Joe Biden Should Not Throw Away His Shot

Dear President Biden: This could be you.

Commenting on President Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week, I expressed skepticism that Democrats would be able to get the old man to step down and make way for another candidate. But this is looking a lot more likely now, as Biden’s response has only made his situation worse. I think he’s expecting that this is just a temporary setback and he will bounce back in the polls. That is more of a wish than a rational projection, and if Biden is still down by four to six points, or worse, by the end of this month, with the mid-August convention looming, the pressure will become insurmountable. I’m not saying this is inevitable, or even that it is the most probable outcome. But it is now at least possible.

Joe Biden’s whole pitch for why he ran for president was to protect liberal democracy against Donald Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. Biden ran in 2020 using footage of the neo-Nazi riot in Charlottesville and Trump’s awful response. He’s been running this year using footage of the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. This week’s Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity, which knocks down a few more of the guardrails against the abuse of power, raises the stakes even farther.

The whole pitch all along has been that this is not about Joe Biden, it’s about saving our system of government. A lot of us accepted him on those terms, and if we see Biden as someone who can no longer serve that purpose, we will demand an alternative. The alternative doesn’t have to be perfect, it doesn’t have to be great—great isn’t in the cards right now; we haven’t done what we need to do as a society to deserve it—but it has to be effective.

And yet—look, it’s legitimately difficult for an old man to accept that he’s no longer up to an important task, especially someone used to being active and vigorous. It’s even harder for a lifelong politician to step away from the limelight and give up the highest office in the land.

So below, I make what I think is the best pitch to Biden—the positive case for what he has to gain by relinquishing office and making way for a new candidate.

Joe Biden Should Not Throw Away His Shot

The history books are waiting for President Biden. Who knows, he could even get a Broadway musical about him. All he has to do is one thing—the one thing that would his establish his legacy more spectacularly than anything else. He has to save liberal democracy by resigning and handing the reins over to his successor.

For a lot of people, I don’t need to explain why he needs to do this. He had a very weak performance in his first presidential debate, giving credence to the drumbeat of accusations from the right that he is too senile, doddering, old, and weak to hold office. For the record, I don’t think Biden is senile. But he is noticeably older and frailer, which is not exactly unexpected for a man in his 80s. Donald Trump is only a few years younger, and I shudder to think what a jibbering mess he will be in four years.

But the fact is that Biden’s weakness was exposed in the debate, and while it may be unfair, the public reaction is not likely to improve. In a call with Democratic governors, he told them he’s how he’s going to solve the problem: He just “needs to get more sleep and work fewer hours, including curtailing events after 8 PM”—a response which, if anything, makes him seem even older.

We can argue Biden’s merits either way, but the only really important thing about this election is that Donald Trump cannot be allowed to win it. He attempted to overthrow the result of the last election, and he is promising a full-blown authoritarian agenda if he wins this one. If it looks like Biden can’t beat him, a lot of us will be desperate to jump ship to someone who can.

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But right now, perhaps everyone is presenting this issue to Biden in terms that are too negative, too focused on what he must give up, what he can’t have. I think we should all pitch this to him in terms of the opportunity of this moment, a chance for glory that he could not have achieved any other way.

This is such an unusual situation that we need to take a step back and see it with fresh eyes. Consider what an extraordinary moment a Biden resignation would be. The stakes of this election, which Biden knows all too well, are about the threat of a man who puts his own personal aggrandizement and lust for power over everything else. Imagine what an extraordinary contrast it would be for Biden to say to the American people, “This is not about my own ambition. This is not about my vanity or wanting to be in office. This has always been about my love for this great American experiment in democracy, and if I can better serve that by leaving office willingly, that is what I will do.”

Think what a relief that would be from the rest of today’s politics, with all its preening opportunism! What a refreshing thought it would be, one that could reset our entire political moment. It would be unprecedented.

Well, not exactly unprecedented. The precedents, in fact, are some of the country’s most exalted moments and leaders. The precedent would be George Washington rejecting calls from disgruntled army officers to seize power after the revolution—or later, voluntarily stepping down after two terms rather than seeking re-election for life.

Or consider Alexander Hamilton, in the 1800 election, giving his endorsement to his greatest political rival, Thomas Jefferson, in order to keep the dangerously unscrupulous Aaron Burr out of the White House. Do you think that was easy for Hamilton? It must have burned like acid to have to back Jefferson—that smug patrician bastard, his political archenemy. But he did it because it was best for the country, and that was more important than any personal animosity. And you know what? It was a moment of such high-minded greatness we’re still singing songs about it more than 200 years later.

This is what Biden should be thinking about. This is his opportunity to make sure he will be mentioned in tones of hushed awe a century from now. It’s his shot at true historic greatness. As those songs about Hamilton put it, he should not throw away his shot.

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There is some legitimate concern, I am sure, that Biden could relinquish office for nothing. What if he resigns and his replacement is less able to run? And let’s be clear that we mean Vice President Kamala Harris. There is no other practical successor, for four reasons.

First, if Biden cites his health as a reason to stop campaigning, it will be untenable for him to remain in office. If he’s too frail to campaign, he’s too frail to govern. So he will have to resign, making Harris the incumbent president. That’s the first reason. The second is that selecting another candidate would be seen as a snub of the first black woman in the presidency—something the Democratic Party is not likely to do. The third is that there is no clear successor other than Harris. If Democrats bypass her, they will have to go through a long, arduous process, balancing the claims of a dozen people with competing cases for why they’re the best candidate, with only weeks to decide.

Most of all, if the stated purpose of replacing Biden on the ticket is to save democracy, it would be difficult to choose his successor by a process that might be seen as undemocratic. But in voting for Biden in the party’s primaries, Democrats have already been voting for Kamala Harris as the person who would succeed him if he needs to step down. She is the only candidate who can reasonably claim a democratic mandate from voters in her party’s primaries.

If Biden is concerned that Harris would find it difficult to beat Trump—and he should be—he needs to realize that he holds the key to changing that. His resignation would change the whole narrative of the race, creating a wave of good will for him, for his party, and for his successor.

I get the basic unfairness of the way people are turning against Biden. Everyone is deeply concerned about his fitness for office—even as they seem to give Trump a pass for all the manifold evidence of his unfitness. If Biden were to resign, it could reverse this balance. Democratics could say, in effect, that they were willing to face up to the flaws of their candidate—so why can’t the Republicans face up to theirs?

Add to this that if Trump finds himself suddenly facing an opponent 20 years younger than him, all of the conservatives yelping that Biden’s age disqualifies him would suddenly find that issue turn against their candidate.

If there is any way to change the dynamics of a race in which Trump is, unaccountably, winning—this is the most likely solution.

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The recent Supreme Court ruling giving the president astonishingly broad immunity from prosecution puts this election in stark focus. Nobody is afraid of a politician like Joe Biden abusing this power. Everybody knows that Donald Trump would abuse it to the hilt. We know this because that is how we got this ruling—in response to his abuses of power when he was in office the last time.

So that’s what this election is about: the need to reject authoritarian fantasies of unchecked power. I don’t think anything is more important than that—and I hope Joe Biden feels the same.

If he does, I will join the chorus lauding his commitment to our free system of government and—something I never expected to do—elevating him to the pantheon of great leaders who have made the tough decisions for what they believe in. He will have earned it.