Quick housekeeping note: It turns out that the only way to paywall voiceover also involves limiting comments to premium subscribers only. Apparently this is a feature Substack is working on; here’s hoping. Meanwhile, I’m putting the voiceover in a separate post so that we can all have a conversation. Comments are open!
If you’re on Twitter, you already know that I have spent the last week calling for Trump to step down from the nomination. This is a riff on the eleventy billion Democratic posters, pundits, and politicians asking why the media is so focused on Biden when Trump is right there, lying and being awful and getting ready to destroy American democracy. All this sturm und drang about Biden and his age and how he ought to step down, they say. Why not Trump? Why is the media going so easy on Trump?
The idea that the media is going easy on Trump because, after nearly 9 years of virtually nonstop attacks, they have turned a critical eye on the Democratic nominee is very, very funny, but let us set that aside for now. Let us also set aside the question of who, precisely, would replace Trump; a person who would surely enjoy MAGA support in this ridiculous fantasy where Trump is the kind of person who would ever, ever step away from a chance at power, redemption, and revenge; the kind of person who would surely endorse his successor.
But hey, you want the media to call for Trump to step down? The New York Times obliged this morning, and so will I. I would genuinely, authentically like Trump to leave politics forever. Please step down, Mr Trump. Go away. Go to an island somewhere and start a reality TV show, or sell real estate, or take a few strokes off your golf game. Virtue signaling on steroids, this take. So controversial, yet so brave.
Also though, from a campaign perspective, Trump should not step down.
It makes no sense. Why would he? He is on track to win this election. Trump was ahead in the polls even before the Democrats collectively woke up to what kind of man they nominated. It gives me no joy, and in fact fills me with existential despair, to remind you that one out of every four adults in America voted for Trump in 2020. They voted for him because they like him, or at least they think he’ll do a decent job as President. With the crucial exception of abortion, his articulated policy positions are reasonably popular. He is also liar and a fraud and a danger to democracy itself, and he represents a significant number of Americans.
People continue to behave as though Trump is the problem. Trump is certainly a problem; he is a cult leader, he is holding the GOP together despite increasingly obvious fractures and constant infighting; it will be a good day for democracy when he shuffles off this mortal coil. If Trump had lost in 2016, MAGA might have died out, or at least simmered down and waited for the next demagogue to come along. Here though, in 2024, MAGA is ascendent. It has captured one of our two political parties because most conservative voters prefer MAGA populism to Reagan conservatism. Getting rid of Trump does not change that math. We are stuck with the spirit of Project 2025 regardless.
I have spent most of the last two weeks alternating between white-hot rage and existential paralysis. I want to grab this whole country by the collar and scream that winning is really, truly the only thing that matters. Biden’s obvious decline would have doomed his candidacy even without the mass revolt of faithful Democratic donors, pundits, and apparatchiks — who, by the way, would never have revolted if they thought Biden had anything like a decent chance at victory, since Biden definitely cannot win after all this friendly fire. Trump can win. That’s why Biden needs to step down. That’s why Trump, politically speaking, should not.
It is truly that simple. Just as there are no gold stars for purity that will shield you from what’s coming even if you’re virtuous and vote third party, or refuse to vote because you correctly despise the shambling narcissistic husk holding his party hostage and actively enabling one of the worst war crimes of the 21st century — just as there are no gold stars for any of that, there are also no gold stars for having the best policies, or being best for America’s future, or even for trying your very, very hardest. There is the White House, and there is nothing. You don’t even get a set of steak knives for coming in second.
Every time I crack a paper or log onto social media I feel myself immediately losing my mind. If I wanted to read fiction I’d read one of the books I keep promising people I’ll get to. Wall-to-wall fantasy, right now, ranging from the truly deranged QAnonesque theories of CNN and MSNBC tampering with Biden’s audio to sabotage him to the more understandable delusion that Trump could somehow lose to Biden in November. Not to mention the right, of course, which has plunged deep into hallucinatory psychosis: a hellscape of demons, globalists, pedophiles, and overwhelming support from most of America if the Dems would just stop rigging the election.
Enough. Wake up. Get your head in the game for God’s sake. If the Democrats can pry the nomination from Biden’s arthritic fingers within the next couple weeks there is still time to nominate someone else that at least stands a chance of beating Trump. Six weeks until the DNC: longer than France took to run their snap elections from start to finish (which, by the way, the right lost because center and left-wing candidates who could not win dropped out to unify the vote). I believe the chances of Biden standing down, willingly or unwillingly, are close to zero, but it is truly our last off-ramp. Because even if every pundit, politician, journalist, and media outlet spends every second of the next four months screaming for Trump to step down, he won’t. He’s not going anywhere. And he’s winning.
For the people who believe Biden is our best chance to beat Trump, there are two questions I would like to see them reckon with:
1) How likely do you think it is that Biden will have a repeat of his debate debacle in public between now and November? And I don't mean little flubs like calling Zelensky Putin or calling VP Harris Trump—I mean repeatedly losing his train of thought and looking lost and confused for several minutes.
2) How important do you think such an episode would be? How many voters would say, okay, no thanks to that?
I ask because every argument I've seen for keeping him top of ticket hinges on that episode being a one-off, an aberrant departure from his normal day-to-day existence. And if there is a repeat, that assumption no longer works, and all those arguments have the rhetorical rug pulled out from under them. And if this happens after the convention when his nomination is finalized, then it's too late to change course.
There are a bajillion data points that Biden's a sane & normal person who's been verbally gaffe-prone all his life. And there're a few data points that Joe, as he's aged, tires more easily and when he tires, HE CAN'T DEBATE FOR SHIT.
Fuck the NY Times and fuck everybody else obsessing about this. At this late stage, the only possible candidate to replace Joe without total chaos & circular firing squad anarchy ensuing is Kamila..
Unsurprisingly, most of the folks shouting for Joe to quit aren't shouting for Kamila to replace him. Because most of you are media goofs who'd feast on chaos and knife-fighting and churn out endless shitty 'analysis' of the bloody fight to be the nominee.
In a couple months, 8 weeks before the election, Americans will start paying attention to politics again, just like always.
Then they'll figure out that Biden's economy is doing better than any of the other G7 countries & that Trump's completely uninterested in anybody but himself and that Agenda 2025 is a mix of Springtime for Hitler & The Handmaid's Tale.