Should Joe Biden Drop Out of This Horse Race?
Is there a correlation between losing a debate and losing an election?
It’s entirely understandable for one to have witnessed President Joe Biden’s CNN debate performance on Thursday night in Atlanta and to come to the immediate reaction, “Oh, this poor man! How could his advisers have let him do this to himself? This is humiliating. Surely he needs to step aside and let someone else who can string together a coherent sentence go up against Donald Trump!”
That was my initial response. At times during the debate it was so painful I literally had to look away from the screen. Regardless of one’s opinion of Biden the man, it does not take much squinting to see one’s own aging father or grandfather up there.
Seeing Biden seemed like a sad, stark reminder of our own family members who deteriorated mentally as they grew older — and further, a reminder of where we too are likely to conclude our lives.
But the next day, once the emotional shock had subsided, it became necessary to confront the questions with more seriousness:
Should Biden be persuaded to step down from the campaign? If so, then who would replace him and how exactly would that process work to determine who it might be? Could there really be any Democrat out there who, dropping them into the top slot right now, would be any less a roll of the dice than Biden?
On Friday morning I found some compelling answers when I interviewed for JNS Mark Mellman, a Democrat pollster who runs Democratic Majority for Israel.
“The reality is that the skills that are honored in these debates are about performance,” he told me. “Those have nothing to do with the skills one needs as a president to analyze the situation, to make the right decisions, to bring other people along with those decisions.”
He said that Biden “has proven he can do that job every day since he’s been president. That’s why he’s been able to accomplish so much and so effectively because he’s made the right decisions, and he’s brought people along.”
Mellman also emphasized Biden’s Israel positions. “President Biden reiterated that Hamas ‘should be eliminated’ and his unwavering commitment to providing Israel ‘with every weapon it needs and when they need them,’” he said in a statement. “He also made clear that Hamas ‘is the only one who wants the war to continue.’”
I followed up and pressed Mellman again on if anything in the debate had given him pause about Biden’s competence. He gave a clear No and said “He’s proven day-in, day-out by his work that he has the skills to be president because he’s done a great job as president.”
Mellman emphasized to me that “the evidence that he’s doing the job well is overwhelming. The evidence from the debate stage is not terribly relevant.”
“Everyone should just calm down,” Mellman said, pointing to both Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama who went on to be elected after losing first debates. “There isn’t any correlation between winning debates and winning elections,” he said. “Everyone ought to just calm down and get to work on making sure Biden wins.”
I wrote a few weeks ago about how I’m sitting out this horse race and not placing any bets. I’ll write in Dick Cheney-John Bolton and then feel good about myself.
Thus, I’m really not coming from a partisan position here of wanting to defend Biden or advocate for what the Democrats should do to defeat Trump. I’m just pulling out my political science toolbox and media theory scalpels to assess what seems to be really going on here and what is likely to happen.
The idea that Biden is too old and mentally gone to do the job of president is not a reality, but a media-manufactured image, and one amplified by a partisan political campaign supported by the echo chamber of the right-wing media industrial complex where I used to work.
However, it’s worth remembering that the left-wing media-manufactured version of Trump which we’ve all grown so accustomed to seeing on a daily basis, is also an artificial construction, slanted with the objective of motivating people to vote for Biden in November.
Take this narrative in particular: that Trump is a “threat to democracy.” Listen to enough MSNBC commentators and you’ll think Trump is a Dr. Doom-level genius, capable of unraveling a federal government which includes 2.87 million employees and 2.86 million-person military force.
Yes, the convicted felon with the sexual maturity of an adolescent male, with a seemingly endless line of indictments, with a debt of $540 million in judgments against him — this is the man you’re so frightened about transforming America from a constitutional republic into an authoritarian slave state? The man whose top supporters buy Q-Anon merchandise and idolize billionaire-man-child Elon Musk for enabling their bigoted anonymous internet trolling? You really find him so frightening?
The only way to win sometimes is to not play the game.
At this point I’m just going to watch the horse race rather than bet on any horse in it. So you’re just going to get straight analysis here.
And simply: one poor debate performance does not prove anything, and does not destroy a campaign. Yes, it does align with the media virus which right-wing media seeks to implant in the heads of the electorate, but this is only one factor among many which the slim slices of available electorate still up for grabs will consider when they decide who the next president ultimately will be.
There are 130 days until the election on November 6. This isn’t a sprint on a straight track won in a single night, this is a cross country marathon with a twisting, unpredictable course. Place your bets if you really must.
Joe Biden is a corrupt, demented pervert, and his political career should have concluded on January 21, 2017.
Not just drop out, he should step down from the presidency right now. Immediately. He’s clearly not up to the task.