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+---
+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.
+