The Nomination Crisis Is Far From Over
What I am hearing from congressional Democrats about President Biden is this: He has done little to nothing to allay their fears. But his defiance — and his fury — has been enough to stay their hand. The caucus meetings House and Senate Democrats held this week were an airing of grievances and despair, but they didn’t chart a path forward. Democrats are drifting toward a grim march to defeat led by a candidate they’ve lost faith in. What they need is a process through which they can gather the information they need to make a final decision. I think one is in reach.
Let me try to offer the most generous version I can of the positions the key players hold, beginning with Biden. “I wouldn’t be running again if I did not absolutely believe I was the best person to beat Donald Trump in 2024,” he told congressional Democrats in a forceful letter that was released on Monday. Take him at his word. He disagrees with the pessimism about both his chances and his capabilities. He feels he has been underestimated before and is being underestimated now. He thinks the polls are wrong. He thinks the media is biased against him. He believes that his performance at the debate was a reflection of a bad cold and an off night rather than a general diminishment. And in the conversations he is having, and the cheering crowds he is seeing for himself, there is no groundswell begging for him to step aside.
There are two main camps among congressional Democrats. One believes that Biden should not be running again but fears there is nothing it can do about it. If Biden won’t withdraw, then criticizing him only weakens him and down-ballot Democrats. Representative Jerry Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, is among those who told his colleagues that Biden should step aside. But faced with the president’s resistance, he backed off. “Whether I have concerns or not is beside the point,” Nadler said on Tuesday. “He’s going to be our nominee, and we all have to support him.”
The other camp remains genuinely uncertain about whether Biden is capable of another campaign and another term. The debate shocked these Democrats. They hadn’t seen him like that before. But to call for the incumbent president to withdraw from the race is a severe and unusual act. Maybe it really was just a bad night. Maybe the reports of Biden’s worsening lapses are untrue or overblown. These senators and representatives are asking the question Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, asked: “Is this an episode or is this a condition?”
What Democrats need to admit to themselves is that Biden is denying them the information they need to answer that question. Since the debate, he has done a small handful of short interviews. He called into two radio shows where the hosts would ask preapproved questions. His interview with George Stephanopoulos lasted 22 minutes. He called into “Morning Joe,” which has been the friendliest place for him in cable news, for less than 20 minutes. He has not gone to the Hill and talked, in a lengthy and unscripted way, with either the House or Senate Democratic caucuses. It’s not nearly enough.
In my conversations with Biden aides, I’ve come to believe that they see interviews and town halls and news conferences as bizarre media obsessions. They don’t trust Biden to perform in those settings, but they also don’t think it matters. They’ve persuaded themselves that the job of the president is the job of making good decisions, and they think Biden is still capable of making those decisions. Whether he can survive 60 minutes with Chris Wallace, to them, is akin to whether he can do 20 push-ups: interesting, but irrelevant.
