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Many congressional Democrats believe their party is heading toward a cliff and shouldn’t even try to turn back.
Senate Democrats held a private meeting late last week to discuss Joe Biden’s electoral viability following his poor debate performance and subsequent revelations of apparent cognitive decline. Politicofewer than four of the 50 Democrats in the caucus said they stick with Biden as the party’s nominee.
By many accounts, most Democrats on Capitol Hill believe Biden has little chance of defeating Donald Trump, while other candidates have a better chance. By Heather Caygle and Jake Sherman, The Hill claim They have not spoken to a single congressional Democrat “who has privately indicated that they believe Biden is capable of running and defeating Trump,” the unnamed “senior Democrat” told Politico They are certain the president will lose the election.
Then a 20-year-old man Almost assassinated Trump.
The former president’s near-death experience has made some Democrats more pessimistic about Biden’s chances. However, Saturday’s tragic events have also made many give up on persuading him to step down.
Lawmakers differed on the specific reasons for the capitulation. Democrats interviewed by The Washington Post Robert Costa He concluded by saying, “Now is the time for the country to unite, and that means Democrats must unite, too.”
Jonathan Chait notesthe argument is incoherent. It is unclear why a shocking act of violence — committed by a young man with no apparent political motivation — would force Democrats to change their behavior. If the focus is on uniting the country, then supporting a man who 38% popularity.
In any case, the impulse to prioritize unity over victory is the result of a fatalism: many Democrats have already concluded that Trump’s assassination has rendered him invincible.
A senior House Democrat told Axios “We’ve all accepted the reality of a second Trump presidency,” a senior Democratic adviser told CNBC on Sunday. NBC The news story of the day said, “The presidential race ended last night.”
If whoever the Democrats nominate is doomed to fail, why bother trying to convince the president of their own party to give up the nomination, which would be both unpalatable and divisive?
But this defeatism is rooted more in the Democratic Party’s own cowardice than in objective reality.
We don’t have much polling data on Trump’s assassination yet, but there’s no reason to think the Republican’s brush with death will bring him a lasting surge in approval ratings. The United States is a deeply divided country, and voters’ views of Trump are generally entrenched. The notable features of this year’s polls are Relatively insensitive (even extraordinary) events.
Trump’s criminal conviction only cost him 1 percentage point In subsequent polls, that shift disappeared in the following weeks. Biden’s poor performance in the debate was only slightly worse than 2 minutes Perhaps Saturday’s assassination attempt will prove to be the single event capable of upending the campaign, but there is no reason to think it will.
Even if there is a big shift in the polls this week, the change is likely to return to the long-term average over time. Four months is a long time in the American news cycle.
Meanwhile, polling data as of the end of last week showed the Democratic Party in good shape politically. Only Joe Biden was not doing well.
When asked which party they would like to see run Congress, voters currently support Democrats lead Republicans by 0.6 percentage points, according to the FiveThirtyEight polling average. Democratic Senate candidates have been outperforming Biden in battleground states. New York Times/Siena College Poll The poll released Monday showed the president trailing Trump by 3 percentage points in Pennsylvania, while Democratic Sen. Bob Casey led Republican challenger David McCormick by 11 points.
at the same time, Swing state polls The YouGov poll found Trump leading Biden by 7 points in Arizona, 2 points in Michigan, 4 points in Nevada, 5 points in Wisconsin and 3 points in Pennsylvania. In all of those states, the Democratic Senate candidate led the Republican candidate by 7 points or more.
Some Democrats believe that only Kamala Harris can truly replace Biden, and that she would not be a stronger candidate than the president even if he were in a slump.
I think that view is wrong. For one thing, we’re in uncharted territory; no one can be entirely sure what would happen if Biden were to leave office. But more importantly, there are good reasons to think that Democrats could improve their prospects by replacing Biden with Harris. The vice president is currently polling at least as well as Biden is with Trump: The poll average, Harris is 2 points behind Trump, Biden Trails He leads by 2.7 points.
Harris also owns reduce Opposition rate Than BidenAs you can imagine, her association with him is currently causing her approval ratings to drop.
Crucially, Harris’s cognitive abilities have not declined significantly. The vast majority of voters have not She thought she was too old to be a soldierShe is an excellent public speaker. All of these qualities set her apart from Biden.
Biden’s supporters might cite his relatively small post-debate poll drop as evidence that he still has life. After all, as I wrote above, the significance of even a remarkable campaign fades over time. But this reasoning is based on a conceptual error. Biden’s problem is not that he debated badly but that his debate performance revealed a sad reality: He has become incapable of even minimally communicating reliably with the public.
Biden couldn’t even successfully finish his brief speech in the Oval Office on Sunday night, even while reading from a teleprompter. The president meant to say “In America, we settle our differences at the ballot box,” not “with bullets.” Instead he said “we settle our differences on the battlefield” — and then, in an apparent attempt and failure to correct himself, continued: “You know, that’s how we do it, on the battlefield, not with bullets.”
That the president inadvertently suggested that America’s political conflicts should be resolved in some kind of ultimate arena was of little consequence in and of itself. But Biden’s missteps highlight the fatal flaws of his campaign. Bad debates fade from the news, but the candidate’s increasingly limited ability to communicate effectively does not. Biden’s decline will limit his ability to convey a favorable political narrative while constantly introducing new negative news stories that highlight voters’ biggest concerns about his candidacy. The president’s Oval Office address on Sunday and recent press conferences give him and his party a rare opportunity to ingratiate themselves with a broad national audience. Because of Biden’s limitations, those opportunities are less opportunities to exploit than existential dangers.
Still, Democrats are convinced that Biden is not the problem. The biggest failures are those lawmakers who believe the party will do better with Biden out of office — but who do nothing to make that happen.
These Democrats may tell themselves that there is no point in pressuring Biden to step down because their party is doomed to fail anyway. But this is a cowardly rationalization, not an objective assessment of reality.
It is irrational to accept a second Trump administration as inevitable, given the data available. Nor is it immoral to do so, given the risks of preventing an illiberal reactionary from taking power. The Democrats have a path to victory. Some would rather avoid personal risk or discomfort than take it.
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