If Trump wins in November, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., who are in their mid-70s, will likely retire, allowing Trump to appoint younger replacements and cement the court’s 6-3 conservative majority for decades to come.
The impact on reproductive rights, voting rights, and other freedoms once guaranteed would be devastating.
It would be irresponsible for Democratic leadership and the Biden campaign to act as if last Thursday’s presidential debate never happened. We saw what we saw and heard what we heard. You don’t win elections on magical thinking.
Biden looked alarmingly weak, struggling to complete thoughts, let alone speak sentences, and Trump confirmed his fears about what four more years of Biden in the White House would mean for the nation and the world.
Polls before the debate had shown the race virtually neck and neck, with Trump holding narrow leads in several battleground states. If Biden now falls too far behind, the party will have to consider an alternative candidate.
The window to begin an orderly process to select a new nominee for 2024 closed about 14 months ago when Biden, then 80, announced he was running again. Changing candidates midway would likely be disruptive and divisive.
The most relevant precedent, in 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson lost his reelection bid, didn’t go over too well: At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, amid clouds of tear gas and rioters fighting police in the streets, delegates gave the presidential nomination to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had never won a primary. (Humphrey went on to lose the general election to Richard M. Nixon, and the rest is history.)
This year’s Democratic Convention will be held in Chicago, and history can have a cruel sense of humor.
But as we’ve learned over the past decade, nothing is impossible in American politics anymore. It’s not impossible if Trump could have won in 2016, and it’s not impossible if he’s a viable candidate now, even after his conviction on 34 felony counts stemming from inciting the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and paying hush money to an adult film actress.
The Biden campaign’s response to this gaffe has been unconvincing. Biden’s powerful speech at the rally on Friday was good, but of course there’s a difference between the way he stomps and parries in a debate and the way he speaks scripted. The impression Biden left in the debate will take time and repetition to erase.
A Biden campaign statement described those who question whether Biden should continue in the race as “bedwetters.” I have no patience for Democrats looking for reasons to panic. I have always believed that voters will ultimately view Biden’s waning vitality and track record as preferable to Trump’s tireless narcissism and track record of failure.
It may yet happen, but I wasn’t expecting the kind of uproar that occurred in the debate.
Biden’s replacement is likely to be Vice President Harris, but what about the argument that she is likely to lose to Trump? Neither premise is necessarily valid. The party could rally around Harris. The candidates could be Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, California Governor Gavin Newsom, or Georgia Senator Raphael G. Warnock. The party is not without a bench.
Biden is determined to continue his campaign and reportedly has the full support of his family and close aides, so the president may well resent being asked to step aside by know-it-all columnists and commentators who have never run for student government office.
But there are voices he respects, including veteran Democratic warriors like Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer of New York, who are understandably echoing Biden’s arguments for now.
But they can’t forget how weak and shaky Biden looked on Thursday night, and they owe it to their party and the country to keep a cool head and watch the polls — and organize an intervention if Biden’s approval rating drops.
Democrats can and, at this point, should hope that Biden can reassure the public and get his reelection back on track, but this is an emergency, and hope is not a plan.