Why we’re still arguing about whether Biden will quit

Only 22 of the 264 congressional Democrats (or Democratic-leaning independents) have formally called for the president to withdraw from the race, according to a count by The Post. About 30 others have expressed doubts, according to a CNN tally.

On the other hand, at least 75 have defended his candidacy publicly, although some in very tepid ways.

That leaves around 140 congressional Democrats who are being fairly circumspect.

Praising the sitting president from your party is easy. So the noncommittal stances of dozens of congressional Democrats reflect deep concerns about Biden’s candidacy that they don’t want to express publicly, particularly if he is likely to remain on the ticket.

Very few Democratic elected officials are saying things along the lines of, “I have great confidence that Biden will carry the swing states.” Asked by reporters on Capitol Hill this week if the president can win the election, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said, “He’s our nominee,” ducking the question.

The president has been dismissing polls showing him losing. But others in the party aren’t. In a meeting with Democratic governors last week, the governors of New Mexico and Maine reportedly expressed doubts that Biden could win their states, which he carried by 11 and 9 points, respectively, in 2020. If Biden loses New Mexico, that would all but certainly be part of a landslide defeat.

Reporting suggests that two of the party’s most influential figures, former president Barack Obama and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), are lukewarm at best about Biden’s prospects.

Polls suggest around half of Democratic voters want Biden replaced. So while Biden has implied that only “elites” want a new candidate, that’s not true. At the same time, it’s not as if the entire party has turned against him.

Democrats under 45 are more likely to want Biden sidelined than their older peers, and Black Democrats are more supportive of Biden than White or Latino ones, according to a recent Post survey. But there are Biden skeptics and Biden supporters across all demographics.

We don’t have surveys of activists, donors and left-leaning groups. Actor George Clooney’s call for Biden to withdraw is one of many indications that party donors are worried about the president’s candidacy. In contrast, labor unions are emphasizing their support for Biden.

While many Democratic elected officials aren’t saying much, a few are openly supporting the vice president should Biden be persuaded not to run.

Left-leaning pundits are taking sides on the Harris question. But they are divided. Even some onetime detractors of the vice president are backing her now. The case for Harris is that she is better able to articulate the party’s message than the president — and replacing Biden with the vice president would be much simpler logistically than choosing another person.

But there is a counternarrative against Harris. She wasn’t a great candidate in her presidential run five years ago. Her performances have improved in the past few years, but she isn’t a great public speaker. Harris doesn’t have particular strength in swing states. And even fans of the Californian worry the country is too racist and sexist to elect her — after all, America has never had a female president or even a Black female governor.

So others are calling for an open process to pick a new candidate. Let’s not pretend here: A call for considering a wide array of other choices is, for all intents and purposes, a rejection of Harris.

James Carville, who was the top aide on Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, and New York Times columnist Ezra Klein are the most prominent of those calling for essentially a mini-primary over the next month, with the delegates at the Democratic convention then choosing the candidate.

But many in the party aren’t excited about that prospect. They argue such a process is likely to divide Democrats and therefore result in a candidate who isn’t in a better position to win than Biden.

Part of the issue is that while the Democrats have a long list of youngish governors and senators who are likely to run in the 2028 cycle, there isn’t a consensus that any one of them should be the candidate this year. So right now, the long Democratic bench is a bug as much as a feature.

Put all that together and you have four camps of Democrats: 1. those who want Biden to remain on the ticket, 2. those who want him replaced by Harris, 3. those who want some kind of open process to pick a new candidate, and 4. those who aren’t confident in Biden or Harris but also don’t want a convention fight over the nominee.

My conversations with Democratic staffers suggest that on Capitol Hill, No. 4 is the biggest group.

With this level of confusion and indecision, the president has adopted a smart strategy: to forcefully lean into the idea that he is staying in the race and run out the clock on alternative plans or candidates.

It’s worth noting that Democratic Party power brokers can unify and coordinate at times. During the 2020 primaries, when it seemed as if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) might win the nomination, party leaders encouraged several moderate candidates to drop out and then endorsed Biden en masse.

In that case, there was unity around an easy-to-implement solution (encourage Democratic voters to choose Biden over Sanders in primaries). Recalling the 2020 process makes me think that one of Biden’s great assets in holding on to the nomination is the uncertainty about Harris. Her running for president would be the obvious solution if she were perceived by prominent Democrats as a clearly superior candidate to Biden.

The 2016 and 2020 primaries and the conflict in Gaza have shown a clear left vs. center-left fissure in the party, with the left expressing doubts about Biden’s leadership. But that’s not at play here. Some of the members of Congress most wary of Biden’s candidacy are centrists, such as Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) Pundits who are usually more aligned with the president than the left ideologically, such as data expert Nate Silver, are among those most loudly calling for him to step aside.

In contrast, prominent left-wing voices in the party — most notably Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — are in favor of having Biden remain on the ticket. (To be sure, writers at the socialist magazine Current Affairs and others outside of Congress on the left are ready to push Biden aside.)

What’s going on? The main explanation is that whether Biden or Harris can win Michigan, whether it makes sense to choose a candidate at the convention, and other such questions are not about policy. So they are not splitting people along ideological lines. Also, there is not an obvious leader of the left whom progressives can rally around as a potential nominee. The 82-year-old Sanders is even older than Biden. In October, Ocasio-Cortez will have just turned 35, the minimum age for a person to be elected president.

Another factor is these politicians’ self-interest. For centrist Democrats running in red or purple states, dissing Biden is useful for their own election prospects, potentially helping to win over independents and moderate Republicans. In contrast, progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who has defended Biden, is being challenged in a Democratic primary. In a Democrats-only race, bashing the party’s incumbent president isn’t helpful.

Remember that few Democratic elected officials or left-leaning groups have called for Biden to step aside. So how did this become such a national conversation? In my view, left-leaning and centrist columnists and commentators from the Bulwark, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Pod Save America and The Post were particularly important. They created a kind of feedback loop: These pundits voiced their concerns about Biden right after the debate; then Democratic politicians, donors and staffers contacted them anonymously and encouraged them to keep airing these concerns; then the pundits repeated the private comments of key party officials.

Everyone saw how terrible Biden was in the debate. But I was shocked that people such as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, a staunch Biden supporter, and Pod Save America’s Jon Favreau, who served in the Obama administration with Biden, were willing to bluntly acknowledge what happened. I often worry that left-leaning (and right-leaning) media act as essentially arms of the two political parties. That didn’t happen in this case.

Why do these media organizations matter so much? Because they are among the most important institutions in influencing the Democratic Party. Scholars who study political parties argue that while partisanship is stronger than ever in America, the parties themselves are very weak. National and state Democratic Party chairs used to have real influence; now they are often just loyalists of the president or the governor of their state. Union membership has declined, so labor isn’t as big a force within Democratic Party as it used to be. There are lots of groups purporting to represent women, African Americans and other left-leaning constituencies, but they often don’t have large numbers of members.

So with other power centers diminished, the media has outsize influence. CNN, the New York Times and The Post aim to reach people across ideologies, but their audiences are significantly more Democratic than Republican. Democratic activists and officials read and watch them closely. MSNBC and Pod Save America are openly aligned with the party, with party leaders often appearing on both and being covered favorably in most cases.

The Bulwark is essentially an outlet for “Never Trump” Republicans. So Democrats consider it a useful guide to what might resonate with independents and swing voters whom the party needs to win elections.

When prominent voices at all six of these outlets were delivering the same message — “Maybe Biden can’t win the election” — that was powerful.

I don’t think this has been just a pundit rebellion against Biden. It was more pundits plus Democratic Party officials who didn’t have a lot of other avenues to challenge Biden using the pundits to raise doubts about his campaign.

What will happen next? I would bet on Biden remaining the candidate. But I am not sure. I never, ever imagined an issue where George Clooney, James Carville and Michael Bennet (middle-aged White men who aren’t leftists) would be on the anti-Biden side, while Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Bernie Sanders would be in the pro-Biden camp. These are confusing times for the Democratic Party and those of us watching it in action — or, at least so far, inaction.