Enough! It’s Time to Challenge Biden at the Convention.

It is time to open a new conversation about the 2024 Presidential Election (because all the old ones have been so fun!).

But before I do, I feel compelled to reiterate my long-standing and only semi-platonic love for Joe Biden. For those who have not been following my every thought as obsessively as I have, I’ve been a Biden supporter for decades. I campaigned for him in the 2020 Democratic primary, AND the 1988 one, back when Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” was changing the world.

Up until recently, I was vigorously defending Biden to my kids, who thought he was too old to serve anymore and that my support of him was data point # 4,277 proving how mortifyingly uncool I was.

The debate made me realize that my kids were right and that I was living in denial. I called for Biden to step down as the presumptive Democratic nominee, but acknowledged that the decision was his alone to make and that any effort to force him out was going to be too messy, divisive and self-destructive to our hopes in November to be a realistic option.

But an open mind changes when new facts are presented. And so, in the words that my kids, and my wife, and even casual acquaintances and complete strangers on the subway like to say: “Daylin, you were wrong again”.

What’s changed? Two things.

First, it is becoming increasingly clear that Biden is not open to leaving. On one level, it’s hard to blame him. Not many people get to be President of the United States, and for Biden, it was clearly a life-long dream. Voluntarily giving it up after only one term is difficult. The last Presidents to do it voluntarily (not to avoid impending defeat) were James Polk and Rutherford B. Hayes, back when wearing mutton chops was considered a brilliant electoral strategy. And giving it up because of personal infirmity must be particularly humiliating and difficult.

But the bigger factor in my change of heart is the fact that Biden’s continued candidacy is causing the bottom to fall out for the Democratic Party nationwide. What does this look like?

Forget individual national polls, which can be all over the map. Look at the behavior of the people with the most at stake. We read numerous reports of top Biden aides, on both the campaign and government side, saying “it’s over”, “there is no path, “there’s no coming back from this” and “we are so F-ed” (all actual quotes). Several well-sourced stories say that Biden’s top campaign team is actually trying to figure out how to talk him into dropping out.

Even when Jen O’Malley Dilon, one of Biden’s top campaign strategists, was giving a PEP TALK to the staff, she acknowledged that whole areas of the country where Biden competed last time were no longer within reach. Hard to get peppy about that.

The latest poll out of New York, which Biden won by over 20 points last time, has New York as competitive. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has Biden losing every swing state. EVERY SINGLE ONE, some by a lot. States we took for granted, such as New Hampshire, New Mexico and Oregon are now toss-ups. States we won last time, such as Arizona and Georgia are considered pipe dreams, leaving us only one even theoretical path to barely get to 270 electoral votes, and again, we are significantly down a number of states we need to win, even for that path.

In 2020, Biden was, at this point, up in the race by about nine points nationally and only wound up eking out a narrow victory by a few thousands votes in 5 states. Now, the RCP average of polls has him down by three. A loss of twelve points we absolutely can’t afford.

Last night Biden gave a campaign speech in Michigan. The governor, both Democratic US Senators and the entire Democratic Congressional delegation all suddenly remembered that the rally conflicted with Yahtzee night and failed to show up.

Congressional Democrats, in tough reelection campaigns are talking about how they can’t have Biden in their districts. Some are talking about running ads urging people to vote for them “as a check against President Trump”. Top Donors have now withheld over 90 million dollars from the Biden campaign and are considering giving it to congressional candidates instead. In other words, we are on the cusp of surrendering the 2024 Presidential election in July!

I’ve seen this before. I’m old enough to remember years like 1972 and 1984. I’m also old enough to remember the invention of the wheel, by Harvey “The Wheel” Wheel. It was a big deal at the time.

In those years, the presidential elections were considered over by mid- summer. People literally stopped paying attention to the national ticket. Donors gave money to state and local races. When George McGovern or Walter Mondale (who both lost 49 states) spoke at a rally and introduced local dignitaries, it was like Michigan last night. No actual dignitaries were there. It was sad to hear a former Vice-President of the United States say “And I want to thank the Deputy Auditor of Pidgeon-Forge Township for joining us tonight”.

The thing is, we CAN’T just give up on the presidential election this year. I obviously don’t have to get into great detail regarding the obvious reasons why. But with the stakes being the end of democracy and the installation of a violent, Christian-Nationalist authoritarian state, electing Congressman Peabody from Nebraska as a “check” is not going to do us much good.

We simply can’t go gently into that not-so-good night. Joe Biden said at his press conference that his delegates are free to vote their conscience at the convention. We have five weeks until the convention. We have to begin the process of convincing the delegates NOT to support Biden on the first ballot. They can vote for Kamala, or someone else, or they can do what was common in conventions of yore. They can vote for local favorite sons or daughters to keep their options open as candidates emerge and the situation evolves.

This won’t be easy. The Biden campaign hand-picked these delegates, but again, many leaders of that campaign see the November writing on the wall. I have personally spoken to about a half-dozen delegates. EVERYBODY understands the stakes, NOBODY wants to see a President Trump, and a Chief-of-Staff Stephen Miller, a Top Policy Advisor Steve Bannon, and Attorney General Matt Gaetz, or Nick Fuentes, or Justice Taylor-Greene.

This could be very messy, and ugly, and even divisive. But I feel we are at the point where we have no choice. Right now, we are just marching off a cliff, which is only really good for lemmings. And I’m not entirely convinced that it’s even that good for them.

And maybe it results in a new nominee and a united, enthusiastic party. Hopefully, if this effort gains steam, Joe Biden will see that it’s in everyone’s best interest to get behind a new ticket. But we can’t wake up the day after the election to our new “Unified Reich” and know that we saw it coming, but did nothing about it.