The many uncertainties of saying good Biden

Sometimes the risk of staying the course is greater than changing the course. Here’s how I’m thinking about the choice Democrats have to make, and the consequences for 2024 and beyond.

 

President Biden should step aside and release his delegates. 

I feel this strongly, but I could be wrong. So I want to share my reasoning, and how I’m thinking through the various uncertainties and possibilities. 

In particular, I see three key uncertainties. First, how voters might respond to alternatives to Biden; Second, how the party might handle such a moment; and Third, how this decision will reverberate beyond 2024. 

I think the third uncertainty (reverberations beyond 2024) is the most important, and least-discussed. 

But the other two are most pressing, so let’s start there. 

 

Uncertainty #1 — Would an alternative candidate to Biden have a greater chance of winning the election?

This is really two questions: What are Biden’s current chances? And would someone else have a better chance?

 

Uncertainty #1A What are Biden’s Chances?

Let’s start with a baseline of where the election is now, and a frank assessment of Biden’s chances as of today.

And as of today, Biden is losing. 

Biden has continually trailed in polls, both nationally, and in the key swing states. Based on current polling, Biden would lose the presidential election if it were held today.

Of course, it will be close. And polling four months out is no guarantee of anything. Polls might be off. Things could change. Here are our first uncertainties:

First, Polls might be off.

All polls make assumptions about what the electorate will look like on Election Day, and how to weight different respondents to achieve a representative sample of that electorate.. Sometimes these assumptions are off by a few points. This is within the realm of the possible, and adds an element of uncertainty. 

When you see the uncertainty in presidential forecasting models, this is most of what you are seeing. Still, polls could be off in either direction. They could also be overstating Biden’s support.

But “polls are off, I’m actually winning” is not a good starting point for any campaign. Polls have been pretty accurate the last few elections, overall.

Now, the second thing to consider: Things could change.

Election campaigns are full of surprises. 

But perhaps the biggest surprise of this campaign is how little anything that has happened has impacted the race (including one candidate earning convicted felon status). Indeed, the polling numbers have remained remarkably flat for months. Presumably, this is because Biden and Trump are extremely well-known to every single person in the country. It’s hard to imagine new information that could change opinions.

Indeed, Biden backers point to the post-debate polls and note how little has changed in the head-to-head polling numbers. But this is hardly a compelling argument for Biden’s chances. Biden needs a change in his favor, so the seemingly frozen stability of the polling numbers are a big problem. 

At this point, I have a hard time imagining what could change in Biden’s favor. 

The theory of the campaign was that once it brought Trump’s depraved insanity back to the forefront, the 2020 electorate that delivered Biden’s victory would snap back into focus. But instead, as I’ve written here, Trump has benefited from a completely predictable nostalgia bias — a belief that things were better under Trump because our memory tends to cast a rosier-than-real glow on the past. 

And Biden’s debate performance has, of course, cemented the number one concern that most voters have about re-electing him: he is way too old to be president. Once a negative impression sets in, it takes much more work to dislodge that impression. 

If this were just a bad night, the campaign might be eager to have him out there more, proving his with-it-ness. The campaign might release behind-the-scenes videos of him making decisions, leading meetings, and looking presidential. That they haven’t demonstrated proof of unscripted vibrancy is very telling.

So, at this point, I would say: Biden is losing. It will be close, and Biden could win. But when people ask me who I think will win, I say with modest confidence: Trump. 

 

 

Uncertainty #1B: Would anyone else do better?

Now we get into more uncertain territory. To ask whether someone else would do better is to imagine a slightly different world, which we cannot effectively poll because it is a different world. 

Each of the alternative candidates has strengths and weaknesses, as do all candidates. But on the whole, there is tremendous political talent and experience in this field. I’m quite confident if there had been an open primary, a few of the next-generation Democratic leaders would have dazzled on various stages, and we’d have a different nominee at this point.

Nonetheless, I’m not sure how different the national and swing-state polling would actually be. I’m very certain it would still be very close. 

After all, the balance of partisan identification and voting has remained remarkably stable for several cycles now. Nonetheless, had an open process played out, my strong guess is that we’d have a Democratic candidate with a narrow but stable lead in head-to-head polls with Trump. 

I say this based on two facts. First, Trump is, and remains, very unpopular; and second, any alternative Democratic candidate would benefit from a novelty bias and the opportunity to define themselves as a fresh start and a fresh face. (This is obviously less so for Harris, but she would still have an opportunity, since most Americans have not seen all that much of her.)

I also observe that Biden is underperforming Senate candidates in swing states with a contested Senate seat. If the election were held today, based on polls, Democrats would win Senate seats in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  Biden is either trailing or tied in these five states.

So why is Biden lagging these Senate candidates? I can certainly speculate about candidate quality — it can still make small differences on the margins, even in these hyper-partisan times. Democrats have strong candidates. Republicans do not. It appears that a small but pivotal percentage of the electorate is splitting their tickets, against Biden. 

Democrats can win statewide in the key swing states. Maybe this is good news for Biden, on the theory that as the election nears, partisanship will kick in. But I’m not so sure. This seems like a glaring warning sign. 

A widely-circulated post-debate snap poll put other Democrat alternatives on the ballot against Trump, and none performed any better than Biden. However, many of these candidates are relative unknowns to most voters, particularly the will-they-or-won’t-they-vote marginal voters who will decide this election.

Voters don’t really know the alternatives:

So, with the unknown candidates, there is more upside potential. Novelty is always a powerful force in politics. And the electorate right now is screaming for something new and different.

Now, obviously, novelty has its limits. And the sheen comes off quickly under the brutal attack ads of a presidential campaign. But Biden’s unpopularity reflects the accumulation of years upon years of attacks. At least a new candidate starts out fresh.

I’d personally love to see a Gretchen Whitmer - Wes Moore ticket. But I think Democrats (and the country) would be better off with almost any of the widely-discussed alternatives.

 

My Bottom Line: Any top-name alternative to Biden would have a better shot of winning in November.

My best guess is that any of the top-name alternative Democratic nominees would get a modest boost upon nomination, a boost that would last through to November. 

Or at least, I can envision a plausible story for how this happens.

I have a harder time envisioning a plausible story for how Biden comes back. I have an easier time seeing him confusedly stumbling over his lines as he accepts the nomination in August, setting off a fresh wave of panic, and further disengaging the younger voters he needs to show up at the polls in November. 

 

Uncertainty #2 — Can the Democratic Party actually pull this off?

A healthy democracy requires healthy political parties.  Healthy parties perform numerous essential functions. They aggregate long-term policy commitments among diverse groups and communicate the consequences of these policies to voters at scale. They make elections meaningful and consequential by structuring choices. They engage and mobilize voters. Healthy parties assemble governing majorities and broker compromises capable of solving public problems.

And most importantly, healthy parties vet and support qualified candidates for public office. 

The Republican Party has failed this test, spectacularly and repeatedly. 

And the Democratic Party?

???

Let me ask it again, for those in the back: And the Democratic Party?

Well, what exactly is the Democratic Party these days? 

When we look at the central task of nominating a candidate for president, what do we find? 

We find the increasingly fragile and isolated ego of one aging man and his immediate family, advised and surrounded by a small cadre of long-time advisors and friends who have supported Biden for most of his career.

Outside that, we find a slightly larger circle of elected Democratic leaders and elders (Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, etc) whose word carries tremendous weight and judgment.

And then, outside that core, we have the sprawling networks and blobs of donors, activists, electeds, media figures, and others who do the collective sense-making of party politics in hopes of shaping each other.¹

So where is the party? This is the problem. It is nowhere. 

The Democratic National Convention is scheduled for August 19-22, in Chicago. That’s less than two months away. Biden has won almost all the pledged delegates. If he does not release his delegates before then, he will be the nominee. Now there is talk of Biden accepting the nomination via a virtual roll call on August 5, a rushed move that smacks of panic. 

Were Biden to step aside today, my best guess is that events would play out something like this:

First, there would be a week or two of frantic activity and private gatherings, as party leaders and donors and activists and delegates weighed in and evaluated the alternatives. There would be polls and focus groups aplenty, and any candidate considering a run would make the rounds on all kinds of media. 

Within a week or two, the potential field would narrow considerably, with all but a few of the alternative candidates realistically assessing their chances are slim, and ceding the space. 

By the convention, the party blob would likely have a clear favorite, and many resources would flow to that candidate. The convention would pick a ticket. And with lots of money flowing, the new nominee would benefit from the traditional post-convention bump. 

Could it go badly? Absolutely. Factions could get dug in, and things could get bitter. That is definitely a risk.

But I see that as a lower risk than many others commenting on what might happen. Here’s why:

First, I suspect most of the potential nominees will not run, on the theory that they have a better shot in 2028, or 2032. Or, they have not mentally prepared for the possibility of a 2024 run, or being president. So, the field will not be as crowded as some fear.

Second, the pressure for party unity will be intense. Anybody who does not get with the program after the convention will have no future in Democratic politics. 

I am also not concerned about some public fighting between factions. I think a vibrant contest will engage many voters, particularly younger voters, who have been sitting on the sidelines this election. Once drawn in, they will be more motivated. 

I could be wrong here. It could be more crowded, more contentious, and more bitter than I’ve sketched out. But my strong hypothesis is that it won’t be. The stakes are just too high. And while there are some longstanding disagreements within the party, there is much more consensus within the party today  than there was in 1968, when the Democratic  party was much, much more divided.

I also think that there is a significant risk of a disruptive convention if Biden is nominated. I can envision an ugly scene o in Chicago of protestors, eager to draw attention to the war in Gaza, causing disruptions. This would be very damaging to Democrats. 

I think this would be less likely if Democrats nominate an alternative who can promise a fresh start in the Middle East. But it remains a risk no matter what.  

Uncertainty #3 — Beyond 2024. How does the future of the Democratic Party change if Biden bows out?

It is hardest to look beyond 2024. But the decisions made over the next few weeks will reverberate for many years. So we must look beyond 2024. 

And here, I see the strongest case for Biden stepping aside and passing the leadership onto a new generation.

Drawing on the beloved 2x2 matrix, I’ll explore four possibilities here, based on the two key decision points: Do Democrats stick with Biden, or do Democrats replace Biden; and 2) Do Democrats win the presidential election, or does Trump win?  (There are obviously other possible outcomes)

I also assign my expected probability to each outcome, assuming only these four possibilities.

Four Possible Outcomes

Overall, I give Trump a 65% chance of winning the election, and Democrats a 65% chance of sticking with Biden. 

I’ll start with the first row, Democrats stick with Biden.

In assessing the future implications, I  assume that Biden is indeed experiencing some cognitive decline, and that this decline will continue to get worse. 

 

Biden defeats Trump (Likelihood: 15%)

Let’s say Biden defeats Trump. He sticks it out, proves his naysayers wrong. And then what? 

Under the continued stress of the presidency, his mental faculties will only decline. With everyone in Washington knowing this, what leadership and authority does Biden have? Will we spend his second term presidency debating his cognitive skills, and arguing over who is actually running things? Will his continued decline distract Washington over when he should go, and how he should pass the torch? How does this impact America’s standing in the world, and the calculus of other foreign leaders?

How does this set up either the Democratic Party or American Democracy for a strong future? 

I have a hard time coming up with a convincing story that is anything other than decline.

And how will MAGA-world take this? I think the likelihood of significant electoral violence becomes especially high in this scenario, because I suspect a lot of MAGA supporters will have a hard time believing these results, given what they’ve been seeing and hearing. A faltering Biden will become such an easy symbol of elite Washington decay. 

I hate factoring MAGA-world’s potential reaction into the calculation. But I think to do otherwise would not be responsible.

 

Trump defeats Biden (Likelihood: 50%)

At this point this feels like the most likely scenario. I find this one the most devastating. 

My expectation here is that in this scenario, the next four months will play out as a rough extension of the current situation, with Biden continually stumbling, and most Democrats increasingly resigned to watching their political glacier slowly split and melt.

Enthusiasm will sap, and many Democratic voters will leave this election feeling hopeless and helpless. There will be a sense that THEY (the Democratic Party establishment) deserved this, because they let US (the voters who were clamoring for an alternative) down. 

The Democratic elite will be shaken and discredited for sticking with Biden, and the internal party battles  over whose fault it was will consume Democrats. 

After the election, when the people on and around the campaign are freer to speak their mind, we will learn just how much everyone knew about Biden’s mental decline, and how much they tried to hide it.

Just when Democrats need the energy to be fighting Trump’s radical presidency, many in the party will be demoralized and angry at Democratic elites, who let them down. This will make the party even weaker, and less effective in the longer term. 

 

Now let’s turn to the potential scenarios where Democrats swap Biden out for an alternative. I’ll keep this generic for now, as to not get hung up on the details of who the alternative candidate would be.. 

Trump defeats alternative candidate (Likelihood: 15%)

This is also a bad situation, too, but I think less bad than Trump defeating Biden.

Certainly, Biden acolytes will claim that Biden would have won. But I suspect many Democratic voters and donors and activists (who have been clamoring for an alternative) will at least feel like Democrats are a fighting political party.

The process of replacing Biden may also serve as a party-strengthening exercise, encouraging more of a collective sense of what the Democratic Party is — and what it could be.

Presumably, a new generation of leaders will have stepped up to lead the fight, rather than having been sidelined. This transition will help the party recover and rebuild faster.

Of course, this scenario includes the possibility that an open convention is chaotic and divisive,  and the internal fighting within the party is what causes Democrats to lose. 

In either of the loss scenarios for Democrats, much soul searching will take place within the party. 

 

Alternative Democratic candidate defeats Trump (Likelihood: 20%)

This is the best scenario for Democrats. Democrats feel energized, and have a new sense of possibility, with new leadership. 

But I don’t want to be too rosy about it. Politics will remain nasty and bitter, and the MAGA movement will still be at the gates. But I can see a generational shift emerging here, and at least some opportunity for modest realignment — or better, significant generational political reform.

The Democratic Party will be strengthened as an institution, and members will feel more confident in the party’s collective ability to do the right thing, even if it’s hard. 

Your assumptions and expectations may be different. But I want to be transparent about the relative percentages I’m giving to different outcomes, and how I think different scenarios will play out. 

There are always unintended and unanticipated costs in any change. But there are also costs of staying the course when the course appears headed towards a crumbling bridge. 

I hope you’ll take away from this discussion that what Democrats do now is not just about 2024. It’s also about the future of the party. 

 

This is not sustainable in the long term — but it might go on longer than you think

The bigger question many people are asking — rightly — is how did we even wind up here? How did we wind up with these two choices for president? How can we be really continuing down this path? 

In a previous essay on this site, I explored a physics concept called “metastability”, which describes a state that shouldn’t continue to exist, but somehow does. It exists in this state because the system is really trapped between two possible outcomes. I often think of our party system in this way. 

As I explained then, there is a…

 weird tension in American politics. Seeming stability and calcification at the surface in the super-consistent election-to-election partisan balance, rumbling discontent below the surface in the tensions and fights within the parties. Or put another way, behavior and attitudes seem at odds. Voting behaviors are remaining stable, but voter attitudes are shifting and fracturing. It seems… unstable? 

Yet the idea of metastability suggests that arrangements that appear unstable can go on like this — on the edge of chaos – for quite a bit. They can go on because individual actors … are behaving based on a few simple rules and patterns that keep the system in its previous state.

But the key thing about a metastable state is that it depends on a very specific pattern of behaviors and interactions. If a small but critical group of actors deviate from this pattern, it can have dramatic reverberations throughout the entire system.

 

I still feel this way, and I wonder whether a major shift in the 2024 election could be productively change-inducing.  Whereas, if everyone continues to act as they have in the past, things continue to stay the same….

One other thing I noticed is that around the time of the debate, Gallup released new numbers of partisan affiliation. The share of respondents choosing to identify as “Independent” hit a record high (51%). The share of respondents identifying as a “Democrat” hit a record low (23%).

Obviously these things bounce around from month to month, and there is a margin of error. But it was notable.

A healthy democracy depends on healthy parties, as I’ve written many times. Our parties are not healthy today. And neither is our democracy. Having half of the country identifying themselves as outside of the essential institutions of modern representative democracy — political parties — is a big, big problem. It’s this alienation from the party system that makes candidacies like RFK Jr’s potentially relevant this election.

If we’re going to get out of this doom loop, we need electoral system reform. More parties, better parties. Fusion voting. Proportional Representation. You know my call to action by now, probably.

Unfortunately, in the meantime, the two-party doom loop is only getting doomier and loopier, as the debate and its depressing reverberations made clear. 

If this crisis within the Democratic Party teaches us anything, I hope the lesson is that the dangers of holding onto the status quo for too long. Change is hard. But sometimes the greater risk comes from not changing. 

So again: There are always unintended and unanticipated costs in any change. But there are also costs of staying the course when the course appears headed towards a crumbling bridge, and into an abyss of doom. 

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1. I take the phrase “party blob” from Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld’s important new book, The Hollow Parties