Ex-Bush speechwriter explains what Democrats are missing about calls for a Biden replacement

02 July 2024

After President Joe Biden's widely criticized performance during his first 2024 debate with Donald Trump, foes of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee have been having heated discussions over whether or not Biden should stay in the race.

The editorial boards of the New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, along with economist/Times columnist Paul Krugman, have called for Biden to suspend his campaign and get behind another Democratic presidential candidate. Krugman, who favors Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee, has been a major cheerleader for Biden's economic policies but believes that his campaign has suffered irreparable damage because of that debate.

But Never Trump conservative David Frum, in an article published by The Atlantic on July 2, warns that looking for a Democratic nominee other than Biden could be messy, complicated and risky.

"The Democrats are a coalition party, not a base party, and they need coalition leadership," Frum argues. "That's what Biden, for all of his evident frailties, has provided. And one reason so many ardent Democrats are ready to repudiate him now is that they do not like coalition leadership."

According to Frum, one of the challenges Democrats would face in trying to replace a Biden/Harris ticket is the fact that "Democratic pressure groups veer far from the ground on which American elections are decided." And Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, notes that those pressure groups have policy differences with prominent Democrats such as Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota).

"Cooper wants to sign trade deals even though his party distrusts them," Frum observes. "Hobbs is tough on immigration and border security. Klobuchar is a former prosecutor who wants more cops on the street. Beshear woos coal country by avoiding mention of climate change."

The Never Trumper continues, "The point, however, is not that any of these people — or other rising centrist Democrats like them — would necessarily be better than a Biden-Harris ticket. Biden has been tested in years of national elections; his strengths and weaknesses are known. The alternatives are untested, and who knows how they would actually perform?.... If Democrats execute a hasty change of nominee, they're very likely to end up with either someone most Americans will never feel they know — or, worse, someone who gets defined by Trump with the backing of hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican campaign funds."

David Frum's full article for The Atlantic is available at this link (subscription required).

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