A Crisis for Democrats

Was anyone in America excited for a rematch of Trump versus Biden? Two unpopular and aging figures repeating the bruising 2020 race? Both entered with historic flaws: Donald Trump as the first convicted felon to run for a major party, and Joe Biden as already the oldest president when he first took office.

But while the Republican Party has remade itself ever more as the party of Trump, Democrats are now openly discussing whether they should renominate the incumbent president.

After his disastrous debate performance in June, Biden faced calls from Democratic lawmakers and power brokers to step aside. But with the president firmly committed to staying in the contest, what recourse does the party have? How would the Democratic Party replace the presumptive nominee? Would such an extreme step be possible? And would it ultimately help against Trump?

On this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, contributing writer and guest host Adam Harris is joined by staff writers Mark Leibovich and Elaine Godfrey to discuss. The political reporters examine the bind that the party is in and what options, if any, it might have.

Listen to their conversation here:

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Hanna Rosin: Hey. This is Hanna Rosin, and I’m here in the studio today with Adam Harris. Hi, Adam.

Adam Harris: Hey. How are you?

Rosin: Good. Adam is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and the last time you were in this studio was when we were talking about the Supreme Court and affirmative action.

Harris: Yes. Race-conscious admissions.

Rosin: Yes. It was such a long time ago, and yet that is our new reality.

Harris: It really is. So much has changed in the last year.

Rosin: Yeah. I mean, I feel like so many things have become our new reality. That’s the state of the world. It’s like, it’s like, Oh, abortion. That’s our new reality. Race-conscious admissions: gone. That’s our new reality. It’s just like we keep ratcheting them up one at a time.

Harris: Absolutely. There’s always something new.

Rosin: Yeah. Anyway, so, Adam, you write about a lot of different things, primarily education. You’re writing a book.

Harris: I am.

Rosin: But this month, you’re doing me a favor: You’re going to guest host this show, which I’m very excited about.

Harris: Yes. I’ll be guest hosting the next couple of episodes off and on, and I’m really excited.

Rosin: Good. Good.

Harris: We should tell people why you’re gonna be stepping away for a bit.

Rosin: Yes. That’s a good idea. I am spending the next few weeks working on a big project for The Atlantic. It’s an audio project. It’ll come out in September.

Harris: I can’t wait to hear that.

Rosin: Thanks. So Adam, I’m turning it over to you. So what’s your first episode? What do you got for us?

Harris: So this week we’re going to be talking about politics, the debate performance from President Biden, the state of the race, and where we go from here with Mark Leibovich and Elaine Godfrey.

Rosin: Excellent. There is nothing else to talk about pretty much.

[Music]

Harris: This race between Trump and Biden is one between two historically flawed candidates. One is a convicted felon, facing multiple prosecutions, some about his attempts to steal the prior election. The other candidate is already the oldest president in history, and after a disastrous debate performance, calls for him to step aside have grown within the Democratic Party.

I’m Adam Harris. This is Radio Atlantic, and with me to help us understand the state of the race are staff writers Mark Leibovich and Elaine Godfrey.

Hi, Mark.

Mark Leibovich: Hi, Adam.

Harris: Hi, Elaine.

Elaine Godfrey: Hi, Adam.

Harris: We won’t exclusively talk about Biden, but his age is on everyone’s mind now. It’s been no secret that he is 81 years old. So, Mark, what do you make of the crisis Democrats are going through right now?

Leibovich: Yeah, I mean, if it was a secret that he was 81 years old, you know, I think the debate kind of put that to rest. He is certainly 81 years old and, I think worse: He kind of seems to be acting like someone who has lost some of his capabilities and is not as sharp as he once was.

Look, I think age has been the biggest issue for Biden, the most vulnerable part of his campaign from the start. This puts it all up to 11, and I don’t think in the last couple of weeks much doubt has been eased around how Biden has proceeded, what he has said, and so forth. Also the president’s handling of it, frankly, which has basically been to continue to be bunkered, has only exacerbated it.

So I think it’s an extremely deep hole. Clearly the Democrats are divided. I think the fact that Donald Trump has managed to somehow remain disciplined and stay out of the news and not interrupt the Democrats’ train wreck indicates how ecstatic they are about this whole thing. And however this is resolved, I think Democrats are going to be in a major hole if Joe Biden remains their nominee.

Harris: I guess we’ve known that he was going to be 81 for like this whole race, right? It was the sort of thing that was sitting in the background. Why did it take the debate for these conversations to come to the forefront?

Leibovich: Well, I mean, the conversations have been going on. They’ve just been going on quietly. And basically the answer that people close to the White House have been giving has been: Just get on board. Relax. Calm down. We got this. And he’s going to be there like he was in 2020. He will deliver.

I think what the debate exposed was how bad he’s actually been. And when you start from a position of really bunkering a president and really, you know, not giving many interviews at all, having very few opportunities to see him in an unscripted setting, something like that hits even harder.

Harris: And, Elaine, now that this is sort of out in the open, what do we know about the calls to replace the president? How real are those paths to actually replacing him?

Godfrey: Well, like Mark said, it’s extremely mixed. You know, you have Kamala Harris. She came out right after the debate to emphasize support for Biden. Most top Democrats have stuck to this line that he had a tough night, but you can’t judge him on just one night.

However, as the days and weeks have gone on now, we have a few House Democrats, in particular, who are speaking out and saying, Actually, maybe we do need a different nominee.

I think on the Senate side, it’s been a little more tight-lipped. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia had reportedly scheduled this meeting to air his concerns, but that meeting was, I guess, canceled because they were worried about leaks.

He issued a statement recently that he changed his tune and said, you know, We’ve gotten this far. Let’s back Biden, basically. So it’s definitely mixed. But under the surface, there are all these rumblings that feel like the dam is about to burst, but it’s felt that way for two weeks, I would say.

Harris: Yeah, and we’ve seen people, like Senator Patty Murray, who have said, you know, He has to show us that he still has what it takes to be the candidate on the ticket.

What would showing the American people actually look like for those people who were sort of on the fence about him continuing his candidacy?

Godfrey: Yeah, I think the president tried to show us by calling into Morning Joe earlier this week, which was a very Trumpian move, actually, to call into a show and talk to the hosts and sort of rant about it. But the thing about what Biden is doing right now is he is not making the case for Democrats, and for his platform to the American people, really talking about Trump much at all. He’s sort of making an entirely defensive case about his own age and his own fitness and, I know I can do this. I want this.

It’s very I, I, I, and I think that has turned off a lot of people, at least a lot of people that I talked to. They’ve said, Okay, but what about Trump? What about us? You know, in this interview he gave on ABC with George Stephanopoulos, George asked him, How will you feel if, at the end of all this, you lose? And Biden said, Well, I’ll know that I gave it my all. I did my best. And when you’re a candidate who’s saying that democracy hinges on this election, that cannot be your answer, and I think that voters are really disappointed about that.

Harris: And, Mark, you mentioned that he’s been sort of bunkered down and kind of does these scripted events. If you’re going out, and you’re doing the big rallies, and you’re doing calls into Morning Joe, has he really been that bunkered down?

Leibovich: Yeah, I mean, I think if in, say, the four or five days after the debate, if he had basically just gone out and done a kind of free-flowing give-and-take with the media in his own White House briefing room, a few times a week, half hour each day, done a bunch of interviews—I mean, the Morning Joe thing should be a bare minimum. But that’s like almost two weeks in they say, Hey, look. I just did a rally. But I mean, guys like Joe Biden can do a rally and read from a teleprompter pretty much in his sleep.

And, it looks like his strategy has just been to run out the clock. It’s like, Okay, I’m going to give you the Stephanopoulos interview a week from the debate. That’ll reassure everyone. It’ll reassure no one. And then we’re going to have this NATO press conference. And so that’s another week.

So, you know, it looks like they are just kind of playing with their food and hope that, you know, in the next few days—and it could come to pass—Donald Trump reclaimed center stage with his running mate, with a Republican convention, and this argument will recede into a level of resignation that is just more sleepwalking into what looks like a very likely disaster for Democrats, Joe Biden, and the country.

Harris: What are the actual chances that he steps aside?

Leibovich: I mean, that’s been kind of the big question. I mean, I think in some ways, if you put it to a vote of Democrats in Congress, Democrats in the Senate, Democrats in general, he’d have a tough time winning that vote. If you put it to a vote of all voting Americans, he’d be swamped.

The fact is that Biden has all the power here. I mean, it’s basically his decision. And he controls not only the decision but also the clock. And every day that passes where he is not saying, Okay, that’s enough, you know, I would say it’s a monumentally selfish and reckless and irresponsible decision, but Democrats are stuck with him.

Harris: This seemed like a race that we sort of knew what the script was, we knew who the candidates were. We’ve known that for a long time. And this, actually, feels like a legitimate monkey wrench in the campaign. Trump, of course, was a bit ahead of Biden in the polls before the debate. What does that sort of look like now?

Godfrey: Yeah. So Trump was already ahead of Biden. Democrats were already really nervous, freaking out. That is the reason that the debate has sent everyone into overdrive.

I think what we can say about the polls two weeks after the debate is that they’re not fundamentally different. But Trump has gained a couple of points basically everywhere we look—nationally and in swing states. But so far, we’re still seeing Biden with a bit of a lead in Wisconsin and Michigan. But the other swing states are either toss ups or Trump is winning them by a significant amount.

Pennsylvania, for example: Trump, I think, is up by six or seven points, according to several polls. But again, these are polls. It’s hard to say. It’s a snapshot in time. And Joe Biden doesn’t have to win that many swing states to win this election. He needs to win the blue-wall states: Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. So I wouldn’t say that things have changed significantly.

What has changed is, as Mark was saying, many, many more voters are uncomfortable with Biden as the nominee. They think he’s too old. They think he’s unfit. However the question is phrased, something like 75 percent of voters, according to most polls, do not think this should be the Democratic nominee.

And I think that in the coming days, I mean, if I was Biden and Biden’s team, I’d be looking at the head-to-head polls that show Kamala Harris tying Trump in a head-to-head or beating him. I’d be thinking about that, I think, if I was Team Biden.

Harris: Mark, you mentioned earlier that this has been sort of unlike anything that you’ve covered. You’ve covered several elections. So what has been going through your mind over the past couple of weeks as you’ve reported on this?

Leibovich: I think it’s been pretty depressing, actually.

I mean, I guess I have a horse in this, in that, you know, I’ve written the story for a while that I think Biden’s too old. But I also think it would be just unbelievably healthy for the country, the party, but also for the cause of winning to get on with the future. I mean, I think the idea, whether it’s Kamala Harris or Newsom or Whitmer or whoever, of just some kind of change that just takes the exhaustion of this gerontocracy off the table—the question of Biden’s age, just the exhaustion factor around Biden—is itself just kind of psychically invigorating. I mean, Harris obviously has some baggage going in. She’s not terribly popular, hasn’t been. But if you look at polls, she’s actually kind of outperforming Biden a little bit.

I mean, basically what these two weeks and the historic nature of this comes down to is something pretty basic, which is the known versus the unknown. The unknown is, obviously, potentially very exciting but also very scary. The known is Joe Biden, and it looks very likely to be a recipe for defeat and, possibly, a really bad defeat, and then everything that would follow on that.

So, it’s depressing, I guess, as someone who has always kind of been depressed by the kind of lemming-like mentality around politics in general. Whether it’s Republicans falling into line behind Donald Trump and now Democrats, you know, maybe falling into line behind someone that they clearly know is not fit to be president, or most of them know isn’t fit to be president beyond January 20, 2025, is itself dispiriting.

But I think what’s fascinating about the story is just that you see the dynamic forces playing out, and actually kind of creeping out in a debate happening about the future that has, frankly, been overdue for a number of years and kind of put on hold because of the unique threat of Donald Trump.

But, you know, to some degree, I think, it was cast in very sharp relief after the debate. The Democrats actually had some time. That was June. We’re now well into July. And there’s a very good possibility that nothing will change, which itself is depressing.

Harris: Yeah.

Godfrey: Yeah, technically, the Democratic delegates are not legally bound to vote for Biden. They’re sort of morally bound at the convention. They made a commitment to their party. They were elected to do this thing.

But they could, in theory, vote for Kamala Harris. That is extremely unlikely though, getting all of these, you know, 4,000 people together to get on the same page here. I mean, I don’t know any other sort of scenario that would replace Biden unless he just steps down.

Now, if Biden were to be chosen, be nominated at the convention, and then either step down or, God forbid, die before the election in November, there’s actually a process in place where the DNC, the national committee, could choose his replacement. So Jaime Harrison would suddenly become very powerful.

Leibovich: Oh, that’s interesting. So basically the Democratic National Convention is not the end game here.

Godfrey: It is not the end game. So if he were to be nominated and then step down, the natural pick, I think, would again be Kamala Harris. I think that would sort of have to be the case.

Leibovich: So I guess that mechanism does exist out there.

Godfrey: Yes, it exists. Has it ever happened before? No. There’s not really a road map.

Leibovich: And then there’s also ballots. Because presumably there’ll be a “Biden-Harris” on the ballot by that point. It’s a mess no matter how you look at it.

Harris: So yeah, it would effectively put us in uncharted waters.

Godfrey: Yeah, it doesn’t really feel like there’s time to make a different choice now. Like, it feels like there is only one option and that option is: Democrats go with this nominee, and all of these concerns just sort of have to be bottled back up, you know.

And I’ve talked to voters about this, or I should say delegates. I was interviewing DNC delegates about this prospect, and they talked a lot about the known versus the unknown, and most of them were saying, I’d prefer the unknown. Like, let’s do something new and different and get excited about something.

On the other hand, I guess the known is: You know how Republicans and Trump will come for Biden if he’s the nominee. You know the baggage. You know going in. But is that the best we can do in our politics?

Leibovich: Beyond the frustration with Biden and clearly the alarm that the debate set off, I think there’s a lot—an increasing amount—of anger at him. I mean, I think he’s acting in a very reckless, hubristic, and kind of pigheaded way.

And as Elaine noted earlier, that response to Stephanopoulos about, As long as I give it the old college try—Adam Schiff actually mocked that on Meet the Press on Sunday—to me, that was one of the most appalling answers he could have possibly given. And it’s the essence of putting oneself ahead of the country. And that was essentially what Democrats were running against in the worst possible way.

Harris: All right, well, we aren’t just going to talk about Joe Biden. After all, Donald Trump is a deeply concerning candidate as well, albeit for very different reasons. So, after the break, we will talk about Trump, the coming Republican National Convention, and what the Supreme Court win would mean for a second Trump term. We’ll be back in a moment.

[Music]

Harris: All right. So, Mark, everyone focused on Biden after the debate. What did you make of what Trump did in the debate and how his campaign is sort of shaped up?

Leibovich: Yeah, I mean, I think what’s perhaps also chilling about this whole period since the debate has been that Donald Trump has largely stayed out of the way, which is not usually his instinct on this. It seems like he’s probably delayed announcing his running mate just to sort of maximize Biden and Democrats being the story.

I mean, essentially for the last several months, one of the articles of faith around this race is if the focus is on Donald Trump, that’s great for Biden; if the focus is on Joe Biden and his age and inflation or whatever, that’s great for Donald Trump. Donald Trump has either wised up to this or has people around him to guide him in this way. But clearly, I mean, every day that this story goes on is a huge win for Donald Trump, and it’s sort of Politics 101 that you don’t want to interrupt the other side when they’re in the middle of their car crash.

Harris: As you mentioned, it’s been a really good stretch of weeks for Trump’s campaign. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump has some immunity from prosecution. What does that ruling mean for the cases against him right now and for what he might be able to do in the second term?

Leibovich: I mean, unclear, but very scary. I’m not a Supreme Court or legal expert by any means, but it does seem like, first of all, a lot of people, when this question came down several months ago, thought it was a no-brainer: They were just going to dismiss this quickly. Maybe the delay in Trump’s legal team sort of going to the Supreme Court will help him put off the Jack Smith cases until after the election.

But now, I mean, I think the court has gone even further and not only, almost certainly, ensured that there’s going to be no other court cases going on between now and the election for Donald Trump but also that he could actually enjoy an even greater level of immunity, unaccountability to do basically what he pleases.

I mean, that’s a level of indulgence he enjoys already in the Republican Party, certainly. He won’t be bound by needing to seek a second term. He won’t be bound by a House and Senate that has grown-ups in it, a White House that has grown-ups in it. I mean, none of those quasi-safeguards that were in place during his first term would exist now.

So yeah, it just added to the level of potential catastrophe that could be in store and why it’s so important that Democrats get their act together.

Harris: Elaine, next week, the Republican National Convention starts in Milwaukee. We’ve talked about the Democrats replacing Biden but, especially after January 6, Trump was the candidate people didn’t really expect to be nominated again.

What do you make of the journey that the Republicans have been on over the last four years that we’ve arrived back at this point where the former president is now the Republican candidate for the presidency?

Godfrey: Yeah, I think the journey since January 6 has been a slow—and then suddenly very fast—entire party embracing Trump and Trumpism.

I think after January 6, maybe there were a couple of months, maybe weeks, where we thought, Okay, that’s kind of it for Trump. And that clearly is not the case and was not the case. And since then, I mean, it’s really been Trump’s party, despite the fact that Trump’s candidates in 2022 lost broadly. He has not had a super-great track record as an endorser of candidates.

Since then, Lara Trump was chosen by Trump to lead the RNC with Michael Whatley, the former North Carolina GOP chair. It’s actually a bigger deal than people maybe think. Someone leading the Republican National Committee is a member of the Trump family, not just an ally of Trump’s. Trump is also not even the incumbent president, and he got to choose that person, right? So that shows you how much of a leader in the party he is right now.

I mean, there is virtually no room in the party now—no room in the party’s organizational apparatus, fundraising apparatus—to oppose Donald Trump. That just isn’t a thing anymore. It’s not really a possibility.

Trump nominated Mike Pence to be his VP in 2016. That was a real move to help appease the evangelicals who were suspicious of Trump. Now here’s Trump out there saying, you know, Let’s leave abortion laws to the states. Evangelicals haven’t left him. They’re mad, but they’re still voting for him in the primary. They’re still going to be defending him.

The RNC’s new, proposed platform says virtually nothing about abortion. It says, you know, We oppose late-term abortion, however they define that. But it says nothing that they removed any mention of federal abortion laws—supporting federal abortion laws—a human-life amendment added to the Constitution. Those things had long been in the Republican platform. At Trump’s urging, they changed that. It’s just such a good example of the power that he has over this party now.

Harris: What are the big moments that could change the race over these next couple of months?

Leibovich: I think the Republican convention itself is important in that if Republicans go out and are overconfident and are talking in a kind of unhinged way, thinking that they can basically say whatever they want and they’re still going to cruise to victory, it could have a serious backlash effect that hurts them.

I remember in 1992—yes, I am a little older—George Herbert Walker Bush was a fairly struggling incumbent president, yet they were still pretty confident of reelection because incumbents almost always win. And Pat Buchanan comes out. He had primaried Bush, and he gave this really, really right-wing, rabble-rousing speech. It was really out there, and it really wound up hurting Republicans. So I think, in this moment, in their confidence, they could perhaps overreach a little bit in Milwaukee.

Then you have the Democratic convention. Can Democrats, if Biden sticks around, rally around him in a way that’s somewhat convincing and even persuade people who have real doubts about him, which will be a lot of people? Obviously, his acceptance speech is going to do that.

You know, there’s a lot of uncertainty about what could happen. I mean, Trump is always going to make news. The question is: Is some of the news going to be even more toxic to the swing voters that he already has a hard time reaching? Obviously then the next debate: That’s, I think, the biggie. Expectations will be low for Biden. You know, he just can’t have a repeat of what happened a few weeks ago, and I think that’s pretty much it.

Godfrey: Glomming on to that, I think Trump does have a problem, which is that a lot of his base doesn’t often turn out in a general election. That’s something that they had been worried about before the debate. They’re sounding a lot less worried now but, like Mark said, you don’t want to be overconfident in a race like this. They have a turnout problem too. A lot of Trump voters are low-propensity voters.

Leibovich: I would point out one thing though, which is that: Yes, Republicans have had a turnout problem. Certainly it was in special elections. But when Trump is actually on the ballot, and it’s only been twice, his voters have turned out. I mean, he won in 2016, and he really overachieved in 2020.

And that election was not supposed to be as close. I mean, Biden was up five, six points in a lot of the late polls. He wound up winning by considerably less. We know how close it all was. And also, they overperformed the House and also the Senate a little bit because they had those voters coming out. So yes, they wound up losing that election, but that was in some ways a beating-expectations election for Republicans.

And, obviously, Trump will be on the ballot in November for Republicans.

Harris: So as we move towards the election, what should people be looking out for over the next couple of months?

Godfrey: If I’m Biden, I’m approaching November with, like, this renewed sense of focus. Like, I need to do as many events as possible that are unscripted. I think that’s going to be really hard for him to do. I think he’s not good at unscripted events, but: That’s what I’m doing. I’m scheduling press conferences, meet and greets. I’m doing as much of that as possible.

And it’ll be really interesting to see if we end up having another debate. After the June debate, pundits were like, Well, there goes the second debate. Definitely not doing that. I don’t know if Biden can not do that if he’s the nominee. I don’t know if he can say, Never mind. I did so bad last time. I’m not doing it now. Like, I just think that would be a bad look.

I’ll also be watching, like—you know, we have Trump’s VP pick coming up. I don’t think it’s going to make a huge difference politically at all. But I guess it could, and it’ll just be an interesting new sort of addition to the race, I guess. If anything, it will give reporters something new to write about.

Leibovich: Seeing how, obviously, Biden gets out of this mess because he’s a weak candidate, and I think the question is: Can he transform himself? Which seems quite unlikely at this stage. But maybe he can surprise people by actually pulling off a series of unscripted give-and-take, impressive events—and again, not scripted, not telepromptered, not the set-piece, receiving-line kinds of things that Joe Biden has been doing since he was basically in kindergarten. So I would say that.

But Democrats have a very weak hand with him. It’s like: Okay, he might not be fit, but the other guy is worse. And I think there’s a fundamental fact here, which is that the anti-Trump coalition in this country is far bigger than the pro-Biden coalition.

And if Democrats are unable, and Biden is unable to see that a person carrying the mantle for a very unpopular incumbent—getting more so—is a good idea, I mean, I think that’s kind of their own fault. And they’re kind of walking the rest of us into this.

But, you know, look: You could not have a more winnable race and a more beatable opponent in this day and age than Donald Trump, and yet he could win anyway. He looks likely to win anyway, and it might not even be close.

So again, I hope I’m wrong. I don’t think I am, but I really hope I’m wrong.

Harris: Well, Mark, Elaine, a lot of uncertainty now for a race that has felt like it has had few surprises. So thank you so much for talking with me today.

Leibovich: Thanks, Adam.

Godfrey: Thanks, Adam.

[Music]

Leibovich: And we’re all gonna die. (Laughs.)

Godfrey: Mark’s a real downer in that conversation. (Laughs.)

Harris: All morbid today.

Leibovich: David Downer over here.

[Music]

Harris: This episode was produced by Kevin Townsend and edited by Claudine Ebeid. It was engineered by Rob Smierciak and fact-checked by Sara Krolewski. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. Hanna Rosin is the host of Radio Atlantic, and she’ll be back in a matter of weeks. In the meantime, I’m Adam Harris and thank you for listening.