Democrats in Turmoil as Party Leaders Call for Biden To Step Aside

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By Adeline Von Drehle

President Joe Biden’s campaign is in turmoil as in-party murmurs about his fitness for office are boiling over into full-blown rebellion. A chorus of anti-Trump voices is calling for Biden to step aside after a disastrous debate performance cemented fears that Biden’s cognitive abilities are declining. But to the despair of congressional Democrats and the 70% of Americans who want a fresh face, Biden insists he is “firmly committed” to staying in the 2024 presidential race.

In a letter to “Fellow Democrats,” Biden cited many reasons for remaining in the race, placing particular emphasis on the argument that he was the choice of Democratic primary voters, and that it would be wrong to disregard their voice.

“The voters of the Democratic Party have voted. They have chosen me to be the nominee of the party. Do we now just say this process didn’t matter? That the voters don’t have a say?” Biden wrote. “It was their decision to make. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned. The voters – and the voters alone – decide the nominee of the Democratic Party.”

Driving the point home, Biden painted his stubborn stand as critical to his larger defense of American democracy. “How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party? I cannot do that. I will not do that.”

But some have questioned whether Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents truly did place their faith and trust in Biden as their nominee, or whether the choice was instead made for them.

“We never had a real primary process. We never had a real debate in this country,” said Ryan Clancy, chief strategist of the bipartisan organization No Labels. “Everybody decided, for their own political reasons, that the best option was to shut down dissent, shut off choice, and force the public into this choice of an election they never wanted any part of.”

Due to his age and historically low approval ratings, there was occasional speculation – and for some, hope – that Biden might not run for reelection in 2024. A September 2023 CNN poll showed that 82% of Democrat-leaning voters wanted “someone besides Joe Biden” as the party’s nominee. But when those respondents were asked whom the nominee should be instead of Biden, no other person polled above 3%.

So when Biden officially declared he would run for reelection in April 2023 and Democratic officials fell in line, the president was unofficially declared the Democratic nominee. This is common for an incumbent ­– parties frequently try to deter challengers, viewing primaries as messy, expensive, divisive, and hurtful to the eventual nominee’s general election chances.

Yet those little-known dreamers who did try to run against Biden – Congressman Dean Phillips (D-MN), author Marianne Williamson, and activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – argue that the tactics Biden’s team used to ensure his nomination were beyond the pale.

“Americans would expect the absence of democracy in Tehran, not Tallahassee,” Phillips said in a statement after he was excluded from a list of official candidates ahead of Florida’s Democratic primary. “The intentional disenfranchisement of voters runs counter to everything for which our Democratic Party and country stand.”

Florida Democrats voted during their state party convention in October to submit only Biden’s name to the secretary of state’s office ahead of a Nov. 30 deadline. The committee did not vote on other names, according to a Florida Democratic party spokesperson. Under state law, if a candidate is running unopposed in a primary, the contest won’t appear on the ballot.

Phillips called on Biden and others to “condemn and immediately address this blatant act of electoral corruption.”

Williamson, too, was excluded from the 2024 Florida ballot, even though she appeared on the ballot when she ran for president in 2020. In a statement to CNN, Williamson said the act was “part of a larger concerted effort by the Democratic Party to clinch the nomination for Joe Biden without any opposition.”

Kennedy, too, called out the DNC for “rigging” the primaries against him to benefit Biden. Kennedy soon abandoned his efforts to run against Biden and instead is running as a third-party candidate, polling with a not-insignificant 8.5% of the vote, according to the RealClearPolitics Average.

“It’s pretty clear that the DNC does not want a primary,” said Kennedy in September 2023. “Essentially, they are fixing the process so that it makes it almost impossible to have democracy function. They’re effectively disenfranchising the Democratic voters from having any choice in who becomes the Democrat nominee.”

The complaints of Biden’s rivals were dismissed by Democratic officials. Steve Schale, a Florida-based Democratic strategist who leads a super PAC supporting Biden, pointed out that there was not a primary in 2012 when Barack Obama was seeking reelection. But Obama was neither 81 nor the most unpopular president since Jimmy Carter, and his opponent was not someone the Democrats painted as a “threat to democracy.”

“How can we be faced with an election where almost nobody feels good about their choices? The short answer for that is because some people thought they knew better than voters,” said Clancy. “They thought the way to save democracy was by making it more difficult, if not impossible, for meaningful competition to emerge.”

Clancy knows just how low Never-Trumpers will go to ensure no ‘spoiler’ candidates emerge in the race. His organization, No Labels, was on the receiving end of a campaign to kill their dream of fielding a “unity ticket” with a candidate who might have broad appeal to middle-of-the-aisle Americans.

“Several people in the party have convinced themselves that the means always justify the ends if it’s going to stop Donald Trump,” said Clancy.

Indeed, the Democratic National Committee has taken unprecedented measures to guarantee a Biden-Harris ticket comes to fruition.

There was the reorganization of the primary calendar, a historic change that slated Biden-friendly South Carolina as the first Democratic primary of the year. Recall that Biden’s 2020 campaign was all but dead in the water after he lost in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada – states that have kicked off the race for the past 50 years – until an overwhelming victory in South Carolina revived his chances and led to his eventual nomination for president. The new calendar was recommended by Biden and his advisers.

There were no primary debates this year, either. This is not atypical – as Schale pointed out, Obama didn’t debate Democratic rivals in 2012. But some voters wonder whether primary debates, in which Biden would have been forced to think on his feet and deliver convincing policy initiatives, might have highlighted his cognitive failings and heightened previously minor concerns earlier in the election cycle.

“If we had the information we have now about Biden’s health during the primary, I’m not confident he would have won the nomination,” said New York voter Kirsten, who preferred not to give her last name.

Many people argue that a primary process wouldn’t have mattered; incumbency advantage is so powerful that Biden would have won no matter who challenged him. Still, Clancy points out that a challenging primary race would at least allow Biden to tout a hard-earned victory.

“If Democrats had opened up the process, would President Biden still have won? Probably,” said Clancy. “But at least at the end of that process, he really could credibly claim, ‘I was put to the test. I had to make the case for my candidacy against other people who wanted the nomination, and in the end, I was chosen.’ That would have been a credible argument. But none of that happened, of course.”

Some people dream that a “mini-primary” might still be held, during which candidates could make their cases, and the party could “go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out,” in the words of Democratic donor and A-lister George Clooney.

Those hopes were dashed Wednesday morning when DNC members received word that they would formally nominate Biden as the Democratic candidate in a virtual vote the first week of August, two weeks before the national convention, when candidates are typically nominated.

Democratic officials claim the vote will be held early not to undermine possible challenges to Biden’s nomination at the convention, but rather to avoid potential disaster in Ohio, where a law stipulates that a candidate must be officially nominated 90 days prior to the general election in order to appear on the November ballot.

Ohio officials have noted that such a deadline no longer exists, thanks to legislation passed earlier this summer.

“The issue is resolved in Ohio, and Democrat proxies know that and should stop trying to scapegoat Ohio for their own party’s dysfunction,” said Ben Kindel, a spokesperson for Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican.

The virtual vote, to some, feels like the cherry on top of the silencing sundae, just another way in which the Democratic party has undermined the will of the people, who now overwhelmingly wish someone else would replace Biden as the party’s nominee. It is ironic, says Clancy, that a campaign whose message has emphasized so heavily the dangers Trump poses to American democracy would work so hard to stifle opposition.

“There’s a lot of people who will go on TV and do interviews about the sanctity of democracy,” said Clancy. “But behind the scenes, they will do everything they possibly can, and they will reach for any tactic they possibly can to limit competition and prevent choice.”

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.