Itemoids ★ Paul Spella

www.theatlantic.com › newsletters › archive › 2023 › 08 › biden-2024-election-democratic-primary-trump › 675042

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Some Democrats, echoing GOP narratives about Joe Biden’s age, are invested in the idea of challenging the president’s renomination. But how would that actually work?

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Trump discovers that some things are actually illegal. How to apologize like a pro TikTok is opening a parallel dimension in Europe.

An Invitation to Chaos

You may have heard the news recently that President Joe Biden is old. This has been a rumor whispered in the hallways of power for some time now, but apparently it’s true. Some Democrats, including Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, think this means Biden should step aside. “We’re at grave risk of another Trump presidency,” Phillips said recently. “I’m doing this to prevent a return of Donald Trump to the White House.”

And by “this,” Phillips means going public with his concerns, and even possibly running against Biden—which isn’t much of a threat, given that Phillips is not exactly a first-tier challenger. But there is no denying that he is expressing out loud what some Democrats have worried about privately.

These concerns are somewhat puzzling, because Biden has so far handled the presidency with plenty of energy. At the least, to judge by performance, he seems far less deserving of a challenger for the nomination than, say, Jimmy Carter in 1980, who was sinking in the quicksand of crises both abroad and at home. The Soviets back then were running roughshod over Carter; Biden has rallied NATO against the Russians. Stagflation—a word no one uses anymore—was a fact of life under Carter; Biden has presided over a “soft landing” from the economic damage of the pandemic, with both inflation and unemployment mostly under control (at least for now), which only a year ago seemed impossible.

Nevertheless, Phillips is right that Biden’s poll numbers are worrisome at the moment. And he’s also right that a health scare during the primaries or the general election could be disastrous. But as a man of 62, I can say that health scares can happen to almost anyone beyond a certain age. Trump, let us recall, is 77. He apparently subsists mostly on junk food and torched steaks, and seems to have emotional issues that make Biden’s occasional stumbles seem fairly benign by comparison.

Regardless of age (or diet), who runs in each party will be decided by Republican and Democratic voters. For those of us concerned about American democracy itself, however, the only question in all of this is whether Biden stepping aside hurts or helps Trump’s chances of regaining power.

I am convinced—especially as a former Republican—that the political stability of the United States (and the future of a healthy Republican Party) would be better served if any Republican beats Trump in the GOP primaries. Some of the Republicans are more committed to American democracy than others, but any of them gaining the nomination would mean a return to a more or less normal presidential election, something America sorely needs to see again. (I have had a friendly disagreement with MSNBC’s Katie Phang on this issue; she thinks Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would be worse than Trump, but I think she’s overly influenced by living in Florida.)

At this point, however, Trump seems virtually assured of the GOP nomination. We might lament that a man facing nearly eight dozen criminal charges will become the standard-bearer of one of America’s two major parties, but it’s likely going to happen. Facing this all but certain reality, what would happen if Biden took the advice to preserve his legacy and stepped aside? Could Democrats coalesce around a candidate whose job would be, first and foremost, to stop Donald Trump?

The main problem with all this Democratic wishcasting is that it ignores the nature of the Democratic Party itself. Perhaps in an earlier time, ward bosses and donors would gather in a smoke-filled room, lubricate the proceedings with some Irish whiskey, yell and threaten one another, and then emerge with the name of a senator or governor to whom all of them would pledge their support (and money).

Good luck with that these days. Even the usually more disciplined Republicans can’t pull off something like that right now: If Donald Trump vanished tomorrow, no one would step aside. I would pay for a balcony seat at a meeting of current GOP candidates to decide who should run in Trump’s place, just to see someone like Vivek Ramaswamy or Francis Suarez claim the mantle of Great Uniter and try to push DeSantis or Mike Pence out of the way.

In any case, an open Democratic primary would spark similar bedlam. For one thing, the obvious choice to succeed Biden on the ticket would be Vice President Kamala Harris, whose approval numbers are worse than Biden’s and rank among the worst for vice presidents. Some of Harris’s supporters might claim that this is the result of racism and misogyny, but in the immediate circumstances, it doesn’t matter: If Biden has to get off the ticket because of soft numbers, it doesn’t make much sense to replace him with someone whose numbers are even softer.

More to the point, if unhappy Democrats want a real primary, then they cannot simply anoint Harris. A modern American primary is a scrum for votes and money and endorsements, and other candidates will have every right to step forward and make the case for themselves. That’s a normal (if sometimes nasty) process, but in a year when a sociopath who instigated a violent insurrection is promising that his main platform is to exact vengeance on his enemies, a Democratic Party brawl doesn’t make much sense.

An irony in the worries about Biden is how much they ignore Trump’s own unpopularity: A poll released this week found that nearly two-thirds of Americans wouldn’t support Trump in 2024. But if the Democrats—essentially accepting the GOP talking point that Biden needs to go—plunge into a raucous primary, the media would turn it all into a spectacle, and the Republicans would be lighting candles over such a miraculous gift. A more disciplined party might be able to mitigate that kind of damage, but today’s Democrats are not that party.

It is possible that Biden—or Trump—may yet have a health scare before 2024. So could many of us. But if the goal of the prodemocracy forces in the next election is to prevent Trump’s return to the White House, “Joe Biden is old” is not a good enough reason to invite such chaos.

Today’s News

Hurricane Hilary is headed toward Southern California and is expected to bring heavy rainfall and flash flooding. On Wednesday, a federal appeals court upheld parts of a decision restricting access to mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill. The city of Yellowknife, the capital of Canada’s Northwest Territories, is under an evacuation order due to hundreds of wildfires in the region.

Evening Read

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.

Live Closer to Your Friends

By Adrienne Matei

Sometime during the pandemic lockdowns, I began to nurture a fantasy: What if I were neighbors with all of my friends? Every day, as I took long walks through North Vancouver that were still nowhere near long enough to land me at a single pal’s doorstep, I would reflect on the potential joys of a physically closer network. Wouldn’t it be great to have someone who could join me on a stroll at a moment’s notice? Or to be able to drop by to cook dinner for a friend and her baby? How good would it be to have more spontaneous hangs instead of ones that had to be planned, scheduled, and most likely rescheduled weeks in advance?

This doesn’t have to be just a dream. Friends who already live in the same city could decide to move within walking distance of one another—the same neighborhood, block, or even apartment building—and campaign for others to do the same.

Read the full article.