This is how you do it:
Q: Do you think it’s responsible for Joe Biden to be at the top of the ticket?
Gov. Gavin Newsom: Responsible? I revere his record. What he’s done in three years is a masterclass. Close to 15 million jobs is eight times more than the last three Republican presidents combined.
It’s because of his age that President Biden has been so successful. He has character and wisdom. We’ve seen his bipartisan approach result in the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS Act, border security solutions. What a gift to have that for four more years.
He’s not going anywhere and people need to get a grip and start making the positive case for his reelection instead of sitting around calling for the fainting couch like Aunt Pittypat.
Here’s James Fallows who says all that needs to be said on this subject:
A possible end for magical thinking about an ‘open convention.’
When it comes to the Democrats choosing a 2024 ticket other than Biden-Harris, I’ve long been in the “it’s too late” camp. The latest “not too late” time for Joe Biden to disclose that he planned to step aside would have been in the first half of last year.
At that point he would instantly have been transformed into a lame duck, on issues ranging from Ukraine to judicial appointments. You can easily imagine Mitch McConnell’s speech the very day after a Biden step-down announcement: “Next year, the American people will decide who should lead them in the future. We would do them a disservice by rushing to confirm any more nominees, or major policy changes, in this twilight period for a one-term president. Therefore… ”
Still, if Biden were going to do it, that was the time. Time enough for other candidates to make their decisions, assemble their staffs, raise their money. Time to try to protect the administration’s remaining plans—infrastructure investments, economic management—from being chewed up in the Democrat’s own primary-election struggles.
That didn’t happen. By last fall it was “too late” for any orderly Democratic alternative to Biden-Harris. But in these past few weeks, as I noted last time, the press has been abuzz with talk about Biden’s age and the possibilities of dumping him. The arguments mostly followed this two-step logic:
Step One: Sure, maybe Biden has been a good president. Perhaps a very good one. But his job now is to stay in office, and at that job he will be bad.
Step Two: Somebody else would be a better candidate! We don’t know who, but an “open convention” could be a good place to find out. (This is where the magical thinking begins.) So let’s talk more about dumping Biden, even though that will hurt him if he ends up as nominee, because the payoff will be getting somebody better.
I said a week ago that I we couldn’t be sure whether this sentiment would grow. This past week there was powerful pushback.⁴
To me the most significant and sweeping was a long opening segment by Lawrence O’Donnell this past Monday. It was deeply informed, and highly informative, about what the job of political leadership actually entails, and why those realities worked strongly against the “dump Biden” concept.
You can watch the whole thing below.
To summarize its main points:
Everyone who’d like to swap out Joe Biden thinks “some other” Democrat would do a better job. But they never say exactly who that other Democrat would be. That is because as soon as you name a specific person—Newsom, Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, JB Pritzker, Wes Moore, Gina Raimondo, Rafael Warnock, on down the long list—the flaws of that person become the issue. Also, when you name one person, the ten people you’re not naming will say, What about us? If you start out by skipping Kamala Harris, you have urgent additional explaining to do. If your argument is that Biden is “too weak,” where do you turn for evidence that others would be stronger? For instance: I am a fan of Gavin Newsom. But so far in hypothetical polls he has done worse against Trump than Biden has.
What about money? The $100 million+ that Joe Biden has raised so far has been raised for the Biden-Harris ticket. Legally it can be complicated to roll that over, to someone a wide-open convention might choose. So that new person would start out, in mid-summer, with a small rather than a bulging war chest, unless the person were Kamala Harris.
And what about experience? Almost none of these “better then Biden” people has ever run for national office. That process is surprisingly hard, and involves a lot of instructive bumps-and-bruises along the way. As Joe Biden knows, from the presidential races he lost in in 1988 and 2008. Kamala Harris knows it too, from having lost (to Joe Biden) in 2020. Some “better” candidate chosen at the convention would be set up for rookie season self-education, starting ten weeks before election day. You can already write the “Dems in disarray!” stories from the campaign trail.
Co-sign. It’s been too late for a very long time. Everyone needs to focus and they need to focus NOW.