biden seems to have given up trying to persuade Democratic elected officials that he has any kind of serious plan to come from behind, and is just trying to run out the clock and hope that coordination and collective action problems will allow him to keep the nomination:

In the past few days, Biden has started to privately convey a new message to Democrats: The conversation about my future is over, and I’m getting irritated that you’re not realizing that. Biden has called several prominent allies individually to tell them to spread the word.

“We think we’ve got a good plan to fight through this,” a senior Biden aide said.

Nearly three weeks since his rocky debate performance that shook his party, Biden is intent on shutting down dissent among Democrats in order to move forward and focus on defeating Donald Trump. And after hearing out his critics, he’s tightening his circle to those he‘s relied on the longest — and who support his path ahead.

[…]

On a later call with the moderate New Democratic Coalition, many of whom are in tough re-election fights, Biden grew frustrated at times, according to people familiar with the call.

When Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., told Biden that “without a major change, we are facing a loss in November” and that many voters are losing confidence he can “project strength, vigor and inspire confidence” as commander in chief through a second term, the president lashed out, according to the people familiar with the call.

Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., who was on the call and has urged Biden to step aside, described the president as “defensive” and said the “most troubling aspect of it was he said, ‘We’re fine.’”

“Which is, I think, contrary to most of our understanding of current facts,” Smith added.

[…]

By the end of last week the president and his team had settled on a strategy forward, the five people familiar with the internal discussions said. 

That strategy, as described by multiple Biden aides and allies, is to run out the clock.

Biden aides are looking to leave Democrats little space for pushing him out of the race. The top Biden aide said the hope has been for the Republican National Convention to become “a tipping point” where Democrats started focusing on Trump, not Biden.

“We’re hopeful people will say, ‘OK, well, he’s doing what we asked for, and he’s doing it effectively,’” the aide said.

If Biden wanted to quell the increasing dissent within the caucus, he would presumably not merely assert the existence of a plan to overcome a substantial deficit with his best chance to change the trajectory of the race having made things worse, but explain what that plan is and have it make sense to people. Instead, they’re just trying to ignore or express exasperated annoyance with people like Schiff and Pelosi and plow ahead and hope the runway runs out. This will probably work to keep the nomination if Biden is determined to. But in terms of how the general election will go if he’s the nominee, it’s the opposite of reassuring. And, hence, Schiff is not going to be the last prominent Democrat who is going to come out for changing course.

*in a rational universe, this particular fact would preempt the use of the “so you want to run JOHNNY UNBEATABLE” strawman, unless you think that Tim Kaine and Ruben Gallego are transcendent once-in-a-generation political super-talents. I know in our actually existing universe it won’t, but anyway the actual alternative is the very real and specific Kamala Harris, who would be the overwhelmingly likely nominee should Biden step down.