Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. The 2024 race has begun. It is a fight between two very old men.
After Biden's bad debate performance last week, there has been off-the-record talk about replacing him on the Democratic ticket. Some Democrats have gone on the record, but some are supporting him.
Until he stumbles again.
BIDEN’S INK-BLOT TEST — It was arguably the most important news conference of Biden’s long career. Rumor had it that scores of congressional Democrats, expecting a disaster, had preemptively drafted statements calling on him to step aside as the party’s presidential candidate as soon as it ended. Some even privately hoped he would face-plant so that it could be a clean break.
Instead, Biden vaulted over the lower-than-the-Earth’s-core expectations. Now the Democratic Party’s path forward is even more uncertain than it was before Biden took the stage.
The fundamental challenge is that everyone saw a performance that seemed to reconfirm their prior beliefs about Biden.
Aides with the Biden campaign and White House were celebrating.
“He exceeded expectations. He answered really fucking hard foreign policy questions beyond my personal capacity to answer. And he also had a couple of great lines that we’re going to be able to use in the campaign,” one Biden aide told us last night. “It was important for the media, it was important for the Hill, it was important for an audience that we really need to show that we’re up to the task.”
...
“This is the worst of all worlds,” one Democratic aide texted us. It was “damaging for [Biden’s] prospects, but not so bad it [that] provides enough fodder to use this to dump him from the ticket.”
“After the first gaffe, President Biden spoke confidently on foreign policy issues with command. The problem is that he left us in purgatory,” a veteran Democratic operative told Playbook. “Candidates and campaigns are supposed to make you feel something — hope, optimism, courage — but instead most of us felt nothing after that presser. And feeling nothing is how you lose elections.”
“Biden has lowered the bar until it’s on the floor and Democrats have to decide if they’re going to go along with it,” added another. “Being able to get through a press conference and being able to beat Trump are not the same thing.”
Most Dems we spoke with last night — even those who are ready for him to depart — agree that the presser moved things in the right direction for Biden. And that while unscripted moments are the things he needs to do the most to make folks comfortable again about him as the nominee, those unscripted moments are what gives them heartburn.
For them, watching Biden make a statement — especially one in a dynamic and unscripted environment — is the political equivalent of seeing a high-wire act without a net: If they fall, it’s likely fatal; if they don’t, they’ve simply wobbled to the other side to survive one more day.
Indeed, several more congressional Democrats called on Biden to leave the race after the conference ended. Reps. JIM HIMES (D-Conn.), SCOTT PETERS (D-Calif.) and ERIC SORENSON (D-Ill.) joined the chorus. But nowhere near the hyped “scores” of House members some had predicted.
Some Democrats we spoke with dreaded the likelihood that Biden aides would spin the night as a big win that showed a president in full command of his faculties. And so, the Biden detractors will regroup. Many lawmakers had drafted statements and were waiting to release them after the NATO summit and press conference wrapped up. Will they release them today?
What’s more, Democratic leaders at some point will also have to speak to Biden about the situation. How frank will they be?
“The Super Friends are assembling,” said a House Democrat who did not believe Biden’s performance yesterday changed anything. “There’s a group of people who are going to go make their case to whomever they can get to at the White House that he needs to step aside and we’re going to get our asses kicked if he doesn’t.”
In an “ideal world,” this “Super Friends” delegation, the member said, would be Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, President Pro Tempore PATTY MURRAY, House Minority Leader HAKEEM JEFFRIES, speaker emerita NANCY PELOSI and JIM CLYBURN.
