---
title: Democratic Slide
date: "2024-07-21T19:09:15+00:00"
draft: false
---
President Biden has given up the 2024 presidential race.
At least for now,
the consensus is that Biden's candidacy (and leadership) crisis hit
a turning point in the June 27 debate.
Clearly though, he maintained his candidacy for almost a month thereafter.
I would argue this implies that he himself does not want to give up on the
nomination.
The question is begged,
how was the president compelled to give up?
----
Some people attribute the decision to donors.
Many political scientists who study and model U.S. national politics--
certainly any in the Downs-Fenno-Mayhew family of theories--
recognize the importance of re-election assets,
and how political actors respond to providers of those assets.
The public diatribe surrounding money in politics suggests that *belief* in the
power of money over politicians is real.
There's been a series of events or ideas that became foci for outrage.
From the McCain-Feingold Act to the Citizens United v. FEC decision.
From the 527s of yesterday's elections to the SuperPACs of today's.
Unsurprisingly then, there was no shortage of witty quips after the
[New York Times](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/us/politics/biden-democratic-donors-trump.html)
published this little gem:
> President Biden is not,
> as one major Democratic donor put it,
> subject to a vote by the wealthy.
Now where do we stand?
Institutions were the defense of the masses against the elite,
and that defense is evidently buckling.
----
Other people attribute the decision to pressure from other Democratic Party
politicians.
I have to wonder where all these critics were hiding for the last year.
It's not like the Democratic Party is a stranger to chaotic primary seasons.
2016 and 2008 *(which involved Biden no less!)* are the obvious examples.
Biden swept every meaningful contest this year.
Jason Palmer won American Samoa and for that he will be immortalized in bar
trivia questions.
The only other candidate that has earned any delegates on the continental U.S.
is Dean Phillips.
*(Wikipedia eagerly tells me he
["is one of the wealthiest members of Congress"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Phillips)
. How curious...)*
To summarize,
you can't explain variance with a constant;
if the Democratic Party is in revolt,
something has to have changed because they *weren't* a few months ago.
With that said,
I can't actually disprove the idea.
Backroom politics being in the backroom, after all.
It begs several follow-up questions.
Like: if we take this theory as given,
why are people celebrating a plainly anti-democratic action?
Biden was elected to be the nominee of the Democratic Party.
More than 14 million people cast ballots for him and Harris as a ticket.
Sadly, this fits into that same theory that institutions are buckling.
Most importantly,
who stands to benefit from this coup d'etat of the Democratic Party?
In case you blinked,
as of two weeks ago,
presidents have broad authority and are above the law in every execution of
that authority.
Biden made promises to not use that authority.
Whether he intended to keep those promises or not,
whether his proposals for constitutional changes were serious or superficial,
he clearly didn't use his authority to keep the Democratic Party's nomination.
Will the new nominee have the same demeanor?
And could there be a link between the timings of the Supreme Court's decision
and and this party takeover?
After years of popular calls to 'pack the court',
Biden's lukewarm call for ethics reforms certainly aren't prompting a
counter-revolution.
So if there is any correlation,
I'm afraid it's part of the same trend towards autocracy.
----
Other people attribute the decision to popular opinion.
There's a major caveat needed to such a theory:
Joe Biden has already won a presidential election at the top of a ticket,
and won twice before that as VP nominee.
There literally is *no one else* with those qualifications and a beating heart.
Not to mention all the Democratic Party primaries for the presidency,
and all the primaries and elections from his 36 years serving Delaware as
senator.
([Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_Senate_election_in_Delaware)
includes a quote from *Current Biography* noting that just months
ahead of the 1972 senatorial election,
Biden trailed J. Caleb Boggs in head-to-head public polling by 30 points.)
There's another major caveat needed:
Much like the DNC nomination process,
the electoral college is not a direct democracy.
Within my **lifetime**,
a Republican nominee for president has won the support of a majority only once.
George W. Bush, in 2004, beat John Kerry with a margin of about 2.4 percent.
He was the incumbent and was leading a *(vague)* war effort and was overseeing a
strong *(not for long!)* economy.
And yet I have lived through more than 4 years of Republican presidential
administrations.
But let's examine the idea.
First, by putting things into perspective.
Trump's approval ratings peaked at 49% and,
at the end of his term,
stood at 34%.
(See
[Gallup](https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx).)
Biden's standing at 38% currently and has varied between 37% and 57%.
(See
[Gallup](https://news.gallup.com/poll/329384/presidential-approval-ratings-joe-biden.aspx)
for the numbers,
or
[538](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/)
for a neat and similar chart.)
It's not a *great* number but it doesn't have to *be* great;
it just has to be *better*.
But maybe modern American politics is going be characterized by presidents
becoming more popular after they leave office.
This phenomena certainly seems to have touched on Bush and Barack Obama.
The natural consequence is that,
in a couple years,
the Democratic Party is going to look very silly for having axed an
increasingly popular Biden.
There's also head-to-head public polling.
[538](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/2024/national/)
has an aggregated average 43.5% to 40.2% for Trump.
[RCP](https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden)
has 47.7% to 44.7% for Trump.
There seems to be ample evidence for an about 3 percent lead for Trump.
We ought to bear in mind that there are 3+ months before the election,
with which ads will be run and speeches will be made and GOTV campaigns will be
launched;
and the Republican National Convention has just concluded with much fanfare
following an attempted assassination;
and the Democratic National Convention is weeks away still.
That leads neatly into my biggest gripe with this theory.
After all the strife about the superdelegate system in the 2016 convention,
we are headed into the 1968 convention.
We have tossed the only institution that let popular opinion dictate whose
names are on the ballot.
Is *that* what people mean by popular opinion causing Biden's decision?
----
Nothing happens in a bubble.
There's no doubt that Trump's Republican Party has challenged our democratic
institutions.
We really can't afford the same populism from the Democratic Party at once.
But I don't have a reason to believe that one party or the other is
'fundamentally' more resistant to democratic slide.
On the contrary,
I expect preferences for autocracy to form around the foundations of democracy
*(i.e., who stands to benefit from those foundations crumbling?)*
rather than any true demographic, ideological, or socioeconomic cleavages.
----
For all the reporting about crime and violence,
I do not find Chicago to be a dangerous city.
*(I suppose I am thus predisposed to doubt all the reporting about Joe Biden's
age.)*
But it seems we're racing back to Chicago's 1968 DNC and,
wow!,
I wish I wasn't in the front row seat.