1). “Trump Was Terrible. But Biden Was Worse: Trump’s lies and unhinged ranting went unchallenged because Biden was incoherent and lost”, Jun 28, 2024, Jeet Heer, The Nation, at < https://www.thenation.com/
2). “To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race”, Jun 28, 2024, Opinion, The Editorial Board, The New York Times, at < https://www.nytimes.com/2024/
3). “Here’s how Democrats could replace Biden: The party would need to open a rulebook not used in decades — and for Biden to drop out in the first place”, Jun 28, 2024, Steven Shepard, Politico, at < https://www.politico.com/news/
4). “Who could replace Joe Biden? Here are six possibilities: With Biden not yet officially endorsed as Democratic presidential nominee, it is in theory open to the party to choose another candidate”, Jun 28, 2024, Martin Belam, The Guardian, at < https://www.theguardian.com/
5). “Debate debacle triggers panic in Democratic Party”, Jun 28, 2024, Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), at < https://www.wsws.org/en/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: The disastrous performance of Joe Biden in the Presidential Debate will, if it is just ignored by the Party's Leadership, greatly increase the likelihood that Trump will “win” the Presidential election, and we will have to live with the consequences of that.
In Item 1)., “Trump Was Terrible. But Biden Was Worse: ….” Jeet Heer writing in The Nation pointed out that:
“As the writer Eyal Press noted, 'An alert, articulate Democrat would be hammering Trump. Biden is hanging on the ropes.'
“Months of debates over Biden’s age should now be over. He’s clearly not up to the job of fending off the disaster of a Trump presidency. (Emphasis added)
“The question now is: Do Democrats have a Plan B?
“The only plausible scenario is for the party’s ranking members of Congress and party elders such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton to converge on the White House to tell Biden to withdraw his nomination for the good of the party and the country (not to say the world).”
The New York Times published an Editorial here posted as Item 2)., “To Serve His Country, ….” that stated that:
“At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.
“The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.” (Emphasis added)
Item 3)., “Here’s how Democrats could replace Biden: ….” and Item 4)., “Who could replace Joe Biden? ….”, both discuss the issues of how to replace Biden and who are the best candidates from the various Democratic Party's elected officials. Certainly Vice President Kamala Harris, and Governors Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker all would be viable candidates, among many others. Finally Item 5)., “Debate debacle triggers panic ….” discusses the undeniable fact that the Democratic Party, and many of its adherents play a secondary role, in allowing fascism to take power in the U.S.
No, the Democratic Party is not the answer to our larger problems; but the Right finds it worthwhile to “win elections” and impose their agenda on the rest of society, even when those actions fall short of what they ultimately want. Trump and many of his minions have plainly told us what they intend to do. The far from perfect protections of bourgeois democracy will be stripped away and the naked face of fascism will be fully exposed. The American left and progressive movements are not ready for this. I for one would prefer to not live in a Dark Ages Fascist society. The Far-Right, and their wealthy funders and the corporations know that the demographics and general outlook of American Society is steadily moving against them. This is a critical time.
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Trump Was Terrible. But Biden Was Worse.
Trump’s lies and unhinged ranting went unchallenged because Biden was incoherent and lost.
If Donald Trump had faced a halfway plausible and competent adversary, tonight’s debate would have marked the death of the former president’s hopes for returning to the White House. Simply put, Trump gave the second-worst debate performance of any major candidate for president, but… He repeatedly made outrageous and offensive lies, such as his claim that overturning Roe v. Wade was “something everybody wanted.” (In point of fact, polls show 65 percent of Americans opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.)
Despite repeated questions on this point from moderator Dana Bash, Trump refused to say he would accept the results of the election if he lost (which only served to remind Americans that he had refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and instead had egged on a mob to attack to the Capitol). He angrily refused to address many of the questions he was asked directly and instead kept harping on his pet issue that undocumented migrants were destroying America. Even as most Americans have started to oppose Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, Trump made the horrifying promise that he would let Israel “finish the job.” He made gaffes like referring to migrants taking away “Black jobs.” And, as fact-checkers such as CNN’s Daniel Dale documented, Trump repeatedly lied about many things great and small. As one example, Dale notes:
Trump’s claim that some Dem states allow people to execute babies after birth is fiction. No state allows this. He’s said the state he’s talking about is New York, which doesn’t allow this, though false social media memes have said it does.
Unfortunately, Dale’s fact-checking was confined to Twitter and the CNN webpage, as well as post-debate commentary. On stage, no one challenged Trump’s absurdities and fictions. Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash let them go unchallenged. Joe Biden did note that Trump was lying, but Biden’s rebuttals were so fuzzy and incoherent that they lacked any ability to convince.
Biden repeatedly stumbled through questions as if he were trying to dredge up a half-remembered script. He often rambled into strange and hard-to-understand directions. In a stomach-turning moment, he derailed a discussion about one of his strongest issues (abortion) by bringing up immigration, the very topic Trump wants the election to be about. It was a completely unforced error on Biden’s part.
At one point Biden gave a rambling and hard-to-follow talk about taxes that ended with the bizarre statement, “We finally beat Medicare.” Trump naturally jumped on this gaffe. Biden likely was trying to say, “We finally beat the rising cost of Medicare,” or some similar, and accurate, statement. But he was too lost in his own words to make the case.
As the writer Eyal Press noted, “An alert, articulate Democrat would be hammering Trump. Biden is hanging on the ropes.”
Months of debates over Biden’s age should now be over. He’s clearly not up to the job of fending off the disaster of a Trump presidency.
The question now is: Do Democrats have a Plan B?
The only plausible scenario is for the party’s ranking members of Congress and party elders such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton to converge on the White House to tell Biden to withdraw his nomination for the good of the party and the country (not to say the world). Kamala Harris would then become the party’s nominee and she could select a vice-presidential pick from among the party’s wide range of talent.
Those who still harbor fantasies of a brokered convention clearly haven’t been paying attention. The Democratic National Committee just moved the presidential nomination roll call up to August 7 so that Biden can get on the ballot in Ohio. Biden already has a total lock on pledged delegates, and even if he could be persuaded to release them, there is no process for adjudicating a successor.
Indeed, since at this point Harris is the only plausible alternative Democratic nominee, there is an argument that Biden should resign not just his candidacy but the presidency—a far more demanding job than merely running for the office. That would give Harris the chance to demonstrate her competency—and to implicitly begin to take the country in an even slightly different direction, e.g., on Israel/Gaza. And with Biden’s delegates already behind her, the convention would become a rally, rather than a bloodbath—allowing Harris to nominate a VP candidate with an eye toward unifying the party.
Although Harris has some political liabilities, none of them are as bad as the problem of Biden’s age, which is dragging his reelection bid down to disastrous defeat. Tonight’s debate only underscores the problem—and indeed makes it unsolvable.
Harris would have been a much better debater than Biden in 2024 and a much better candidate than Biden. It’s likely she would’ve made mincemeat of Trump. Unlike Biden, she could still be an eager and energetic candidate.
The office of the vice presidency exists for a reason: to take over the job when the president isn’t up for it. Now is the time for Harris to save her party and America.
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To Serve His Country, President Biden Should Leave the Race
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.
President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy.
Donald Trump has proved himself to be a significant jeopardy to that democracy — an erratic and self-interested figure unworthy of the public trust. He systematically attempted to undermine the integrity of elections. His supporters have described, publicly, a 2025 agenda that would give him the power to carry out the most extreme of his promises and threats. If he is returned to office, he has vowed to be a different kind of president, unrestrained by the checks on power built into the American political system.
Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year.
At Thursday’s debate, the president needed to convince the American public that he was equal to the formidable demands of the office he is seeking to hold for another term. Voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead plain to see: Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago.
The president appeared on Thursday night as the shadow of a great public servant. He struggled to explain what he would accomplish in a second term. He struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s provocations. He struggled to hold Mr. Trump accountable for his lies, his failures and his chilling plans. More than once, he struggled to make it to the end of a sentence.
Mr. Biden has been an admirable president. Under his leadership, the nation has prospered and begun to address a range of long-term challenges, and the wounds ripped open by Mr. Trump have begun to heal. But the greatest public service Mr. Biden can now perform is to announce that he will not continue to run for re-election.
As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency. There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden. It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes.
If the race comes down to a choice between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the sitting president would be this board’s unequivocal pick. That is how much of a danger Mr. Trump poses. But given that very danger, the stakes for the country and the uneven abilities of Mr. Biden, the United States needs a stronger opponent to the presumptive Republican nominee. To make a call for a new Democratic nominee this late in a campaign is a decision not taken lightly, but it reflects the scale and seriousness of Mr. Trump’s challenge to the values and institutions of this country and the inadequacy of Mr. Biden to confront him.
Ending his candidacy would be against all of Mr. Biden’s personal and political instincts. He has picked himself up from tragedies and setbacks in the past and clearly believes he can do so again. Supporters of the president are already explaining away Thursday’s debate as one data point compared with three years of accomplishments. But the president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night or blamed on a supposed cold, because it affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years. Even when Mr. Biden tried to lay out his policy proposals, he stumbled. It cannot be outweighed by other public appearances because he has limited and carefully controlled his public appearances.
It should be remembered that Mr. Biden challenged Mr. Trump to this verbal duel. He set the rules, and he insisted on a date months earlier than any previous general election debate. He understood that he needed to address longstanding public concerns about his mental acuity and that he needed to do so as soon as possible.
The truth Mr. Biden needs to confront now is that he failed his own test.
In polls and interviews, voters say they are seeking fresh voices to take on Mr. Trump. And the consolation for Mr. Biden and his supporters is that there is still time to rally behind a different candidate. While Americans are conditioned to the long slog of multiyear presidential elections, in many democracies, campaigns are staged in the space of a few months.
It is a tragedy that Republicans themselves are not engaged in deeper soul-searching after Thursday’s debate. Mr. Trump’s own performance ought to be regarded as disqualifying. He lied brazenly and repeatedly about his own actions, his record as president and his opponent. He described plans that would harm the American economy, undermine civil liberties and fray America’s relationships with other nations. He refused to promise that he would accept defeat, returning instead to the kind of rhetoric that incited the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
The Republican Party, however, has been co-opted by Mr. Trump’s ambitions. The burden rests on the Democratic Party to put the interests of the nation above the ambitions of a single man.
Democrats who have deferred to Mr. Biden must now find the courage to speak plain truths to the party’s leader. The confidantes and aides who have encouraged the president’s candidacy, and who sheltered him from unscripted appearances in public, should recognize the damage to Mr. Biden’s standing and the unlikelihood that he can repair it.
Mr. Biden answered an urgent question on Thursday night. It was not the answer that he and his supporters were hoping for. But if the risk of a second Trump term is as great as he says it is — and we agree with him that the danger is enormous — then his dedication to this country leaves him and his party only one choice.
The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race, and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.
It is the best chance to protect the soul of the nation — the cause that drew Mr. Biden to run for the presidency in 2019 — from the malign warping of Mr. Trump. And it is the best service that Mr. Biden can provide to a country that he has nobly served for so long.
Here’s how Democrats could replace Biden
The party would need to open a rulebook not used in decades — and for Biden to drop out in the first place.
Panicked Democrats might be ready to shove President Joe Biden to the side. But they need him to take the first step.
Within minutes of Biden’s poor debate performance concluding on CNN, the network’s commentators were openly discussing the possibility of replacing Biden on the ticket.
While the party technically does have a system for nominating a fresh candidate at the convention in the event of a candidate declining a nomination, the entire process is a creaky one that hasn’t been considered in decades.
There’s no mechanism by which other party leaders can throw Biden off the ticket, according to the Democratic National Committee’s rules. Instead, if anyone in the party wants to replace him, it is through throwing it to an open nominating process on the convention floor.
Biden won around 95 percent of the nearly 4,000 delegates in this year’s primaries — who are pledged, but not committed, to backing Biden.
That means there’s no legal requirement that they vote for Biden in the roll call. But Biden’s campaign has had a role in choosing these delegates at state conventions across the country — and at least half of them would have to spurn him in order to deny him the nomination.
But if Biden agreed to decline his party’s nomination, it would kick off an open and unpredictable process of picking his replacement.
Other names — from Vice President Kamala Harris, to Govs. Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer and JB Pritzker, to numerous others — could be placed in nomination. The candidates, who could span the Democratic Party’s geographic, ideological and generational wings, would be working to sway the thousands of Democratic delegates to support them on the first ballot.
The pledged delegates aren’t the only ones who have a say. The Democratic Party has stripped “superdelegates” — elected officials and party leaders who can vote for anyone they please — of most of their power since the contentious 2016 primary. These superdelegates would be free to vote if no candidate won a majority of delegates on the first ballot. An open, contested convention would give more than 700 party insiders a major role in picking the new nominee.
Biden’s wishes could also become hugely important. He could try to influence the process by endorsing Harris, his vice president. And she would have an argument in her favor since she is already on the ticket.
But if such a scenario occurred, Biden and Harris would have to persuade them. Biden’s delegates don’t automatically go to her but a Biden endorsement could be enough. But there’s no guarantee, and Harris’ poor poll numbers might give some Democrats pause.
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Who could replace Joe Biden? Here are six possibilities
With Biden not yet officially endorsed as Democratic presidential nominee, it is in theory open to the party to choose another candidate
Fri 28 Jun 2024 05.54 EDT
Last modified on Fri 28 Jun 2024 21.30 EDTJoe Biden won the Democratic primaries earlier this year but does not officially become the party’s candidate for president until endorsed at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which takes place from 19-22 August.
There is no formal mechanism to replace him as the presumptive nominee, and such a move would be the first time a US political party has attempted to do so in modern times.
In effect, the only option would be for Biden to agree to step aside and allow the delegates he won in the primaries – who vote to nominate a candidate at the Chicago convention – to choose someone else.
There is no legal requirement for delegates to vote for the person who won in the primaries, but they are asked to vote in a way that “in all good conscience reflects the sentiments of those who elected them”.
Were Biden to step aside, he may try to name someone – most likely his vice-president, Kamala Harris – as his preferred candidate, which would carry some weight with delegates but would not be binding.
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The most drastic course of action open to Biden – resigning the presidency – would make Harris president. But that would not automatically make her the Democratic nominee for 2024.
If a candidate were to be chosen at the Chicago convention that would make what is conventionally a highly choreographed event, where a party presents its nominee to the public over several days, into a much more volatile open, or contested, convention – a rarity in modern US politics. About 700 party insiders, who may not be united, would have the choice of picking a new candidate. They would then have only three months to unite behind and campaign for them before the November election.
The most obvious pick would be Biden’s vice-president. She has been widely criticised for not carving out her own role in the Biden administration and has poor polling approval ratings, suggesting she would struggle against Donald Trump in the glare of an election campaign. The 59-year-old was backing Biden after the debate, but may be the easiest for the party to install as a replacement. Moreover, if Biden should choose to resign now, Harris would automatically become president.
Gavin Newsom
The 56-year-old California governor was in the spin room on Thursday night talking down any alternatives to Biden as nominee, saying it was “nonsensical speculation”. He had a primetime debate last year with the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, which could be a presidential match-up of the future, and has made a point of supporting Democrats in elections away from his home state, which looked, at times, like a shadow White House campaign.
J B Pritzker
The 59-year-old governor of Illinois would be one of the wealthiest of possible picks. He can flourish his credentials of having codified the right to abortion in Illinois and declaring it a “sanctuary state” for women seeking abortions. He has also been strong on gun control, and legalised recreational marijuana.
Gretchen Whitmer
The Michigan governor, 52, was on the shortlist for VP pick for Biden in 2020, and a strong showing in the midterms for the Democratic party was in part attributed to her governership. She has been in favour of stricter gun laws, repealing abortion bans and backing universal preschool.
Sherrod Brown
The 71-year-old would be the oldest of the alternate picks, but is still seven years younger than Trump. It was considered a surprise when he did not have a tilt for the Democratic nomination for 2020, at the time saying remaining as Ohio’s senator was “the best place for me to make that fight” on behalf of working people. A strong voice on labour rights and protections, he has also spoken defending IVF and abortion.
Dean Phillips
A candidate during the Democratic primaries earlier this year, he picked some backers but failed to appeal to the broader party, winning no contests, and so is unlikely to be a factor if Biden steps down.
Even if Harris coasted to the
nomination, she would need a vice presidential candidate of her own, and there would still be a fight among the party’s future stars to be her running mate.
Any of Democrats’ rising stars would be a possibility, though Newsom would be particularly unlikely. Unless either changed their residency, a Harris-Newsom ticket would be ineligible for California’s 54 electoral votes — and there’s no realistic path to a Democratic victory without them.
From the moment he declared he would seek a second term, Biden and his team have insisted he is running for reelection. And Biden won every primary and caucus — capturing more than 85 percent of the aggregate vote — with the exception of far-flung American Samoa.
But the immense pressure of a poor debate performance — and further sags in polling numbers — could change all that.
If Biden is going to drop out, the clock is ticking. Even though the Democratic convention isn’t until mid-August, the DNC is moving up its nomination process.
Ohio law requires the party’s candidates to be determined by Aug. 7, and the DNC has decided to upend the traditional convention roll call to ensure their candidate is on the ballot there.
That deadline is only 40 days away.
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Debate debacle triggers panic in Democratic Party
Thursday
night’s debate between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican ex-President Donald Trump was a totally degraded spectacle. One candidate could barely finish a sentence, while reiterating his commitment to US military supremacy and war against Russia. The other openly defended the attempted fascist coup of January 6, 2021 in which he attempted to establish a presidential dictatorship.
Biden’s disastrous performance has already touched off a full-blown crisis in the Democratic Party. Even before the 90-minute session ended, there were panicked phone calls among party leaders and their media apologists declaring that Biden must withdraw from the race and allow the Democratic National Convention in August to nominate a more credible candidate. The process for carrying out such a shift is highly contentious and problematic, however, with no obvious replacement at hand.
The primary concern of dominant sections of the US political establishment is that Biden’s catastrophic debate performance, which has solidified Trump as the frontrunner in the election, has put in jeopardy far-reaching plans to massively escalate the war in Ukraine, to which Trump has expressed reservations. All of their efforts to orchestrate a replacement for Biden are aimed at putting in place a president capable of overseeing the massive escalation of US imperalist violence on a global scale.
If Biden had not so visibly disintegrated on stage, Trump’s own performance would have been widely viewed as deeply damaging, even disqualifying. The 78-year-old fascistic ex-president frequently refused to respond to questions, seemed fixated on migrants as the cause of every social evil in American life, and was unable to acknowledge elementary facts or discuss political issues without brazen and obvious lies.
That said, the political crisis goes far beyond the debilitation and disorientation of the two candidates. The CNN moderators are not senile or delusional, but their questions and follow-ups were no better, from an intellectual standpoint, than the meandering answers and non sequiturs of the Democratic and Republican candidates. The entire event was a manifestation of the thorough, deep-going rot that characterizes official politics in the wealthiest and most powerful capitalist nation.
Even if the two candidates had been lucid and coherent, the system which they represent is increasingly irrational, wracked by social contradictions and conflicts within and among nation-states that are exploding into war. If one abstracts from the question of the two decrepit and loathsome personalities on the stage, what is the “choice” which the capitalist ruling elite is offering to the American people?
One candidate represents the substantial fascist and Christian-supremacist constituency in the Republican Party, which seeks to establish a religion-based state that would roll back a century of social gains for working people, women and racial minorities. If Trump were not the candidate, his replacement would inevitably be a younger and perhaps less notorious advocate of militarism, dictatorship and social reaction.
The other candidate represents the military-intelligence apparatus which controls the Democratic Party and is primarily interested in pursuing the foreign policy and national security policies required to maintain the global dominance of American imperialism. Any replacement for Biden would continue the war in Ukraine, support Israeli genocide in Gaza and escalate the US military and economic confrontation with China.
Both parties are fundamentally opposed to the social and democratic interests of the American people. Both are unalterably committed to the defense of Wall Street and the worldwide hegemony of the United States, against both Russia and China, and rival imperialist powers like Japan, Germany and France.
The consternation in the Democratic and media establishment arises from these considerations. Biden’s performance has put in jeopardy the war policies to which they are fully committed. And it comes on the eve of other major political shifts in global politics: French and British elections over the next two weeks, followed by the NATO summit in Washington, at which Biden is supposed to preside.
At the same time, events like the mass uprising in Kenya, the failed military coup in Bolivia, a resurgence of COVID-19 and the outbreak of H5N1 “bird flu,” and fires, floods and hurricanes exacerbated by climate change testify to the mounting instability of capitalism as a global system.
Joseph Kishore, the presidential candidate of the Socialist Equality Party, offered this assessment of the debate:
The explosive political crisis in the United States, the center of world imperialism, is the most concentrated expression of the world capitalist crisis. While the exact course of events cannot be predicted, one thing is absolutely certain. There will be no progressive resolution to this crisis until the working class, on a world scale, comes together as an international force on the basis of a socialist program.
The problem is not Biden or Trump—or Putin, Xi Jinping, Macron, Scholz or any other individual capitalist politician. The problem is the capitalist mode of production and the nation-state system with which it is indissolubly bound up.
The resources exist to abolish poverty and provide a decent and fulfilling life to every human being. But these resources, produced by the labor of the world’s population, have been appropriated by a relative handful of corporate exploiters and billionaires, who subordinate all of society to their increasingly deranged pursuit of expanded wealth.
There will, in the face of Biden’s debacle and the threat of Trump’s return to the White House, be a growing interest in third parties. Both the Democrat and the Republican are regarded with hostility by a majority of the American public. Polls already show that the number of people indicating a desire to vote for a third-party candidate has doubled since the 2020 election.
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