Joe Biden says he's still in the race, but the voices calling for him to go are getting louder, even after congressional Democrats reportedly resigned themselves to the idea that Biden wasn't going anywhere. Divisions are popping up everywhere, as the Democratic Party appears to be splitting into two opposing camps that have different ideas about the best way to salvage any hope of winning the election. One camp thinks the party is better off uniting behind Biden and not giving Trump the advantage of a divided party, and the other wants to cut Biden loose and hopes someone else will emerge who has even the slightest chance of winning.
Neither option looks promising, but famed Democratic strategist James Carville is clearly in the latter camp. He went absolutely nuclear in an op-ed in the New York Times on Thursday.
"Mark my words: Joe Biden is going to be out of the 2024 presidential race," Carville wrote. "Whether he is ready to admit it or not. His pleas on Monday to congressional Democrats for support will not unite the party behind him. Mr. Biden says he’s staying in the race, but it’s only a matter of time before Democratic pressure and public and private polling lead him to exit the race. The jig is up, and the sooner Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders accept this, the better. We need to move forward."
There is, of course, a caveat.
"But it can’t be by anointing Vice President Kamala Harris or anyone else as the presumptive Democratic nominee," he says. "We’ve got to do it out in the open — the exact opposite of what Donald Trump wants us to do."
What Carville is calling for is an open and transparent process.
We’re going to nominate a new ticket in a highly democratic and novel way, not in the backrooms of Washington, D.C., or Chicago.
We’re at the stage where we need constructive ideas for how to move forward. Representative Jim Clyburn and the Times Opinion columnist Ezra Klein have spoken about a Democratic mini-primary, and I want to build on that.
I want to see the Democratic Party hold four historic town halls between now and the Democratic National Convention in August — one each in the South, the Northeast, the Midwest and the West.
It's a cute idea. If only the Democratic Party had the opportunity to vet potential nominees sooner. Oh, wait, it did. There was a whole primary. Biden even had a couple of challengers whom he resoundingly defeated.
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Carville is under the impression that pretty much anyone on the Democrats' bench could "beat the pants off Mr. Trump," even though most polls show these replacements performing no better than Biden — and mostly worse. Carville doesn't seem to have an accurate pulse reading of the situation.
"I’m not worried about our talent. We have a staggeringly talented new generation of leaders," he said.
Polls suggest otherwise. Trump's position improves when pitted against all the likely alternatives, when the same man most voters think isn't capable of handling the presidency is doing better than the back-ups, that's a problem.
"I’m not worried about the money. Americans will be fired up by this open process, and many are already fired up to beat Mr. Trump," Carville continued.
Again, voters are used to knowing who their candidate is by the time summer rolls around, so an extended pseudo-primary is likely to be divisive, not unifying.
"I’m not worried about time. We have excitement and momentum on our side," Carvile insisted.
No, you don't. We're less than four months from Election Day, and the time for this to have taken place has long passed.
"And our opponent?" Carville asked. "The one born with a platinum spoon but no moral compass? The pathological liar? The felon? The predator found liable for sexual abuse? The wannabe dictator? The Putin lickspittle? I’m not worried about him, either."
You should be. Voters have already concluded that the lawsuits and criminal trials against Trump were politically motivated and rejected the scare tactics warning about the end of our democracy. Lord knows the whole Putin thing has gotten so old and overused; do voters even listen to that garbage anymore?
Donald Trump was headed to victory before the debate. Carville is lying to himself and Democratic voters because if Trump has proven anything this cycle, it's that he's resilient and the Democrats' efforts to destroy him haven't worked.
Of course, the big problem with Carville's idea is that party leaders aren't likely to support it. And why should they? They've rigged elections before. How do you think Hillary won the nomination in 2016? They aren't about to trust the little people in the party to decide for them.
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