Joe Biden Should Not Run

Breaking news: the FBI just found another 6 improperly stored classified documents in Biden’s possession, this time in his Delaware home. These are different documents than the one stored next to the Camaro in the garage, or the ones in his home library, or the ones at the Penn Biden center, or…

Biden’s record thing is different than the Trump record thing, and there are already many articles explaining why. These articles are long and boring even for a sicko like me, which is to say completely inaccessible for the average voter who has things like hobbies and a family and a job that doesn’t involve reading long and boring articles for hours every day.

Last Thursday Biden confidently told reporters “There’s no ‘there’ there,” but that’s not really his call to make. Not your call either, no matter how many articles you read. That call belongs to the FBI and they already made it, they are the “there” that was there. There will be no exoneration, no matter what they find. In the court of public opinion you’re guilty the moment accusations fly.

It’s pretty obvious what comes next, at least short-term. The Trump classified documents scandal is now a dead letter, and everything Democrats said about it can and will be used against them. House Republicans will loudly launch an investigation, which will in turn launch shrill and endless news coverage; Fox News and MSNBC will shout “hypocrite” at each other until one or both drop dead of hypoxia.

Whatever. That’s politics in 2023.

But the Biden document scandal — or lack thereof — does not have to be politics in 2024. We don’t have to write endless think pieces explaining why what Biden did is different from what Trump did. We can spare ourselves the trouble, and much more trouble besides, with a single timely retirement.

By all indications, Biden plans to announce his 2024 campaign shortly after the State of the Union address in February. He should not.

Biden must not run. We must have an open primary. Damn the torpedoes.

There are torpedoes — big ones — to damn. As Ed Kilgore points out, Biden has no heir apparent, which means that Biden stepping down would create a power vacuum and a vicious fight to fill it. In some beautiful alternate universe in which Democrats acknowledge the existence of a future once in a while, our 80-year-old President chose a suitable heir as a running mate back in 2020. Unfortunately for us, we live in a universe where Biden put Kamala Harris on the ticket instead: a woman who fails the Turing Test every time she finds a microphone. All indications point to Harris bunkered down atop the Dunning Kruger curve forever: she will run in ‘24 and the media will hamstring her opponents by transmuting regular primary politics into unforgivable attacks against a woman of color.

Primary risks aside, Democratic infighting would distract from GOP infighting, arguably the greatest show on earth right now. There’s something to be said for sitting back while Republicans devour each other alive on CSPAN. Keeping Uncle Joe in the driver’s seat allows the Democrats to offer a known and stable quanitity while the GOP gibbers and shrieks and makes their old mistakes.

This hold-what-you’ve-got plan sounds pretty solid, at least initially, but there’s a problem. Like most Democratic strategies, the Biden ‘24 gambit assumes that conditions will remain the same for the next two years. A bet on time standing still is hell of a risk under regular circumstances; doubly so when one element that needs to stay the same will be 82 years old by inauguration day. Democrats have spent the last three years insisting that Biden’s as sharp as ever: what are the odds he slips into senility, never mind a casket, over the next two?

Octogenarian durability aside, a heavily-armed Republican House majority has Biden surrounded and firmly in their crosshairs. These next two years will be wall-to-wall investigative committees. The House is going to impeach Biden, possibly several times. It will conduct endless hearings about The Laptop; we are all going to know way more about Hunter’s dick than we ever wanted to.

And now, thanks to Biden’s unorthodox filing system, we are all going to hear about classified documents until we beg the House to classify their document hearings so we can stop hearing about them.

The Democratic party cannot stop House histrionics. What they can do, however, is decide whether all that energy and fury gets directed at the 2024 candidate or at a one-term President on his way to greener pastures.

It is still possible to create a world where the Republicans circle-jerk themselves to death over Biden’s real and imagined crimes while a different Democrat stands to the side, looks directly into the camera, and says “while these clowns obstruct the workings of the United States Government, here’s what I’m going to do about Medicare for all.”

That Democrat will be bruised and bloody from a vicioius primary, without a doubt. But maybe that primary needs to happen. How else is the party to find an heir? If nothing else, a pitched 2024 battle might force the Democratic party to become the kind of institution able to stand up straight, make eye contact with the American people, and say “Sometimes a specific woman of color is a terrible candidate and it is neither racist nor misogynistic to say so.”

That bloodbath of a primary is unavoidable; the question is when, not if, we have it. None of the problems Kilgore outlines go away if we hold tight to Biden, we just kick them down the road to whenever Biden kicks the bucket. Holding steady through ‘24 cannot coronate an heir, or heal the moderate/progressive divide, or facilitate the growth of a meaningful leftist movement within American politics. It can only prolong our current moment.

Biden ‘24 also does nothing to address the material and cultural conditions that gave birth to the MAGA movement in the first place, which means the stakes aren’t going down any time soon. Every election is going to be the most important election from now on: a matter of life and death for increasing numbers of people. There will never be a good time for the Democratic party to temporarily fall apart. The American conservative movement has convinced itself that all trans people are pedophiles and are rapidly convincing themselves that their political opponents operate on behalf of Satan. Liberal ideology has no built-in framework for an enemy that sincerely believes in witchcraft; the Democratic party can barely comprehend the nature of the danger we face, let alone address it.

Ultimately, the Kilgore plan is the same as every other Democratic plan: hold the line and dig the trenches. Buy time. I bought time in 2016 and again in 2020 but at a certain point one has to ask: what are we buying ourselves time for? The complete consolidation of power and wealth into the hands of a few tech billionaires that replace workers with AI? Techno-feudalism, mindless consumption, brains burned out through endless electronic stimulation, isolated and stunted and alone? Babies who spend more time looking at an iPad than their parents who grow into kids who can’t make eye contact who grow into adults stuffed full of chemicals?

Not only do we live in a dying world, we live in a world that ought to die. Conservatives offer an alternative, even if it is a rotten and nightmarish one. In 2022 the Dobbs decision tipped the scales in favor of our own fucked reality but that balance could shift quickly. An animal will gnaw its own leg off to escape a trap. Republican voters are doing something similar to the body politic.

An open Democratic primary is unlikely to generate an actual alternative to the two hideous futures currently on offer, but it at least provides an opportunity for motion. Some candidate with a vision that goes beyond shoring up the battlements while they actively crumble. An acknowlegement, at the very least, that the present is untenable.

Do the right thing, Joe. Take a load off. Spend some time with your dogs. 50 years of politics is more than enough.

Come on, man.

Thumbnail image by Barbara from Pixabay