The Revolt Against Biden Is (Mostly) Dead

Several House Democrats shed actual tears during a caucus meeting today because Biden refuses to drop out. AOC then told reporters the "matter is closed," and "Biden is the nominee."

It feels like I’ve spent the past infinity days waiting for the news cycle to offer me anything other than another day of “Democrats call for Biden to drop out” and “Biden says he’s staying in.” This has been such a tedious and demoralizing discourse that I’ve delayed writing about it in hopes of any kind of zig or zag in the story. But today it feels like we got a pretty clear answer on the situation.

For a little context: Most major media outlets, a growing chorus of powerful elected Democrats, and nearly half of Biden’s own base thinks he should step aside after that devastating debate performance (except for those 65 and older, go figure, as you’ll note from the below graph).

Last week, I thought I may have been wrong in predicting that Democrats didn’t have the cojones to push Biden out of the race, no matter how dire the polls looked. We witnessed something of a Kamala Harris renaissance on the internet — even among her longtime critics on the far left — that recast her as “cool,” so to speak, and gave me a little bit of a hope that her stepping in for him might actually happen. But the last couple days have squashed most of that hope: Biden has insisted repeatedly and pretty definitively that he is the nominee, and even AOC has appeared to accept that reality, despite reports that several Democratic congressmen were shedding actual tears at their caucus meeting today because they know he’s going to lose.

Today’s Democratic Senate lunch was apparently equally bleak, as CNN reported that U.S. Sens. Jon Tester, Michael Bennet and Sherrod Brown declared behind closed doors that Biden is going to lose to Trump. Note that these senators represent the purple states of Montana, Colorado, and Ohio, respectively, so we should probably heed their warnings. But why are these men and others in their positions of power willing to say this behind closed doors, while lacking the balls to publicly coalesce around forcing Biden out?

Look—despite what people may yell at me online when I criticize the president, I do in fact understand what’s at stake in November. Regardless of Biden’s shortcomings, the rapey, fascist, narcissistic, insane, idiotic candidate he’s running against is unequivocally worse. Some voters on moral grounds refuse to vote for a candidate who doesn’t entirely represent their views; I tend to be more pragmatic about it and show up for the lesser of the two unsavory options. We may as well minimize damage on the environment, abortion, democracy, Medicaid, etc., if that’s our only choice, right? I will hold my nose and vote for a warm pile of vomit over Trump; I really will.

I just disagree with Democrats about the matter of “risk.” Some still believe that a Black woman candidate thrown into the race 4 months before election day, even if she’s younger and sharper and more capable, is a riskier choice than the sitting 81-year-old white male president, regardless of his shortcomings. I’d argue that the riskiest possible choice for Democrats right now is sticking with the candidate who is already clearly losing over the Hail Mary pass in the fourth quarter that at least gives us a shot at defeating Donald Trump.