Politics
/
August 16, 2024
Hey, can we circle back to when many supposedly intelligent people were making one of the most obviously ridiculous political arguments of all time?
President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a campaign rally at Sherman Middle School on July 5, 2024, in Madison, Wisconsin.
(Scott Olson / Getty Images)
On July 19th, 2024, a man by the name of Christopher Bouzy posted on X (formerly Twitter) about the then-raging debate on whether President Joe Biden should end his bid for a second term. Bouzy was not alone in discussing this topic—at the time, it was at the top of mind for practically anyone interested in politics. And as a liberal X power user, he was not alone in insisting that Biden needed to stay in the race. But what made Bouzy unique in this moment—and what has caused his post to stay in my mind ever since—was his sheer enthusiasm. He did not provide a theory of the case as to why he believed that Biden could win, an argument against his potential replacements, or even just a defense of the president’s record.
Instead, he said this: “Biden said fuck your polls, fuck backstabbing Democratic lawmakers, fuck wealthy donors, and fuck the mainstream media. He is not stepping aside. Let’s go!”
Attached was an edit of the president dancing in front of a massive crowd, set to hype music.
Fortunately for all of us, Biden did, in fact, step aside two days after Bouzy’s post, and we’re all far better off for it. Since Vice President Kamala Harris replaced Biden in the race, Democrats have surged in every metric you would want to surge in, from enthusiasm to fundraising to candidate favorability to head-to-head polling against Donald Trump. A race that appeared at times to be on track to an inevitable Trump landslide now has a reasonable chance of ending in a Democratic one.
In my assessment of the state of the Electoral College, I found nearly 100 electoral votes worth of states that once leaned toward Trump and now lean toward Harris. It’s a gargantuan shift, one so large that it’s practically without precedent in this political era, and it has turned the entire election on its head.
Such staggering, immediate success for Harris was undoubtedly unexpected, but the critical question right now is this: Could some kind of surge have been predicted? Those like Bouzy—call them BlueAnon—would prefer us to believe that it couldn’t have been and that we overlook their prior insistence that a change in the election would doom the Democrats. Rather than standing behind their words and lamenting the decision of the man they cast as Trump’s strongest opponent to leave the race, they immediately rallied behind and started propagandizing for his replacement.
Practically none have admitted that they were wrong to demand that Biden stay in. If they could have it their way, their opposition to his withdrawal would just be quietly forgotten, with their points against it remembered as reasonable concerns that Harris managed to overcome by doing better than anyone at the time expected.
The problem for them—and for us, considering that some of those who took these stances include some of the most influential academics and writers in American liberalism today—is that none of their points in favor of keeping Biden on the ticket were sound. At best, they relied on uninformed superstition; at worst, they carelessly spread misinformation.
Current Issue
To start, let’s look at one of the biggest arguments some made to fight against a ticket swap: that it would jeopardize the party’s ballot access in several states where filing deadlines were coming up. This, to put it bluntly, was nonsense.
When BlueAnon brought up states where filing deadlines for new candidates or parties had passed, they ignored the fact that a Biden replacement wouldn’t count as a new candidate. This was due to the simple fact the Democratic Party, as of July 2024, didn’t have a nominee yet. It had a presumptive nominee in Joe Biden, who won the primaries and had a majority of delegates pledged to vote for him at the convention. But that convention hadn’t happened yet, which meant that Biden was as much of an actual Democratic nominee as you or I was at the time. The party was the one that had ballot access, and that ballot access was set to be in place whoever the nominee was, whether that be Joe Biden or Kamala Harris or my dog.
You didn’t need to be an election lawyer to see that there was no problem here—you just needed basic common sense and intellectual honesty. But this didn’t stop people with gigantic platforms from spreading this falsehood as if it shut down the entire debate.
Along with these blatantly inaccurate claims about procedure—which, in one of the lowest points of the saga, included none other than DNC chair Jaime Harrison arguing that a potential August ballot access deadline in Ohio mandated that Biden receive an early nomination in mid-July—there were also attempts at substantive electoral arguments on Biden’s behalf. Again, these points were alarmingly half-baked.
Some rested their claims on the idea that dropping Biden would give up the party’s “incumbency advantage,” without ever explaining why being an incumbent during a moment where the public broadly wanted change—and when said incumbent was deeply unpopular—was supposed to be an advantage. Others, like Boston College history professor and liberal social media star Heather Cox Richardson, tried to point to history to say that, in Richardson’s words, “if you change a presidential nominee at this point in the game, the candidate loses.” Not only did Richardson base this on a sample size of exactly two elections, 1952 and 1968, her argument rested on the highly contestable implication that Democrats lost in those two years only because they didn’t run their incumbents and went with lower-profile alternatives. Given that Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson were both widely unpopular when they dropped out, this is, at the very least, a very contestable claim, far from something that should be stated as a matter of fact.
At best, these people were misinformed and careless with their platforms and their credibility. At worst, they simply didn’t care about the quality of their arguments as long as they served their point. Either way, they demonstrated the exact kind of reckless, electorally incompetent behavior that liberals have long said was only the domain of cult-like Republicans or starry-eyed leftists.
For a faction that has proudly advertised itself as a group of hard-nosed political realists who truly care about elections and their consequences, they were remarkably willing to delve into conspiracism and superstition as soon as reality didn’t suit their preferences. This may not make them unique, but it does make them far less serious. Unless we see some real, meaningful mea culpas, I’m not going to take these commentators seriously—and you shouldn’t, either.
Can we count on you?
In the coming election, the fate of our democracy and fundamental civil rights are on the ballot. The conservative architects of Project 2025 are scheming to institutionalize Donald Trump’s authoritarian vision across all levels of government if he should win.
We’ve already seen events that fill us with both dread and cautious optimism—throughout it all, The Nation has been a bulwark against misinformation and an advocate for bold, principled perspectives. Our dedicated writers have sat down with Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders for interviews, unpacked the shallow right-wing populist appeals of J.D. Vance, and debated the pathway for a Democratic victory in November.
Stories like these and the one you just read are vital at this critical juncture in our country’s history. Now more than ever, we need clear-eyed and deeply reported independent journalism to make sense of the headlines and sort fact from fiction. Donate today and join our 160-year legacy of speaking truth to power and uplifting the voices of grassroots advocates.
Throughout 2024 and what is likely the defining election of our lifetimes, we need your support to continue publishing the insightful journalism you rely on.
Thank you,
The Editors of The Nation
