Could Biden Decide Not to Run?

What Nancy Pelosi, Jim Clyburn, George Mitchell and others should say to him

I’ve gone back and forth on whether to write this piece. One day, I’d wake up and say to myself that Joe Biden is a good president, but since I first covered him in 1988 he has always been a lousy presidential candidate and the Democrats must nominate someone younger who can better beat Trump. The next day, I’d wake up and say to myself, it’s too late — if Biden had declined to run at the beginning of the year, as I urged, things could have been different, but now it’s a fait accompli and we need to suck it up and accept that he’s the nominee.

I finally decided that it’s only too late if we accept the lunacy of the endless American campaign season. In almost every other country, campaigns last 60-90 days. Why not here? The truth is, the last chance to get in the race is December 8th, the filing deadline for the first big primary, in Michigan. While it would be terrible for the party and country for someone to challenge Biden in bloody primaries (this is historically harmful for the party of the incumbent), a statesmanlike withdrawal in the next few weeks would allow time for aspirants on the talented bench of the Democratic Party to jump in and create an exciting, energizing campaign about the future.

The following is — for now, at least — a fantasy. None of the people below have shown the slightest interest — at least in public — in urging Biden to withdraw. The chances of him changing his mind remain slim. But if the recent ABC News/Washington Post poll showing him trailing Donald Trump by 10 points—now an outlier— were to be replicated in the coming weeks, those odds could change. Biden isn’t surrounded by sycophants but his advisers all have a vested interest in his running. So he needs to talk to other people of stature who are willing to tell him some hard truths, and to explain why stepping aside is actually in his interest. Biden’s innermost circle consists of Jill Biden, Valerie Biden (his sister) and Ted Kaufman, who worked with Valerie on his first campaign in 1972 and served out his term in the Senate when he became vice-president in 2009. This delegation of dignitaries would have to convince them, too.

Here’s how they might try to make the case:

THE PRESIDENT:

Hey, everyone. Welcome. This feels a bit like an intervention, but that’s OK. I understand your concerns. I really do. So go ahead and make the case for taking away the keys, but, please, not to my Corvette. I told my kids and grandkids they’ll have to rip ‘em from my hands.

THE FIRST LADY:

They never will.

THE PRESIDENT:

I guess I should be grateful. When Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott went up to the White House it was to tell Nixon to resign. I remember that day well.

NANCY PELOSI:

Mr. President, we just wanted to lay out a few things for you and Jill and Val to think about.

THE PRESIDENT:

And Ted. He’s been my close friend since ‘72. If he ever tells me to pull the plug….

TED KAUFMAN:

I almost certainly won’t, but will listen with interest as always.

VALERIE BIDEN:

Me, too. We’ve been talking about running or not running since 1972.

BILL CLINTON:

What an amazing campaign! If I remember right, Cale Boggs was 63 and you were 29, right? Didn’t you make an ad out of that?

A newspaper ad from Joe Biden's 1972 campaign for U.S. Senate.

THE PRESIDENT:

Bill, the point of that ad was not that Boggs was old — it was that he was out of touch. I’m not out of touch. Ask the UAW guys on the picket line.

NANCY PELOSI:

None of us here think you’re out of touch, Mr. President. We all think you’ve been a great leader for our country. The question is whether you’re a great candidate and the best person to beat Trump.

THE PRESIDENT:

“Don’t compare me to the Almighty; compare me to the alternative” is a good line and will eventually work just fine.

NANCY PELOSI:

But our voters want alternatives for the nomination — a democratic process for a president who loves democracy. They are shouting this as loud as they can.

CHUCK SCHUMER:

The polls are crazy consistent on this.

THE PRESIDENT:

I’m beginning to neutralize the age issue on the stump by saying that “I’m 600 years old” and it gets a big laugh.

BARACK OBAMA:

I wish the humor neutralized it, Joe. I really do.

CHUCK SCHUMER:

What’s scary is that all of our terrific gains in special elections this year are not rubbing off on you.

THE PRESIDENT:

For Chrissakes, it’s early.

CHUCK SCHUMER:

It’s early but these numbers aren’t fluid, even after a ton of solid ads for you in the last few weeks. Around three quarters of likely voters think you’re too old and nearly 60 percent of Democrats want another candidate. How do you turn around the bad numbers on youth turnout? They are really consistent.

JIM CLYBURN:

I hate to say it, but we got a big enthusiasm gap with young Black voters, too. After several cycles of increased Black turnout, it’s headed in the wrong direction. Lots of these kids will come out in the general, but lots of others will say they have something better to do that day.

THE PRESIDENT:

I owe it all to you, Jim, but are you really saying that they’re going come streaming to the polls for Gretchen Whitmer, Roy Cooper or Gavin Newsom?

JIM CLYBURN:

Like all voters, they like new, fresh outsider candidates who don’t have to defend things they don’t like. Anyone else we nominate—man, woman, black, white—won’t have to defend inflation, border policies and so forth.

VALERIE BIDEN:

It pains me, but the numbers I’ve seen show that voters — including a lot of women — just don’t want a woman president.

HILLARY CLINTON:

There was plenty of misogyny in ‘16 but that’s not what made the difference in my race. We gotta keep trying and a woman candidate would make sure our momentum on Dobbs stayed strong.

THE PRESIDENT:

Abortion. Trump on trial for months on end. All the batshit crazy stuff he says—attacking our military. Look, I’ll bounce back next year.

NANCY PELOSI:

Maybe, Mr. President. But views of you are hardening. You said you were a transitional figure and now you’re clinging to power. That’s the way it looks to independents and to an awful lot of Democrats.

BARACK OBAMA:

Look, Joe, I know what you’re thinking. I talked you out of running in ’16 and if I hadn’t, you might have beaten Trump then and spared the world all this shit. Fair enough. I had two terms. Bill had two terms. Why shouldn’t you? Two points. First, it’s a little hard for me to admit, but the plain fact is that you have already put more legislative points on the board in less than three years than either Bill or I did in eight.

NANCY PELOSI and CHUCK SCHUMER (in unison):

That’s true!

THE PRESIDENT:

It is, literally, true.

BILL CLINTON:

Depends how you score it, but yes, huge achievements, Joe.

BARACK OBAMA:

Point two: If you’re worried about being a lame duck for a year if you dropped out, think about what your second term would be like if you squeaked back in. Our second term was a disappointment to all of us. No big wins. Remember?

BILL CLINTON:

You may not get impeached in your second term like me, though the scumbags will sure as hell keep trying. But you’ll limp out of there with a mixed legacy. Leave now and you’ll be seen as the best one-term president in American history. And better than most two term presidents, maybe including me.

GEORGE MITCHELL:

You’ll be Cincinnatus and George Washington. A deeply-respected figure in American history.

THE PRESIDENT:

Or LBJ. Hounded from office.

HILLARY CLINTON:

There’s no war on and no one will say you were hounded.

BILL CLINTON:

If LBJ had stayed in, he would have likely lost to Nixon and his huge achievements would have been forgotten. That could happen to you. And the idea you hear a lot now — LBJ withdrew and the Democrats lost, therefore you withdrawing would doom the Democrats — is a ridiculous historical analogy.

NANCY PELOSI:

I know you’re feeling great, Mr. President. But you have no idea how you’ll feel five years from now. Jimmy Carter says 80 would have been too old for him to serve and he was a super young 80.

RON KAUFMAN:

Joe isn’t ailing and beaten down and tired of the job like LBJ.

THE FIRST LADY:

Joe’s a young 80.

THE PRESIDENT:

Trump couldn’t ride a bike if his life depended on it.

CHRIS COONS:

I’ll leave whether you’re an old or young 80 to the doctors, but it’s not about the truth of that. It’s the perception, and voters think you’re too old and he isn’t.

THE PRESIDENT:

Look, I can’t worry about that right now. As you all understand, I have this responsibility to protect democracy. You know, Konrad Adenauer was building a democratic West Germany in the late ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s and he stayed as chancellor ‘til he was 87. Three-pack-a-day smoker.

And this bed-wetting by Democrats is so predictable. Happens every cycle. Remember, Barack, when they said on the cover of the The New York Times Magazine in the summer of 2011 that we had a 17 percent chance of being reelected. 17 percent! 

BARACK OBAMA:

Yeah, but we could fix that problem by bringing unemployment down. You’ve improved the economy already and are still 20 points behind Trump on handling it. It’s not because people aren’t feeling it yet. It’s because of your age. Which isn’t fixable.

NANCY PELOSI:

There’s no shame in stepping back because of age. I did it when I was 82. I wouldn’t have stayed speaker even if we kept the majority.

STEPHEN BREYER:

I’m not a political person and so had not meant to say anything. But I should note that I stepped down when I was 83, in large part because of what happened with Ruth.

GEORGE MITCHELL:

As you may remember from our great trips to Israel when you were VP, I quit the Mideast job before I turned 80.

THE PRESIDENT:

I’m touched you’re here, George, for any reason. You guys might not know it, but George and I were extremely close in the Senate and when I left, you said I’d done more to bring Republicans and Democrats together than anybody. I told that to the crowd in Maine last July and said it might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about me.

GEORGE MITCHELL:

You did it as president, too — on Covid and infrastructure and the debt ceiling — and nobody’s going to forget it. But here’s what I fear. I’m 90 now — the only one here who has actually lived through his eighties — and no matter how good you feel, it’s really hard to get through a whole year in your eighties without being sick for a few days. Nothing major — if you’re lucky, no falls or hospitalization — just under the weather. What happens then? I’m afraid what happens is that Trump’s line about how he’s really running against Kamala Harris goes from a talking point to a real argument, which she would be in no position to rebut.

THE PRESIDENT:

That proves my point. Do I really have to remind all of you that I’m the only who has beaten Trump? Anyone else would do worse against him.

NANCY PELOSI:

With all due respect, Mr. President, we no longer believe that’s true. This cycle is different from 2020 in important ways. We think almost any younger Democrat would match up really well against Trump and would be the only way to beat Nikki Haley or some other young Republican if one of them somehow pulls an upset. Nobody here wants to see you challenged for the nomination, which would be disastrous. We just think it’s best for the party for you to step aside in favor of new leadership, as I did with Hakeem.

THE PRESIDENT:

But you knew Hakeem was good. Who would we nominate instead of me?

CHUCK SCHUMER:

That’s what primaries are for.

VAL BIDEN:

You’ll rip apart the party that Joe has done so much to unify.

CHRIS COONS:

Actually, that unity you brought is ironically why the primaries would be relatively peaceful. They’ll all be singing your praises — like the Republican candidates did with Reagan in ’88. There’s no Bernie or Warren out there, and even a progressive would be endorsing what you did. Newsom, Cooper, Whitmer, Booker, Klobuchar, Shapiro or someone else will catch on in the primaries. After Kamala gets her shot and likely comes up short, any of the rest of them would pick Warnock for number two.

JIM CLYBURN:

That works OK for me.

BILL CLINTON:

Andy Beshear is up by eight in his Kentucky re-elect in November. Crushing it for governor in a bight red state. That boy could win 55 percent against Trump.

THE PRESIDENT:

Do you really want Andy Beshear or Gretchen Whitmer handling Russia?

BILL CLINTON:

That’s what Bush said about me.

BARACK OBAMA:

And McCain said about me. None of us is indispensable, Joe. That’s a delusion that sets in when we get this job. The good news is that Democrats are rock solid behind Ukraine, so there’s zero chance of a policy shift with us in charge. Same with keeping the pressure on Bibi. We’d all miss your skills globally and with Congress, but we gotta win.

NANCY PELOSI:

The excitement of the primaries would be good for the party and the stakes are so high that we’ll be plenty unified with plenty of cash going into the general.

THE PRESIDENT:

You still haven’t convinced me that my record and incumbency wouldn’t mean more than a fresh face.

BILL CLINTON:

You understood in your ’72 race what has always been the case: These elections are about the future, not the past. Why do you think I ran on “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” in ’92 and “Let’s build a bridge to the 21st Century” in ’96?

BARACK OBAMA:

My whole ’08 campaign was “Turn the page.”

THE PRESIDENT:

It was your talent, Barack. None of these wannabes have it.

BARACK OBAMA:

Someone fresh will emerge and turn a new page.

THE PRESIDENT:

You all have given me a lot to think about. Thanks for coming by.