I know that most Daily Kos folks feel that Biden should stay until he decides to go. And they take him at his word that he isn’t going anywhere. And he shouldn’t be pressured. I know that those of you who feel that way will want to punch back at me. And that’s OK. I’ll read your comments with equanimity. There’s no need for any of us to be mutually antagonistic.
We admittedly far fewer numbers of Daily Kos members who see the importance of Biden doing the right thing deserve a place here, too. We are on the same side as those who disagree with us. Like the Biden-should-stay crowd, we also want the Democrats to achieve the biggest possible electoral victory, despite the chaos of this moment.
Biden’s declaration today that he will not step down, in my opinion, was purely performative. He has no choice up to the moment he announces that he is either resigning the presidency or dropping out the race to sound determined. He has to insist in the strongest possible terms that he isn’t going anywhere. Were he to flinch, the drama would be over too soon for all the loose ends to be tied up. He may know he will soon step down, but not be ready yet. Or he may still need to be convinced. The party certainly isn’t ready quite yet. Things have yet to fully play out.
The best metaphor for the debate debacle is the Emperor Has No Clothes. The debate nakedly revealed what had long been suspected by a large majority of voters and politicians. Biden’s health is failing, and quickly. He can’t get better. He can only get worse. He can’t campaign effectively, much less deal with he immense challenges of another term in office. He is not the first leader to try to hide a medical condition. But it’s close to impossible to do that in his condition, under today’s media glare. FDR could get away with it. Biden can’t.
From a purely compassionate perspective, It would be deeply irresponsible not to remove Biden, one way or another. It’s always difficult to take your parent’s or grandparent’s car keys away. Biden did, in fact, crash, at the debate. Like your grandparents, if he keeps driving, Biden can only crash again, sooner or later. An ill-timed Biden crash would have catastrophic global circumstances.
It’s painful to watch, but this is a Shakespearean drama that just has to run all the way through the third (or fifth) act before the curtain can fall. Getting the details as right as possible before the inevitable announcement is critically important. This is why ideas and possibilities are floated publicly. To test them.
Should Biden resign or drop out? How can Biden’s proud legacy be best protected? What is the fairest and safest process for determining a replacement? It takes time for a big, complicated party to work though all this. But that is exactly what we’ve been getting glimpses of since the debate, as if through a scrim, as more influencers every day express misgivings or float ideas.
My guess is that the curtain will fall by the end of this week, which — not by coincidence — is the week ahead of the Republican Convention that will anoint Trump.
If I’m right, a new drama is about open. It will be exciting as hell to watch the party that DID THE RIGHT THING FOR AMERICA by graciously and successfully retiring a beloved leader whose time had passed choose a new candidate. It will be fantastic to watch the entire country riveted on the Democrats, ignoring Trump and the Republicans the very week they anticipated commanding attention. While they are busy promising mayhem and chaos, we will drown them out with a vision of a positive future.
Our story, of a unified party that can save America from the far right, just like Great Britain and France have done so recently, will gain unprecedented momentum. It will be a global hit of massive proportions.
Biden stepping down this week, the week ahead of the Republican Convention, will set the stage not just for a Democratic victory in November, but for a Democratic landslide that will set the MAGA far right back to where they belong. At the far fringe of political discourse. In a few years, hardly anyone will admit to having been MAGA.
In retrospect, the debate debacle will come to be understood as painful but necessary.