Ridin’ With Biden

Let me provide my argument about November’s election. I’ve mumbled around in comments, but I have avoided a full post for many reasons. Here is my thinking. Maybe seeing both sides can help calm the waters. Maybe not.

The Calls For Joe Biden To Resign

Biden has said he’s not going to resign, and in a well-run party, that would be the end of it. Adam Schiff’s and Nancy Pelosi’s latest calls for him to resign will split the party no matter what Biden does. Some things can’t be taken back.

The arguments are mainly that he is too old to appeal to the voters and that he suffers from a cognitive disability. “Too old to appeal to voters” is a subjective judgment. There’s theoretical support for it, and his poll numbers are not where we’d like them to be. But we don’t know that the reason for the poll numbers is his age. Whatever the cause, low poll numbers are a concern.

The matchups with Donald Trump, by and large, are neck and neck and have continued that way since before the debate. With three and a half months to go, we can change them. Notice I didn’t say “they can change.” I’d like to emphasize our agency. We are voters. We influence the people around us, and even the commenters on this blog have a bit more reach than the average citizen.

And polls. Oh dear, the polls. I look at the polls for a broad picture. Polls typically have a margin of error of 3-4%. That means that if a poll shows that Biden lost two points over the debate, he’s still where he was before.

I would like the polls to be better than neck and neck. Maybe send some postcards, work with the campaign? Agonizing over them isn’t going to change them. And some of the polls that are cited are approval ratings, too often Biden ratings cited without Trump’s. As Biden said, it’s not a choice between him and God. I also have a hard time interpreting the “Biden is X% behind Congressional candidate in state Y.” We’ve had many comments on that comparison.

Professional pollsters have their own ways of correlating this, but to my mind, it’s all pretty loose, and there were big wrong calls around the “red wave” of 2022. I would not make a definite statement about Biden’s electability in either direction. But we can move those numbers.

I do think there are problems with the polls, but even if there weren’t, I think I’ve presented here a sufficient argument not to examine every one-point movement in one single poll. Pay attention to them, yes. But call for Biden to step down? No.

There’s a subjective side to the “too old” argument, too. There is a tendency in American society to minimize and fear old people, so there’s a real concern that voters will share this prejudice, just as they might share misogyny and racism toward Kamala Harris. Trump uses hair dye and bronzer, along with an angry and hostile manner to present himself as a real man. A lot of people seem to fall for that.

The argument veers into divining what other people think. I’ve found that what I think is often NOT what other people think, so I am cautious about that. Far too much of the discussion has been people’s fears about what other people will do, and the amount of data that can be brought to that is very limited.

The Parkinson’s argument too often reduces to the assumption that old people have Parkinson’s. I have a friend who has the same sorts of foot problems that Biden has. She has been producing fund-raising shows in Santa Fe. I have mild foot problems of a different sort. My doctor said that those nerves are the farthest from the center and eventually wear out. Feet are at the other end of the body from brains. These minor accompaniments to old age are easily diagnosed as Not Parkinson’s.

Step Two

Let’s say that Biden steps down. Then what? I have seen a hundred scenarios, none of them well-supported. Since the primaries are over and Biden won overwhelmingly, there might be legal or political problems with throwing all those votes away. There are issues with the campaign war chest and who controls it. What do the voters think about changing horses in midstream? I haven’t seen any polls at all on this subject.

I have seen no scenario that persuades me that those calling for Biden to step down have any idea what comes next. I see fantasy football, but no working out of strategy. An open convention? Please. No strategist goes into an important meeting without orchestrating it to the greatest extent they can.

We are also told that a new candidate (Johnny Unbeatable in several genders and colors) will generate enthusiasm, and all those voters who think Biden is too old will be delighted. If there were a single candidate who already had wide support, I might entertain this as plausible, but there isn’t one.

Even if we had one, all of them are untested relative to the oppo information the Republican Party is now readying to throw at them. Biden has been on the national scene for years, and the only oppo that remains is that he’s old. Everything else has passed its use-by date. I see little to no discussion of how to deal with the oppo for Johnny Unbeatable.

It’s not a television show where the bright and unexpected idea works out perfectly and everyone lives happily ever after. There’s a lot that can go wrong in these intermediate steps, and I don’t see it being addressed by the “Dump Biden” crowd. Maybe it can be dealt with, but a lot more gaming out needs doing.

Success!

We have a lot of work to do. Get out the word about Project 2025. Get out the word about JD Vance. Irritate Trump so that he reaches max weird. Remind people that not knowing what the President is doing today is a good thing. Get out Biden’s accomplishments and plans that can be done with a trifecta. Bring lawsuits to improve ballot access where necessary. Train as pollworkers. Write postcards. Call. Let’s go!