The Honesty Thing
The price for supporting Biden is the left's credibility.
There are two reasons why Joe Biden needs to withdraw from the presidential race. One reason—the reason that gets the most attention within the Democratic Party—is that he appears likely to lose. The other reason is that he is legitimately too old to do the job for the next four years. In much of the post-debate panic about Biden, these issues get blended into one: He appears likely to lose, because he is too old. But it’s important to understand these as two distinct concerns. Glossing over that distinction is causing the left wing of the party, in particular, to flirt with a disaster.
Biden is polling badly and threatening to drag down Democratic Congressional candidates with him. That cold read of the polling is reportedly what spurred Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer other top Democrats to really begin the full court press to get Biden to drop out. The counterpoint from Team Biden ever since the debate has been: It’s early, the race is close, nobody really knows what will happen in November, we need to rally around Biden and win. There is at least some truth in this. Polls in July, fluctuating from news event to news event, do not necessarily predict the vote count in November. The debate was bad, but it could in theory recede into memory as more stuff continually happens to supersede it in voters’ minds. So much of the red and blue votes are already baked in and unchangeable that it is possible to make a somewhat plausible argument that forcing Biden out due to today’s polls is an overreaction, and the thing to do now is for the party to unite and throw everything into the campaign, because the danger of a new Trump administration is so extreme.
In fact, this is the calculation that Bernie Sanders and AOC, the leaders of the Democratic left, made: Biden is wounded and under attack but he is going to be the nominee and we can extract some good policy promises in exchange for giving him our support now. So, in the last week, AOC backed Biden and Bernie published an NYT op-ed urging everyone to unite around Biden and then Biden tacked left and came out for ending medical debt and national rent control and some other things. I can see why AOC and Bernie made this calculation, and I interpret it as a good faith attempt to seize a crisis in order to elevate the left’s political priorities. I think that it was a mistake on their part for two reasons. One is that Biden will lose and his promises will be worth nothing and we all would have been better served if they had used their political capital to help get Biden out of the race. But what I want to talk about here is the other reason, which is less discussed, but even more important in the long run.
The other reason is that rallying behind Biden now will force Democrats in general and the left in particular to lie to voters for the next four months. The lie they will be forced to tell voters is “Joe Biden is not too old to do this job for another four years.” That is both false and a necessary message to hammer home if they want a legitimate shot at getting Biden elected. Backing him therefore requires the sacrifice of something beyond political capital: credibility.
Now, I don’t want to sound naive here. National electoral politics comes with a certain level of lying built into it. For example Senators sometimes have to say things like “my friend and colleague, Ted Cruz,” when they would really prefer to say “this guy is a piece of shit.” Such niceties are sometimes necessary for the smooth exercise of power. (Writers are on the opposite end of this spectrum—we can speak honestly, but we have no power.) We’re not talking about little white lies like that though. We’re talking about lying about the fundamental ability of our candidate for president to do the job of president. That is a big lie. Asserting it as a fact makes us liars. And lying to voters is something that makes voters cynical and dismissive of all political messaging and, ultimately, receptive to a guy like Donald Trump, who gives the appearance of “telling it like it is.” Credibility, a reputation for honesty, is a priceless thing in the cynical world of politics. Sacrificing it is a mistake.
I’m less concerned about the honesty of, you know the median Democratic senator (most of whom lie constantly) than I am about the honesty of the politicians that I consider to be representing the truth in politics. I have left wing political beliefs because I believe that they are true. Bernie Sanders and AOC are among the few major national politicians who I believe speak the truth (mostly, within reason) about what America faces and what America needs. Even if they are making a well-intentioned effort to get helpful laws passed by backing Biden right now, I don’t think they have fully thought through what they would be giving up to do so. Trump had his own Big Lie, and now they would have one of their own too. It erodes the trust in the left and makes us just another group of lying politicians. The left has never had a majority in the Democratic Party, but we have had the moral high ground. Part of the reason is that we are more honest. Consider the price of sacrificing that.
It is not possible to square this circle. It is not possible to be completely honest with voters and also to successfully sell Joe Biden. If you want to see what trying to square the circle looks like in practice, all you have to do is watch Bernie Sanders—a guy who wants to be honest!—struggle to do so in his interview with The New Yorker yesterday:
NYer: I watched President Biden with Lester Holt Monday night, and I watched him on “360 with Speedy Morman,” and he is definitely getting out there more than he was the night after the debate. But just to be honest, Senator, I mean, the guy has trouble completing a single sentence.
Bernie: He does… I’m not aware that anyone thinks that Joe Biden is the best candidate in the history of the world, or that he’s an ideal candidate, and nobody will argue with you that he has a . . . [trails off] He admitted it. Sometimes he gets confused about names. You’re right—sometimes he doesn’t put three sentences together. It is true. But the reality of the moment is, in my view, he is the best candidate the Democrats have for a variety of reasons, and trying, in an unprecedented way, to take him off the ticket would do a lot more harm than good.
Wow, great endorsement. Do you see the problem here? There is an unbridgeable gap between telling the truth about Joe Biden and saying things that might motivate enough Americans to vote for Joe Biden. You can see above Bernie’s attempt to do both, which comes out as “This guy is too old to complete a sentence, I don’t even like his old ass, but we’re stuck with him, and we need to beat the other guy, so let’s go.” Does this sound like a winning message to you? Is this the message that is going to drive the voter turnout in swing states necessary for Joe Biden to defeat Trump? Is this the type of messaging that is going to turn around the existing high level of unpopularity that Biden has, and catapult him to higher popularity, on the road to victory? No it is not. This is saying “He’s too old, yeah, but the other guy is worse.” This statement may be true, but it is not the slogan of a winner.
So you know that if the Democrats stick with Biden, they will instead have to forge ahead with a stronger message. They will have to try to convince Americans that Joe Biden—who is obviously a fragile and rapidly aging man, who followed up his disastrous debate performance with a string of speeches and interviews in which he could not even successfully read text off a Teleprompter, and who cannot even advocate for his own newly adopted good leftist policies because he is incapable of clearly communicating them to the public—is just fine. Good to go for four more years. They will have to push that message, because the only alternative is a sure loss. All of Biden’s supporters in the party will be enlisted to push that message. And everyone in America will see all of the Democrats pushing this obvious lie about this man who is too old to hide the fact that he is too old, and the argument from the left that Republicans are the ones who lie and we are the ones who tell the truth will lose whatever validity it had in the minds of much of the country.
Bernie and AOC made a bad call on this one. Now we have to hope that the cutthroat centrists can push Biden out, and save the left from this trap that could fuck up our credibility for years to come.
Previously: The Hole at the Heart of the Democratic Party; The End of Liberal Institutionalism; The Left Is Not Joe Biden’s Problem. Joe Biden Is.
For Defector this week, I went to Philly and wrote about Boots Ennis, the next great Philly fighter. He is the real deal.
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This is absolutely true. The thing about people Joe Biden's age is that THEY ARE NOT GOING TO MAGICALLY GET BETTER. Joe isn't going to be any better than he is right now. He's not going to be able to speak better, or answer questions better, or make better decisions on what he says and does. This is it. He clearly cannot serve another 4 year term in his current state... And THIS IS AS GOOD AS HE'S GOING TO BE.
This is spot on, the kind of good-faith critique we need more of. Everything about this situation feels like an Amando Iannucci satire of the Democratic Party--including the dogged loyalty of the party's left which is never reciprocated.