Is Biden Gambling Everything on an Early-Debate Bounce?

There’s been speculation that Biden is desperate and might “step aside” if he can’t turn things around. This makes no sense.

There are two hot topics involving Joe Biden that are currently circulating among the chattering classes of U.S. politics. One has been around for a while but just won’t go away:

If Biden is still struggling in August he needs to consider stepping aside.

It's not a great situation for Ds either way, but you have to do due diligence on the question. It's an important election, obviously. It shouldn't be taboo to talk about. https://t.co/JaJvtLFuQt

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 23, 2024

Actually, far from being “taboo,” the idea of Biden “stepping aside,” which Ezra Klein gave enormous attention to back in February, is still in the air. It is being joined in the world of 30,000-foot strategic speculation with questions about exactly why Biden is so eager to debate Donald Trump so very soon. The New York Times offers one theory:

Tens of millions of dollars of advertising has not changed President Biden’s polling deficit. Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial has not altered the race’s trajectory. And Mr. Biden’s significant cash and infrastructure advantages have yet to pay political dividends.

So on Wednesday, the one weekday Mr. Trump is not confined to a courtroom, the Biden campaign shook up the race, publicly offering to bring forward the first presidential debate by three months. The move was meant to jolt Americans to attention sooner than later about their consequential choice in 2024. Mr. Biden’s advisers have long believed that the dawning realization of a Trump-Biden rematch will be a balm for the president’s droopy approval ratings.

This fairly common take suggests an early debate is a sort of shoot-the-moon strategy for a struggling candidate who may otherwise be on the path to near-certain defeat.

You have to admire the ingenuity of conservative pundit Henry Olson for coming up with a way to combine the two items of Biden speculation:

That early debate date signals something else, something no one yet wants to seriously discuss: the possibility that Biden may yet drop out. The Democratic convention does not begin until August 26, almost two months later. The first presidential debate typically attracts the most viewers … Scheduling the debate in late June gives Biden time to recover his standing and go into the convention on an upswing.

Suppose, however, if he does not. If Trump holds his own, Biden’s low favorability suggests even a credible Biden performance won’t right the ship. If the polls still look this bad in early August, after a big debate and tens of millions more in spending, Biden must make a big decision …

He may decide to put the country, or at least his party’s chances, before his own desires.

So the early debate challenge, which might be viewed as a sign of Biden self-confidence, is instead interpreted by Olson as a mark of desperation, a last gambit before a shocking surrender.

Here’s the thing: Once you begin with the premise that there is a snowball’s chance in hell that Biden will “step aside” or be shoved aside by a convention packed with delegates pledged to him, then everything the president does will necessarily look desperate. After all, if he is going to undertake a maneuver that no incumbent president or presumptive nominee ever has before, even those facing much tougher odds than Biden does today, it’s going to require a lot of prep work, right?

I mean, Joe Biden can’t just wake up one fine day in July or early August and announce that the Democratic Convention is going to be wide open and wish the delegates luck in finding a substitute. Assuming he feels the need to show some respect for his vice-president (and his own judgment in choosing her in 2020), Biden would have to make sure his delegates support Kamala Harris and that everyone in the entire party is ready to explain why nominating someone who is polling even worse than the incumbent who found it necessary to “step aside” would be a good idea. If, conversely, Biden wants to extend his political suicide to Harris, he’d probably need to spend a good deal of time explaining not only to her but to Democrats why they should instead be happy with Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom or whatever fantasy candidate party elders select.

The reality, folks, is that this isn’t happening and people should stop pretending it might. Whether or not Democrats would or should prefer a stronger nominee to keep Trump from returning to the White House, getting from here to there in the time available is very nearly impossible. Even if it were feasible, a political party this frantic to defenestrate its own president (and possibly its own vice-president) in order to win an election isn’t going to come across as any more stable or faithful to its values than Trump. If only to stop the crazy talk, let’s hope Biden does well enough in the June 27 debate to make this the highly competitive presidential election we’ve all expected from the get-go.