Dems telling Biden to step aside must show their demands are based on more than just vibes

It pains me to say it looks like the president is thinking about dropping out of the race. As you know, I have been skeptical of most reporting on the subject. But last week forced me to reconsider that skepticism.

That’s when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Joe Biden needs to make a decision. She said this after he had already made it. Since then, she and other big-wheel Democrats, including Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, have argued to Biden that if he stays in the running, he risks bringing down congressional Democrats down the ballot, in addition to paving the way for Donald Trump’s victory.

This morning came with the most explicit suggestion yet that Biden is thinking about dropping out. The Post, along with others, reported that Pelosi has told some House Democrats “she believes President Biden can be persuaded fairly soon to exit the presidential race amid serious doubts he can win in November.” “She thinks Biden is getting close to deciding to abandon his presidential bid,” the Post reported.

Pelosi is the 21st century’s greatest House speaker. Her clout among Democrats, not just in the US Congress, is pretty much unlimited. If she’s letting it be known that she thinks Biden “can be persuaded fairly soon” to exit or that he “is getting close to deciding to abandon his presidential bid,” it’s probably true. It would be foolish to doubt it.

Will it happen? Jesus God, I hope not. Biden is still the best hope of defeating Trump and preventing an authoritarian takeover of the United States government. He’s the incumbent. His achievements are many and great. Social and economic indicators, like crime rates, which are down, and wages, which are up, are moving in the right direction. He has the backing of his party. (Yes, even those, like California Congressman Adam Schiff, who have called on him to drop out.) And the anti-maga majority is still out there for the taking.

His campaign continues to say he’s in it to win it, and to God’s hoary ear, I hope that’s correct. But until the convention, I think we should think about how Pelosi and others have been making their case.

We know why. The how is just as important, though. The likelihood of victory for Donald Trump will skyrocket the moment the Democratic incumbent leaves, if he leaves. The debate was a disaster. Lots of people recoiled in horror at the sight of an old man on stage. But the stakes are too high. If he leaves, it better be for reasons beyond vibes.

Here, the Post’s report is helpful. It said Pelosi gathered evidence to support the contention that the president should leave. In talks with Democratic congresspeople, Pelosi was shown private polling data about their races. This “informed Pelosi’s thinking as she maneuvers through the sensitive discussions with Biden and his inner circle.”

Pelosi then used that evidence to challenge Biden. In a recent discussion with the president, according to the Post and other news outlets, “Pelosi rejected the president’s assertion that he was doing fine in the polls. She asked him to bring a senior adviser into the talk so they could compare in detail their divergent internal polling.”

A word about polling. First, private polling is better than public polling. The former is high-quality, expensive and necessary for making campaign decisions. The latter is what you and I have access to by reading the news. Second, public polling about the presidential election has been “in the ballpark” of private polling commissioned by Biden’s reelection campaign, according to Ron Klain, a close advisor.

It may seem like Pelosi is making a convincing data-driven case to drop out. But that’s not as convincing as it seems. If public polling is “in the ballpark” of being right, that means Biden is probably one polling error away from winning, according to The Economist’s data editor. When Biden said he’s doing fine in the polls, that’s not denial. Despite a disastrous debate, despite endless myopia from the press corps, despite slippage among Democrats, the election is still a dead heat.

You can say Biden should step aside because polls are showing he should. But polls are not monolithic. You can find one to support pretty much whatever argument you want. So the question isn’t whether Pelosi is making a data-driven case. It’s what data she’s using to make it. Given the enormity of the stakes, I don’t think it’s enough for even the 21st century’s greatest House speaker to say, “trust me. It’s real bad.” If you’re going to ask the most transformational president of our lifetimes to step aside, base it on something more than a guess.

I’m not the first to say that if the damage from the disaster debate is as terrible as Biden’s critics say it is, there would be internal campaign polling that would tell us exactly that – and that someone somewhere would leak it when the time was right. But if Ron Klain is correct in saying that public polling and private polling are “in the ballpark” of each other, that’s why we haven’t seen leaks from anyone anywhere.

Polling data, as close to sacred as anything in politics, isn’t showing a clear picture of what to do. You can say Biden should stay the course or you could say he should exit. That’s why we will probably never see it. We will hear about it, as we did in the Post report. But ultimately, if Biden leaves, it will not be for reasons beyond vibes. It will be vibes.