Saying Biden is toast is an indirect way of saying he’s got to go.
With the permission structure created by Biden’s dismal debate performance, the truth can now be told.
“Obama has long harbored worries about his party defeating Donald Trump in November, repeatedly warning Biden in recent months about how challenging it will be to win reelection,” the Washington Post revealed on Wednesday. “Just before the debate, Obama conveyed to allies his concerns about the state of the race.”
And yet, while many in the center-left media ecosystem have called for Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, “Obama has not voiced that conclusion.” He may not have to. The front-line Democratic lawmakers who fear tethering their political fates to Biden have skirted the social prohibition on calling for Biden to leave the race by simply insisting that he’s toast in November.
“While I don’t plan to vote for him, Donald Trump is going to win,” Representative Jared Golden (D., Maine), wrote in an op-ed published in the Bangor Daily News. “And I’m OK with that.” As the first branch of government and with its responsibility for policy-making, he added, “our Congress matters far more than who occupies the White House.” But if Trump wins the White House again, as Golden expects he will, it will be doubly important for voters to retain as many Democrats in office as possible to both constrain Trump and rein in the worst instincts of “the GOP old-guard” in the legislature.
Golden isn’t alone. “About 50 million Americans tuned in and watched that debate. I was one of them for about five very painful minutes,” Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D., Wash.) confessed. “We all saw what we saw, you can’t undo that, and the truth I think, is that Biden is going to lose to Trump.”
“I know that’s difficult, but I think the damage has been done by that debate,” she concluded. These members are unlikely to be the last to obliquely call for Biden’s ouster by contending that Democrats would essentially concede the election if they renominated the incumbent. But for now, this bit of rhetorical jujitsu is how nervous Democrats are attempting to navigate a challenging political landscape.