Are Democrats *actually* serious about Trump’s threat to democracy?

Nominating Biden would suggest not

Today, I’m thrilled to have

Chris Cillizza

contribute to The Warning. Chris is a fellow Substacker, who writes So What. He also produces daily videos on his YouTube channel. He has worked for The Washington Post and CNN.

I’ve known Chris for a very long time. He’s an extremely smart guy, and an expert in campaign politics. Chris knows the country really well, and is a great political journalist. I would encourage you to subscribe to his newsletter.

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For months — and months — the left has insisted that the ONLY way to understand this election is as a choice between democracy and dictatorship. That, if elected, Donald Trump would steer the country directly into an authoritarian direction in which he would seek to consolidate total power and eliminate the loyal opposition — including the media.

Candidly, I’ve never thought that depiction of the race was right. Not because Trump doesn’t have dictatorial impulses, but because the pillars of a free society — the independent media, the other arms of the federal government, etc. — would withstand another four years of Trump. (This Politico piece on the construction of an authoritarian government in Turkey has hugely influenced my thinking on the subject.)

But, let’s just take that election framing favored by liberals at face value. Trump is a would-be dictator. Electing him again would mean the end — or at least the unraveling — of democracy. The stakes COULD NOT, literally, be higher. Two hundred-plus years of American democracy is the ante of this election.

Given that, one would logically think that the Democratic nominee would HAVE to be the best the party has to offer — someone who gives Democrats (and the country) the best chance to beat Trump.

Eighteen months ago, I believed that person to be Joe Biden. After all, he had:

• Already beaten Trump once

• Was a sitting incumbent president

• Had accomplished a number of policy successes, despite a divided Congress

The one issue I saw with Biden was voter concerns about his age. A majority of Americans — even back then — said they believed that Biden was too old to be president. That included a sizeable number of Democrats.

My thought was that while, yes, that was a problem that it would resolve itself somewhat once it became clear — as it was to me — that Biden was not going to bow out of the race, or face any serious challenge for the nomination. Democrats might not love it, but once they realized that Biden was the guy, the age concerns would fade.

About six months ago, my view on all of that started to change. Why? Two reasons:

1. The poll numbers weren’t moving. People STILL thought Biden was too old to be president, despite the fact that it was clear he would be the nominee

2. Watching and listening to Biden made clear that he had slowed — visibly — over the past few years, and that he was no longer anywhere close to the guy he had been when he ran in 2020. (And he hadn’t been young then!)

I started writing about Biden’s age more on So What — much to the chagrin of many of my more liberal subscribers. My point was simply that this issue wasn’t going away, or going to get better for Biden. He and his team needed a plan to deal with it. My suggestion back then was for Biden to give a high-profile speech in which he dealt bluntly with his age — and sought to cast it as more of a strength than a weakness. “Yes, I am older,” Biden could say, “but with age comes wisdom. I know how to do this job.”

Or, he could have done an interview with a BIG mainstream media outlet — like The New York Times — in which he made this same case, and which his campaign could point to as a flag-planting moment: the president has already addressed the age question and all that. They could just keep referring people back to the speech (or the interview) when questions about Biden’s age came up.

They did none of that. Instead, they went in the opposite direction. They hid Biden — limiting his public appearances, keeping him on a very strict schedule and opting to avoid any interviews with anything but pro-Democratic media outlets.

I wrote — repeatedly — in those months that what Democrats were doing amounted to a MASSIVE gamble. They were betting that Joe Biden, at 81, would be able to convince skeptics that he was up to the job. And they were making that bet with Trump waiting as the Republican presidential nominee.

The effect of that decision was to make the first Democratic presidential debate THE most important moment of the campaign. ALL of Democrats’ chips were shoved into the middle of the table. Because Biden had done so little publicly — and almost nothing that had not been entirely scripted — the prospect of a 90-minute debate was seen as a (or THE) necessary proof point to show the public that he wasn’t too old to do the job.

Even going into the debate, I had my doubts about Biden’s ability to perform. In the limited amount of exposure his campaign had allowed him in recent months, he was decidedly shaky. While the left (and the media) insisted this was all deceptive Republican video editing and attempts to gaslight all of us, I saw what I saw: a man who was struggling to perform in ways expected of the president.

Even with those doubts, however, I never imagined that Biden could be as bad as he was in the first debate. The blaming of staff or over-preparation or a cold or the moderators (or the dozen other excuses I’ve heard in the last few days) overlook this basic fact: Biden had one job to do in this debate, and he failed to do it.

He needed to be just okay. Trump had set the bar so low — “this guy doesn’t even know he’s alive,” the former president was fond of saying of the current president — that Biden seemed virtually certain to clear it.

But, he didn’t. And, if I am being honest, he didn’t come close. Biden repeatedly trailed off in attempting to answer questions. His voice was hoarse and shaky. When he wasn’t speaking, his open-mouthed gape made him look entirely out of it. He missed opportunities to attack Trump — on abortion and his 34 felony convictions most notably — and fumbled rehearsed lines meant to deal with his age.

It was an utter and complete disaster. The worst performance by a major party candidate in a presidential debate in modern history. (Yes, worse than Richard Nixon in 1960.)

ALL of which brings me back to the frame I mentioned at the top of this post — the one Democrats have argued MUST be applied to all writing and thinking about this race: that Trump is an existential threat to democracy and must be beaten.

If you truly believe that, I do not see how you can also be arguing that Biden represents the party’s best chance to defeat Trump.

I mean…

It’s impossible for me to believe that the BEST candidate to keep Trump from the presidency is ALSO a candidate who three-quarters of the electorate think lacks the “mental and cognitive health to serve as president.”

Do I think that Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer (or any other Democrat) would run away with the race against Trump? I do not. We are a deeply polarized country, and it’s hard for me see ANY candidate — Republican or Democrat — getting more than 52%-53% of the popular vote.

And, of course, Harris and Newsom and Whitmer all have warts of their own that would be probed by Trump’s campaign and by voters.

But, NONE of them are as weakened as Biden is after that debate performance. I am not ready to say Biden could not win. He might be able to (see above about our deeply polarized country).

What is beyond debate, however, is that Joe Biden is no longer the best bet — or even close to the best bet — for Democrats to beat Trump.

And if beating Trump is SO important to the country, that means that it’s time to move on from Biden. Period.

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