A half-century ago, a prominent senator who was taken seriously in matters of national security led a delegation to the White House to tell the president it was time to go.
Then the president was Richard Nixon, the issue was the Watergate scandal and the senator was Barry Goldwater.
Now comes the news — broken by The Washington Post — that U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, D-Virginia, is trying to assemble a group of Democratic senators to go to President Joe Biden to tell him it’s time to withdraw from the presidential race.
I did not have “Mark Warner as Barry Goldwater” on my political bingo card, but there we have it.
I have no idea whether this will be successful, but if Biden were to make that decision, this is one of the ways we might expect it to happen. I’m also reminded of the quote attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson: “If you strike the king, you must kill him.” I can argue the pros and cons of Biden dropping out both ways, but what seems worse than either of those scenarios (from a Democratic perspective) is what’s happening now: Prominent Democratic leaders calling Biden’s abilities into question. Put another way: By merely raising the question of Biden’s fitness, have they already inflicted a mortal wound?
I like facts and figures, especially figures, so let’s look at some.
Right now, Biden is losing.
Pay no attention to the national head-to-head polls. That’s not how we elect presidents. We elect them state-by-state. (Hillary Clinton can explain that to Democrats quite well.) There are also only a relative handful of states that matter (thank you, Electoral College), and in one swing state after another, Biden is losing. Furthermore, Trump’s margin is growing — not so much because Trump is expanding his support (he’s not) but because Biden is losing support. Let’s look at seven states Biden carried last time:
Arizona: In May, there were multiple polls with differing results, depending on how many third-party candidates were included. Some showed Biden ahead. Some showed Trump ahead. One showed the race tied. Now the three most recent polls show Biden down by margins of 6% to 11%.
Georgia: Biden has consistently trailed but at least in April, one poll showed Biden down by 2%. Now the two most recent polls show him down by 10%.
Michigan: In early May, Biden led by 4% in two different polls. By late May, he led by 1% to 2% or was tied in four different polls. In the two most recent polls, he’s down by 4% in two polls.
Nevada: In May, two different polls showed the race tied here. Now the two most recent polls show Biden down by 9% to 10%.
New Hampshire: In early May, Biden led by 6%. By later in the month, polls showed that lead was down to 3% to 4%; another showed it tied. The most recent poll shows him down by 2%.
Pennsylvania: In May, polls show Biden leading the Keystone State by 2% to 3%. Now the two most recent polls show him down by 4%.
Wisconsin: In May, polls showed Biden up by 2% to 7%. By mid-June, Biden was down by 2% to 3% in all but one poll which still showed him ahead.
Perhaps even more worrisome for Democrats should be Virginia, a state that’s gone for Democrats four times in a row, but where the most recent Roanoke College poll found the race tied. A subsequent Fox News poll came up with the same results, and both sides sure seem to believe the state is in play. Trump held a rally in Chesapeake the day after the debate; first lady Jill Biden made an appearance in Virginia Beach.
Updated on Sunday: Since I wrote this on Friday, a new series of polls — by Morning Consult for Bloomberg — have produced more favorable results for Biden. Those polls show Biden up 5% to 6% in Michigan and up by 2% to 3% in Wisconsin, although still behind in the other swing states, closing the gap in some but with his deficit growing in Pennsylvania to 7%. It’s rarely wise to rely on a single poll. We don’t know if these upward ticks for Biden in some (but not all) states are temporary blips, or the start of a trend. In any case, if the Morning Consult results are accurate and the election were held today, Trump would still win.
Biden’s slide in the poll began before his disastrous debate performance
While the clamor about getting Biden to quit the race began after the debate, voters were showing declining confidence in him before then. That means his current standing is not entirely due to the debate — and may not be easily reversible. Here’s why:
Once voters’ impressions take hold, they’re hard to change.
Campaigns are about persuading voters. They’re most effective when voters don’t know much about the candidates. Here, though, we have two candidates who are very well-known to voters.
Let’s look at how little campaigns do to change voters’ minds:
In 2020, Biden consistently led Trump in polls through the campaign.
In 2016, the polls consistently showed Hillary Clinton ahead — and, in the popular vote, she did finish ahead. That’s just not how we elect presidents.
In 2012, Obama led most of the polls, except for a short window where Mitt Romney did. Overall, Obama’s numbers wound up where they started — voters then knew all they felt they needed to know about the president; they were looking at Romney and eventually concluded they’d stick with Obama.
We have to go back to 2008 to find a campaign where there were frequent lead changes in the polls — and that campaign involved two non-incumbents (Obama and John McCain).
Realistically, there’s not much new information about either of these candidates that would persuade voters to change their minds. It looks to me as if voters have pretty well made up their minds about Biden and Trump. The numbers suggest to me that voters aren’t enamored of Trump, but they’re definitely not sold on Biden.
There are few campaign moments that capture voters’ full attention.
If you’re the candidate who’s behind — and right now, that’s definitely Biden — you need one or more of those moments. The debates are typically some of the best opportunities because, for all the shortcomings of debates (which I addressed in a previous column), they do afford voters an opportunity to see the two candidates side by side. This year, there are just two debates, and Biden has muffed one of his big opportunities. The danger for him is that by the time of the next one, Sept. 10, voters will be so locked in that nothing will make a difference.
Biden is weaker than other Democrats on the ballot
Of the seven swing states I listed above, four have Senate elections this year. I’m not counting Virginia as a swing state because if Democrats wind up having to fight for Virginia, they’ve already lost nationally.
Note that in all four of those states, Biden is losing but the Democratic candidate for Senate is ahead — barely.
Arizona: Democratic Senate candidate leads by a margin of 1%
Michigan: Democratic Senate candidate leads by a margin of 2%
Pennsylvania: Democratic Senate candidate leads by a margin of 4%
Wisconsin: Democratic Senate candidate leads by a margin of 5%.
Now look at this a different way. While those Democratic Senate candidates are ahead, they’re not ahead by much — two of those are within the margin of error, and a third is pretty darned close.
If you’re Warner, or other Democratic senators, what you’re worried about is not just Biden losing, but that he winds up pulling down all these Senate candidates, too. You might also look at these numbers and conclude that there’s plenty of opportunities for Democrats to win Senate seats, but that the presidential nominee is underperforming. That raises the question: Can you find a different nominee who would perform better?
The polls aren’t much help when it comes to measuring a different nominee
That’s because while many of the potential Democratic substitutes may be well-known to political junkies like me, they’re not well-known to the general public, with the possible exception of Vice President Kamala Harris and former first lady Michelle Obama. Reuters recently had the Ipsos polling company test matchups and found that the only Democratic alternative who polled better than Trump was Obama — she led 50% to 39%.
Harris ran nearly even with Trump (Trump 43%, Harris 42%), but Ipsos also showed Biden and Trump tied. Again, see what I said above: Ignore the national polls. What really matters (and what we haven’t seen yet) are state-by-state polls on all these possible alternatives and those don’t exist. Knowing that Harris might be nearly tied with Trump nationally in a hypothetical match-up is not nearly so useful as knowing how she’d perform state-by-state in those seven swing states above.
My takeaway, when I look at these numbers, is that Trump’s numbers aren’t great (Ipsos never got him above 43%), either, but voters just don’t know who many of these Democrats are. That might be good news for Democrats: Trump is stuck. He’s only winning because Biden’s numbers are slipping. There might be an opportunity here for a fresher candidate to turn things around. Or is there?
The scenarios ahead
Here’s where we must leave the realm of facts and figures and dive into speculation.
The best example we have of a president dropping out of a presidential race — Lyndon Johnson in 1968 — isn’t particularly helpful. Maybe Nixon would have won no matter what, but given how thin his margin over Hubert Humphrey was, we have to wonder how he would have fared against Robert F. Kennedy if Kennedy hadn’t been assassinated. Because of that, I discount 1968 as a useful guide.
Instead, here are two scenarios among many:
- The pro-replacement scenario: Biden announces he’s dropping out and that reenergizes Democratic voters. Within this scenario, there are two alternatives. One is that the party rallies around Harris, either enthusiastically or grudgingly. (The politics of displacing the nation’s first female vice president, first Black vice president, first South Asian vice president are extremely dicey for Democrats). The other is that there’s a wide-open contest for the nomination. Either way, Biden’s withdrawal sets off months of frenzy that upends the campaign and resets the race. Instead of an aging Biden in whom voters have doubts, Trump faces a younger, more energetic candidate who voters find either a) more exciting than Biden or b) more reassuring than Biden. Give voters someone other than Biden and Trump is toast.
Under this scenario, if Harris is the nominee, she is able to energize Black voters in a way Biden hasn’t this time and dispels the notion that she’s not a good campaigner. Or, alternatively, if she’s not the nominee, the different constituencies of the Democratic Party rally happily behind whoever is. - The anti-replacement scenario: Biden announces he’s dropping out, the Democratic Party tears itself apart and nominates a candidate who’s even weaker than he is. Biden’s nomination last time around had the effect of papering over natural divisions within the party. We’ve seen a lot of those start to bubble up anyway — look at how much the party is split over Israel. Biden’s departure, whenever it comes, will open up a mini-Civil War within the party over which direction it should take. While Democrats are sorting all that out, Trump is sitting there unscathed and able to characterize the new nominee in unfavorable terms before that nominee is able to characterize themselves. Replacing Biden does nothing to solve the basic problem: Voters are unhappy about many things, the economy most of all, and they blame Democrats, not Biden.
Under this scenario, if Harris is the nominee, she shows why she fizzled as a presidential candidate in 2020, just with higher stakes. Or, alternatively, if she’s not the nominee, some Democrats are outraged that their party turned against nominating her and become even more disenchanted.
Which scenario is the most likely? I’ve got no idea. And here’s the thing: Nobody else does either. But what Warner probably fears is a very different scenario: that Biden loses and takes lots of other Democrats down with him.
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