How Do You Solve a Problem Like Joe Biden?

Why It's Hard and What Will Happen

Catch-up service:

The Age of Centrist Heroes Is Over
Birth of the Nudge Economy
Creativity Needs Stupidity
Your Obligation To Be Optimistic

Last Friday I sent you my first thoughts on the reaction to the Biden-Trump debate. It seemed clear to me this was a consequential event, the consequence being that Biden would no longer be the Democratic candidate for president. In the course of ninety minutes - actually the first twenty minutes - he completely lost the confidence of his own supporters. He would surely have to go.

And yet, over the following days, something strange happened: nothing. Amid all the wailing and gnashing, the White House did not give an inch. On Friday afternoon Biden spoke at a rally in South Carolina and gave a creditable display of sentience. Barack Obama tweeted his full support. Bill Clinton (who is younger than Biden, by the way) did the same. James Clyburn called for “four more years”. The party establishment closed ranks, at least in public.

Perhaps I had neglected one of Leslie’s Razors (#4) and overrated the importance of the present moment. After all, did anything fundamental actually change on Thursday night? The debate generated profound Democratic anxiety over Biden’s candidacy but that already existed, just less publicly. His poll ratings did not crater, because they were already bad. The next step did not suddenly become obvious, either; if nothing has been done that’s because it’s hard to know what should be done. As long as Biden wants to hang on to the nomination, it’s very hard to dislodge him. There are no formal mechanisms for doing so. Barring his closest advisers resigning, or a mass congressional revolt, he is secure.

Neither is out of the question, but you do have to wonder what would have to happen before the people around Biden decide it’s time for their man to call quits. Another public humiliation? A further degeneration of his faculties? What if he dies? You sense that, even in that scenario, they might take the El Cid gambit:

El Cid’s ruled Valencia peacefully for five years until 1099 when the Muslim Almoravids arrived and laid siege to the city themselves. In the course of the siege El Cid now 56 perished from a likely combination of disease and famine. In an attempt to break the siege, his wife, Jimena, ordered that his body be dressed in his armor and he be set upon his horse to lead his troops in one last charge. The Valencian Knights broke out of the gates with El Cid’s corpse in its saddle, the Muslims seeing the dread general coming at them, broke and fled as the Knights cut them down in numbers said to be in the thousands. 

Having said that, this isn’t just a case of wilful blindness and insane stubbornness (though it is all that). The question of what to do about Biden is complex and knotty and, in its awful way, gripping. Let’s examine it more carefully.