Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Who will tell Biden? The dread of 2024 - with A.B. Stoddard

Episode Date: October 2, 2023

Many Democratic activists, strategists, donors, officeholders, and party leaders are privately discussing the weaknesses of President Biden's candidacy, heading into what now appears to be a very competitive 2024 election. But is anyone telling President Biden? Is anyone credible and viable willing to challenge President Biden for the Democratic nomination? We are constantly told that American democracy hangs in the balance. Wouldn't this be the time? These are some of the topics we discuss with A.B. Stoddard, long-time Washington, DC journalist (currently with the Bulwark, formerly with The Hill and Real Clear Politics). Read A.B.'s piece that we discuss in this episode: "To Beat Trump, Democrats Need a Whitmer-Warnock Ticket" https://plus.thebulwark.com/p/to-beat-trump-democrats-need-whitmer-warnock

The company line is hold the line. Everybody trusts that a year from now, Biden's going to be strong enough to actually campaign. They're pretending that they will trot him out, run him around. Everything will be normal. He'll give interviews. He'll interact with people in ways that, okay, he does not right now because he can't. It just, it's nonsense.

These days, every time I speak to friends of mine who are Democrats, whether they're professional Democrats like strategists or party leaders or donors or activists, and I ask them about Joe Biden as the party's nominee heading into 2024, I get a look of despair. It's as though every one of them recognizes that President Biden should not be the nominee in 2024. But who's willing to take the risk and play the role that Eugene McCarthy played in 1968 to be the challenger to an incumbent Democratic president? These are some of the questions I have today for A.B. Stoddard, a longtime Washington journalist who's been at The Hill for a number of years, where I first started reading her years ago, then at RealClearPolitics. Now she's at the

Bulwark, the news and analysis site. And she recently wrote a piece for the Bulwark in which she laid out that the Democratic bench in her eyes is quite strong. And tapping into that bench, you could create a very compelling Democratic ticket in 2024 that is not Biden-Harris. But who's working on this? Who's willing to tell Joe Biden this? So these are some of the questions I had for A.B. Stoddard is I had an external conversation based on many of the internal private conversations that many Democrats seem to be having with one another. Before the conversation with A.B., just one housekeeping note, we're starting to drop episodes a second

time each week on Thursdays. We'll have one coming this Thursday. Then we'll be back next Monday. That one will be with Karl Rove returning to our deep dives on the 2024 election. But now our conversation with A.B. Stoddard. Who will tell Biden the dread of the 2024 election? This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time, A.B. Stoddard, a longtime Washington journalist who was at the

Bulwark now, who was previously at The Hill for years when I first started reading her and at Real Clear Politics. A.B., thanks for joining. I'm happy to be with you, Dan. So, A.B., you're like peculiar in a good way in that you are, for as long as I've been following your work, you were once part of a larger faction in this sort of DC media ecosystem, covering politics, writing about politics, analyzing politics, which is that you were not like a viewpoint journalist. You know, there are many self-identified viewpoint journalists, or what some would call a kind

of journalist with an ideological, somewhat of an ideological bend which is different than a partisan bend but just more of an ideological bend which is fine and you have more and more of those reporters and analysts in mainstream news organizations where they they don't wear it on their kind of badge but they kind of have a a point of view and you have resisted that you are just like a quintessential centrist dare i say normal and and i don't mean those who aren't you are abnormal but just like a a very just like call up we call balls and strikes no ideological acts to grind you yourself have described yourself as homeless so who are you like that's what i mean by peculiar. It's, by the way, it's wonderful. I think my listeners are going to enjoy this conversation, but can you

just like, just for a couple of minutes, like how you arrived at this place? Yeah. You're like, you're like a, almost near extinct, like on the verge of extinction, your breed of writing and analysis. Oh, I hope not. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's been an interesting, uh, journey because, um, I, I really am homeless in that I have, I support policies in both parties. So I don't have, I don't have, there's not, there's not really a good party for me. So I don't consider myself a Democrat or Republican. I think a lot of people think I'm a Republican because I was on Fox for years. I, there's too much about the Republican party, even before Donald Trump that I couldn't agree with while I did a lot of the time and, you know, in areas of foreign policy and debt

reduction and that kind of thing. This became such a strange town, you know, in 2016. I had very strong opinions on Hillary Clinton. I still do. I get a lot of crap for it from people who are in the anti-Trump coalition because I thought she was, I think she lied about what she was being criminally investigated for. And she called it a security review and she treated the voters like they were stupid. And while she did not tell, according to the fact checkers and the truth tellers, as many lies as Donald Trump, I just had a real feeling that Trump could win because she was so disliked. And there was so much denial, as you can remember, in this town, particularly about that. And so just this is

important because I do remember that now that you mentioned it, that you were one of the few people who was saying Trump could win when no one believed, well, not no one, but very few people believed that. In fact, I had many Democratic friends of mine who were rooting for Trump to win the nomination because they were certain he was the one Republican that Hillary could beat with certainty. Oh, yes, exactly. They were just sort of giggling about it

because they never thought she would lose. And I wrote in March of 2016 that he could win. He put it on his Facebook page at the time, Donald Trump did, even though he couldn't stand me because he listened to me on Fox all the time, you know, criticizing him and other things. But I basically wrote that Mitt Romney apparently lost in 2012, the American people think in a landslide, some kind of, you know, electoral route to President Obama, but he lost by, you know, 334,000 votes in four states. And that was the path for Donald Trump. I always saw the electoral college path for him. And I always saw how so many

in the electorate really thought that Hillary had disqualified herself. So I knew that the mania of excitement for a woman was not going to be, you know, as energetic as Democrats thought it was. And I really believed, yeah, that Trump could win. And so then once he came in, I was hysterical about this person that I knew during the campaign was, you know, going to come in and not accept if he was the president, the Congress, the courts or the Constitution. on all sides of this or all areas on the spectrum of politics and sort of Republicans were still cautious at that time, you know, 2017. I don't know if you remember, that was a year when it was like, wow, man, you know, he just filed fired the FBI director, you know, he there was a lot, there was a lot of fear, even in his own party. And then by 2018, 2019, that's gone. And if you criticize Trump, you're like a radical, liberal, pink hat, women's marcher, Trump derangement syndrome person. And that's not true. What I realized, I mean, I had, as I said, my own political views that don't belong in either

party, but I realized, you know, there was a real, this was really truly all about the system and that we didn't have the luxury of fighting over policy anymore. And that's the way I still feel. And I think that's where the way we all feel at the Bulwark that we're not in a situation right now where we can quibble over policy. What comes first is the constitutional order. And that is just really a threat. And now that Donald Trump is really popular again in the Republican primary, likely the presumptive nominee and doing well in general election matchups, people, you know, no longer think that there is the threat that that I know that there is to the constitutional order, no matter what he says about, you know, the execution of General Milley or no matter what

crazy crap, you know, comes out of his mouth. Right, suspending the Constitution. Yeah, it's suspending the Constitution, and people have moved on. And so it is, it is, it's surreal to be here all over again. But I am seriously a lonely centrist. I really believe the radical friendships of both parties have gone wacko. And I think they're off- to stay at the table. And that's part of why I'm getting a lot of heat now for saying Biden's too old, and that the voters see him as disqualified because of his age. But I think his record has been really amazing in light of the fact that he had no margin and no math in the Congress. And that the fact that he brought, he's, no radical leftist could have brought Mitt Romney and however 10, 12 Republicans to the table

on all these bills that got signed into law that were consequential and substantive if they were not negotiated compromised products of common sense to rise above the filibuster threshold. It's truly a remarkable record in these times when we have not seen bipartisan cooperation like that in so long, no one can remember it. I've watched the Congress since 1994. So I truly always make a point when I speak to people outside of Washington to remind them that are,

there are these people in the middle trying to do this. It's not that they're centrists, but without them, we can't govern. And, and, and people like Mitt Romney are leaving and, and Rob Portman and others.

And I, and I really, anyway, I value the contribution. And I hope that, you know, I hope that more of them don't leave because i don't know that we have an environment anymore that would invite new ones to

come in yeah i mean that's i i hope i i hope you're wrong about that that there's no way to to bring them back in but i want to talk now so that you you make you predicted 2016 and i know you have real concerns about 2024 which we're going to get to in a minute. But before that, 2020. So by my lights, you know, if I had to boil it down, the reason Joe Biden won in 2020 is it wasn't about Joe Biden. It was about people wanted uncertainty added to the crazy in some respects. And and people were just ready for an alternative. It was the election was effectively a referendum on Trump. And and Biden was sort of like a non factor in the election for a variety of reasons. He didn't need to be a factor because the election was really about Trump. And he literally was not

much of a factor because it was the middle of the pandemic and he's quote unquote running his election from the basement. And some could argue, and I think Democrats should argue, that in addition to the accomplishments that you cite, he served a noble purpose, which was putting the brakes on this crazy, at least for some time. And that could be from from the perspective of the Democratic Party, and hopefully for some Republicans, some kind of important legacy. Did you I mean, how do you assess why Biden won? Do you share that analysis that I just laid out? Do you think I'm, because I want to get to from there to 24. A hundred percent. Polling, as we both know well, has been completely unreliable since 2016. Maybe longer, but that's when we notice it, right?

I mean, this is crazy. In the fall of 2020, we were told that all these well-funded Democrats were viable in Senate races in Kentucky, Montana, Iowa, South Carolina, right? Yeah. And they were going to just turn those red states blue. Right, right. And they raised hundreds of millions of dollars. The most appalling waste of money. Yeah. millions of dollars. The most appalling waste of money. And then the polls, you'll recall,

had Biden way ahead of Trump. I mean, always comfortably, sometimes eight to 10, but definitely five. And I did think he would win by more than he won by. I did because I thought, you know, you have Trump. He's this, you know, he's, he's, he's a fiend who wants to, he's, he wants to be an authoritarian and create an autocracy. And then COVID comes. And he told us for months to calm down. He wouldn't give us tests. He didn't want any data about the sick. He didn't like numbers. And he was telling, you know, Bob Woodward, February 7th, that he knew how like crazy, you know, how scary it was that it was airborne and it was going to be a wipeout. And I thought, oh, he's definitely Biden's going to win by five because people need a

break, but they hold him accountable for needless death. I mean, this is, this is the topper after everything, after, you know, being in the Oval Office with Russians and giving classified information away and, and Helsinki and June one, I mean, of 2020, everything after everything, this is going to be it. And so I was stunned to see him almost beat Joe Biden. So let's, let's stay on that for one moment, because I think people don't always, you know, they have a recency bias. But like if you go back to 2020, so say Biden won the popular vote by about seven million votes.

If you take a big chunk of those, almost five million, those are votes in California that mostly went to Democrats. It wouldn't have made a difference in the Electoral College. And then you take a couple million votes or so of that 7 million that are New York, another blue state. The bottom line is you get to about, what was it, like something like 44,000 votes? Right. Some some number of votes in the tens of thousands spread across a handful of states. Very similar, ironically, to how Trump won in 2016. And then you realize that it's not to say that Biden won by 7 million votes doesn't really explain it. This was an extremely close election. So even with everything you just described, the country was still basically split down the middle. I mean, they went with Biden for the

reason, I mean, at least the reason I think it was, which was that at the end of the day, it was some kind of referendum on Trump. But even with it being a referendum on Trump, a lot of voters still wanted Trump. I was so depressed by that because, again, I really thought Biden was going to win with like a really Yeah, it would have been decisive. You want it to be decisive, a clear statement. Right, a repudiation of Trump. And it's very, you know, the Democrats do themselves no service when they run around the country saying

Joe Biden beat him by 7 million votes. Again, people are under the illusion that, I mean, California and New York don't matter. You know, Republicans have an advantage in the electoral college. This is really, really important reality that people grapple with. We don't elect presidents to the popular vote. And so looking at that, I was really stunned. And then I did see, as those of us who pay close attention, you know, Republican, really good Republican performance down the ballot from Trump. So there were a lot of people who were

disgusted with Trump, but they came to the polls and they voted Republican. And Republicans did pretty well. And they made some gains that were that were good for them. I look back and I, I'm, I mean, because Biden is in such a weakened position now and he is an incumbent with a record, um, and economic pain. I mean, I just, it's, it's, people really need to grapple with the reality of how close it was, uh, in 2020. And so if you accept that it was as close as it was, and then you say January 6th, 2021 was the wake up call. And then the midterms in 2022, one would think kind of, uh uh was bearing that out with all these republicans assigned uh aligned with trump um underperforming uh in the midterms so we think okay it's really close in 20 but there's all these events after that would think okay that's really

broken things and it it appears that things have not broken because we now have all these polls many of which you cite in your piece uh at the Bulwark that we'll post in the show notes, which, you know, basically lays out that if you, and I agree that these polls are sometimes tricky to read and interpret, but there's a consistency to either how close this is again in 2024, or that actually Trump, it's not so close that, that like Trump, Trump is winning in some of these polls. So it sounds to me like it doesn't surprise you sadly that's um i think it does surprise me a bit that everyone has come around i mean he was much weaker um last december after the midterm elections. I wouldn't say he was isolated within the party. He was still the front runner. But all of us believed at that time that,

you know, the Florida governor was in the hunt. He was much closer to him in polling. And DeSantis, I thought he was kind of a weirdo candidate. But I thought, you know, if the primary electorate is really worried about Trump's electability, they might just go with somebody else. I knew by April that Trump was the, I've thought since April that Trump is the presumptive nominee and that there's no chance for anyone else. The general election matchup numbers being this good for Trump after four indictments, 91 criminal charges in January 6th, is very hard for me to swallow. There's so many questions I have for you about this. Okay. So Biden himself has said, and I'm quoting here, Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American

democracy. Now, it sounds to me the way you've described your own views, you share some view of that. I mean, that at least Trump is determined to destroy American democracy. Do you believe Biden? I mean, I know you can't, you never know what's in someone's head or in their heart, but do you believe Biden and the people around him really believe that Trump is determined to destroy American democracy? Like, do you really think that do you think that they think that democracy is really hanging the balance? Or this is a very good political message for those moderate independent voters, swing voters i'm talking about the reason i ask is because if if one believes truly believes that donald trump is determined to destroy american democracy it seems awfully dangerous to to allow if you're the party in opposition to trump to allow yourselves to be in such a scary even competitive competitive position with this, with this guy who you think

is going to destroy American democracy. So I really often wonder, like, do Democrats believe, I mean, professional Democrats, not rank and file, you know, just people, the kind of people advising the president, advising the state, you know, the state, the national party committees, do they, do they believe Trump is, is Mussolini or like Berlusconi? Yeah, he's corrupt. He's a little bit of a maniac, but he's not really a threat to democracy. Because if he were a threat to democracy, we'd really be doing things differently. We wouldn't be running a conventional election and treating this like Joe Biden's the conventional incumbent who should win in a conventional political environment. So that's my thinking. But I do think that they see him as an existential threat to democracy.

And I don't know, actually, when he messages that, that that's reaching a lot of swing voters at this point. I think it's an important message. We expect to hear a lot of it next year. I think several things about the circle of insiders who helped convince Joe Biden to run again or supported his decision to do so. I have been writing about this since last July. So I started at Real Clear Politics writing about it July. I wrote about it again after the midterms. I wrote about it again after the State of the Union address when everyone said he had the best State of the Union address. Of course, he'll be great in a reelection campaign.

Yay. He had so much Red Bull. It went great. And I kept writing about this. And I was actually, and I'm on the record, convinced he would not run again. I have spent enough time with Joe Biden when he was in the Senate. We had many he was going to realize the situation that he, at the end of the day is, yeah, he has an ego like all politicians, but that he had sensed that his age would limit him to one term in 2019 or 2020. That's why he had said so.

And that he sensed the situation with his family and just a multitude of reasons and that he would actually not do it. He delayed it many times. And I was thinking he's putting it off because he's not going to run. And he wants to whatever execute the strategy in Ukraine and not be a lame dog with, you know, the Russians and the Chinese or whatever. So I was stunned when he announced his reelect. Am my thinking about the inner circle around him and the professional elite establishment Democrats is that they, many of whom would like to work in the long after he exits stage left, they would like to work in this party, have convinced him, or he has convinced himself and they support it that he's the only one who

can beat Trump because they don't want to deal with the issue of Kamala Harris. And so they don't want to upset a very important part of their coalition and that there's no way that he could just announce he was not running again and say, my vice president has been amazing and she'll be hard to beat, but it's time for an open primary because presidents do not pick nominees. Voters do. Okay. So just to stay on this, just to decode this for, for our listeners. So, so, and tell me if I'm, I'm getting it wrong. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what AB is saying is what you were saying is first black woman in history is vice president. It is not easy to have an open primary where she is challenged. If he were to say he's not running, presumably she runs. And then if others want to run,

you know, she either has a lock or others are just uneasy about running against this, what would be a historic first, which would be the first black female president. And so she is effectively, you know, the, the nominee for 24 and many professional Democrats I speak to think that she would be a weak nominee and as weak as Joe Biden, maybe she would be weaker and they, they can't take that risk. By the way, some have said, including ones who have worked for him and worked for Obama told me when I say, well, what about some of the others, which we'll talk about in a minute, just based on the piece you wrote, they say, well, they're unproven too. So they argue that Biden is at least proven with all his flaws and warts and liabilities. He is a proven commodity when it comes to beating Trump.

And they don't believe Harris or for that matter, many of the others are. Yes, that's exactly right. And so that is the buy-in. The company line is hold the line. Everybody trusts that a year from now, Biden's going to be strong enough to actually campaign. And I mean, I don't think he'll ever debate Trump again, but they're pretending that they will trot him out, run him around. Everything will be normal. He'll give interviews. He'll interact with people in ways that, OK, he does not right now because he can't. it's a way of avoiding the Kamala Harris issue, which would be divisive. And yes, they have written off other contenders who they say, you know, even if you're a governor, like you're,

you don't like, you can't hack it. You can't come in and sell yourself as the chief executive. Like that's not going to work against Trump. I think it, it just, it's, it's nonsense.

But yeah, I agree with you that I think that the – it's nonsense. But yeah, I agree with you that I think that the power circle at the top of the party says let's just risk it because we don't want the hornet's nest of a transition to the next generation and having the party fight it out. Tevi Troy wrote a good piece for The Examiner, I think, which I'll put in the show notes, where he goes through the history of presidents who decide, incumbents who decide not to run. And he basically said the least reliable source of persuasion, the least reliable group of people who could persuade an incumbent president not to run for election are his advisors and staff they are always they are always kind of clinging on it's usually a family member or like a very close you know kind of almost like familial like uh

confidant uh who does it but okay so i want to i want to get to this piece you wrote for the bulwark which i keep referencing and that was the reason i i uh touched base with you in the first place to beat trump democrats need a whitmer warnock ticket and then the subhead is despite biden's accomplishments voters find his age disqualifying his party must unleash its younger talents in 2024 and you wrote this piece for the bulwark uh at the end of the summer and you cite a uh ap poll showing that 77% of Americans say Biden is too old to carry out a second term, including 69% of Democrats. And those numbers have been rising. So we can debate whether it's fair or not fair. This is not like a subject of ageism. The public perception is the public perception, and presumably it's not going to get better with time.

Being president's a busy job. Running for re-election is a busy job, not to mention family. You know, there's a lot of stress, I think, right now in his family, son. Again, just the distraction of it. There's like a lot going on for any person, let alone someone who's his age.

So it's like, it's hard to see how the situation gets better. So you, you actually go through the exercise of saying, let's talk about some of these possible candidates. If someone else were to run, let's, let's like talk about who these people could be. So can you, can you just spend a few minutes like walking, you do, you do this in the piece, just walking through who you think the democratic bench is. So, uh, I, I really encourage everyone to read the piece because I do, um, you know, I do go through a bunch of data. You are right, Dan, the polling has since gotten worse. Um, I talk about his good record. I talk about, I don't talk about Hunter in that piece.

Um, I could have, I wrote five paragraphs about Hunter and took it out and kept it basically about his age because that is really the only thing that matters. Voters have decided that they don't like the way Joe Biden walked. You think the Hunter piece is not relevant as an issue, meaning that the issue that's broken through is age. I think the Hunter problem is an issue, but the most disqualifying issue is his age. He has been written off by a majority of the electorate as just no longer viable. And as you just said in the piece,

I say like that can be unfair. It's fair or unfair. We have to accept, you know, you have to fight the war you're in, not the one you want. And even if they make the case that Joe Biden doesn't have dementia, people don't like the way he walks and they don't like the way he talks. He's too old. He's too old. He can't do this anymore. It's not fair that Joe Biden is four years older than Donald Trump and that when he entered the presidency, he was still pretty, pretty spry. The presidency ages you considerably. And Joe Biden, if you go

back to clips from 2020 and 2019 has visibly aged a lot. And so there are a bunch of talented Democrats ready to step in. Um, a lot of people like Gavin Newsom, I would not advise ever nominating someone from California or New York at this moment in our politics if you're a Democrat wanting to keep the White House or win it back. So if you look at, you know, Josh Shapiro is a big favorite. He's the governor of Pennsylvania. He's really super promising. He's a brilliant speaker, a really smart thinker. Had a long run as attorney general. Yes. You know, so he's the experienced guy. And won the middle of the electorate in

Pennsylvania because of his record as attorney general. Independent voters liked his record. He ran on a record. But he's just gotten the job. Wes Moore, my governor in Maryland, also people impressed by him, but just got the job. The reason I argue that Gretchen Whitmer and Raphael Warnock make a great ticket is because she has won twice in a critical battleground state. She is running that state like a badass. And she is a very, very powerful voice on choice. And she has won also the middle of the election. I mean, she had to win some swing voters to win with the margin that she won by in a very important swing state. Raphael Warnock has won five elections in a couple of years

in the state of Georgia. And you can say, well, he's lucky that he ran against Herschel Walker, but he has continued to win because he's really smart politically, because he chooses what issues to talk about, what issues not to talk about. He does not keep a high profile. He's a very serious, cerebral person, and people in the Senate respect him for working across the aisle. He is also a pastor. He's just a fascinating person, a pastor at Martin Luther King's church in Atlanta, and continues to preach every Sunday. He has a messy- I'm not a fan of his politics, but he's a, but he's a very charismatic speaker. I mean, he's for the reasons you're saying, right. He has a messy divorce with some stories that are bad about his ex-wife and I don't know, some real estate situation with his church and rentals and stuff. None of this, none of this compared to Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton when she was

running rises to the level of panic by any stretch. The idea that the Democrats would come up with a next generation ticket with executive experience that is diverse and competent, young and dynamic, could energize core constituencies and then have Joe Biden say, you know, it's not about Joe Biden and Donald Trump anymore. It's time to turn the page in this country. I just think that people are really hungering. You and I and most of your audience, Dan, we're politically engaged and we follow this stuff closely. The people in this country who are not, they want a fresh start. They want someone who's younger that understands how to order an Uber.

This is just really, really hard for Biden to overcome. They need a fresh start from his record on inflation i mean this is just it's it does so much to to i believe to threaten trump uh if if you bring in someone like that and that's well i also think it threatens trump in the republican primary because because the the most the strongest argument i've thought against trump among republican primary voters i i foolishly naively thought this was that he's got an electability issue. So I would say, look, love Trump, hate him, like some of his record, hate some of his record. I liked some of what he actually did just purely on the policy side.

You can find him loathsome. You can think he walks on water, whatever. You think the DOJ investigations are fair. You can think they're unfair, whatever. He is going to get Biden and Harris reelected. I thought the electability argument was the strongest argument. And of course, all these polls come out recently showing that, no, no, no, he can beat Biden. So that strips away the electability. If, however, you have the kind of candidate you're talking about, just the profile, leave aside the individuals. I think it does change things up in terms of the contrast with Trump. And suddenly Republicans have to think

long and hard, do we want to run Trump against a generational contrast, a young, energetic kind of reformer, center-left reformer that gets the benefit of a fresh start that neither Trump or Biden get? Exactly. And look at Nikki Haley's polling numbers against Biden. She polls much better against Biden than Donald Trump does. Even though Donald Trump is really neck and neck with Joe Biden, and he never was in 2020, and that's great for Trump, once the general election voters see Nikki Haley, they choose 51-year-old Nikki Haley over Biden by a bigger margin than they choose Trump. Yeah. All right. So then the question becomes timing. Suppose Democrats are persuaded,

professional Democrats, people around Biden are persuaded that he shouldn't run again. Then the question is, well, it's getting too late. We're already now in October, basically. We're in October of 2023, and the primary process formally begins in January, and it's too late. And so I went back and looked. So Eugene McCarthy, in March of 1968, March 12th of 1968, Oregon Senator Eugene McCarthy challenges an incumbent president, LBJ. I was surprised to see how late the New Hampshire primary was back in 68. But in any event, March 12th of 68, McCarthy challenges LBJ. He loses the primary in New Hampshire, but he gets 42% of the vote. Johnson gets 48% of the vote, which was a shock. Incumbent

president getting less than 50% in the first primary. And then on March 31st of that year, Johnson announces surprise announcement that he is not going to run for reelection. So is there a Eugene McCarthy? Because it is a huge risk. And Eugene McCarthy, I should add, wasn't the nominee. He challenged LBJ. He forced LBJ effectively to not run again. But he himself was not the nominee for president. And I don't even know where his political career went after that. You know, what would it take for a Democrat to say, I'm not going to wait for Biden to decide that he's not running. I'm going to announce I'm running. And I don't mean RFK Jr. or, you know, some other kind of more gadfly

Democrat. I'm talking about a, a, what are the politicians you're talking about or others that we may not be thinking of? Well, Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips has, uh, he made some waves in August saying he went on a couple of Sunday shows. He said he was considering, um, doing that very thing. Um, and that he, uh, really felt the numbers were scary and it was time for the party to reckon with this and that he might, he was considering doing it. Now he has not done that, but apparently he was on Steve Schmidt's podcast a couple, maybe just 10 days ago or so saying that he still might. You know, my, it's, it probably is too late. I don't, none of the people that we talked about the most favored are going to primary Joe Biden. I think that donors continue to call them and, and are panicked and say, be ready, be ready in case he has a dramatic event like

Mitch McConnell did where it suddenly seems like they're doomed and they have to sort of pull some emergency cord. And so I think the smart people, and clearly Gavin Newsom is, are sort of staying ready, but not to jump into a primary, just to step up in case the whole thing- He can't run, but not to force, but they're the whole thing he can't run but not to force but

they're not trying to none of them are willing to force biden's no way and the reason is why ab but that's my question why that makes me crazy they are preserving their viability for 2028 right when we're not going to have free and fair elections anymore if donald trump has been in the white house for four years he'll just pass it on to his son or daughter and we're going going to have free and fair elections anymore. If Donald Trump has been in the white house for four years, he'll just pass it on to his son or daughter. And we're going to be living in some totally different systems. So. Right. But,

but to be clear, I mean, again, I don't, I don't want to be so, I mean, just to put this in stark terms, you're,

you're saying the reason not doing it is careerism. I mean, they're basically, it is a cynical bet on, I need to preserve my political. I'm like, cause they are all custodians of their political future and in their minds. And the safe thing to do is to hang back and not burn capital and burn ties

with the democratic establishment by taking, they don't want to be Eugene McCarthy. They would be thrilled if Biden didn't run, but they want to be our K in 68, meaning, uh, or Hubert Humphrey or whoever your, your candidate is in 68.

They don't want to be Eugene McCarthy. They will be thrilled if there's a Eugene McCarthy. They just don't want to be it. They don't want to be it. And they will rush to the rescue if fate and destiny calls, but they don't want to rock the party boat. They don't want to be the enemy of the establishment. It is. It's just, you know, it is. It's to preserve their political viability in the future. And whether it's 28 or 32, but that's exactly what's going on. They all know what a threat Donald Trump is.

They absolutely do. Everyone in that bench, Jared Polis, governor of Colorado, Pritzker, governor of Illinois, Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky. I mean, there's a lot of people that there are House members that are super impressive that could step up. I mean, after Donald Trump was elected, I'm never, ever going to believe that a House member shouldn't run for president. There's a lot of people that could step up chris murphy senator from connecticut

super impressive guy i mean there is a big bench of of of uh of people in their 50s who are ideal um for for this transition but none of them are stepping up okay but i just want to put a like an explanation point on this this is paradoxical because you're saying they recognize what a threat he is, yet they are preserving their options to run four years from now after he might have been president for four years. It just doesn't make sense. They either recognize him as a threat or you see what I'm saying? It doesn't it's not it's not logical. Like if they really think he's a threat, then how could they possibly say? But we'll be there in four years. But Dan, you and I both know Republicans who believe that Donald Trump is a sociopathic criminal who is going to destroy the constitutional order. And they vote for him and go out and defend him every single day because they want their jobs. They are too afraid to go home and be harassed in the golf shop and the country store.

So what's sad to me is that the cynicism is pervasive. That's all. I'm not saying, this is not whataboutism. I'm just like, it's sad to me because I honestly believe that most of the people, they basically say this. Most of the people around Biden, they want Trump to be the nominee. They want Trump, they think Trump is their best shot. And and to getting reelected, that to me is depressing. Because they know that Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley could could decisively beat Biden. But they are nervous about these polls and they are very nervous about the fact that the electorate and an overwhelming majority of the electorate and then a huge

majority of the Democratic electorate have decided that Joe Biden can't hack in anymore and he shouldn't run. And they're counting on. So what they're going to try to do next year is just they just believe that they are going to energize the coalition with anti-Trump like, you know, fumes. And we're all good. They're just going to bring everyone in the Democratic umbrella right back to that Trump rage. And if you look at the apathy in the coalition, if you look at the fact that the erosion in the coalition of Asian and Black and Latino voters either checking out or fleeing to the Republican Party, this is a huge problem numbers wise. The black approval, black voter approval rating of Joe Biden is stunning. He's lost like 25 points

in less than three years. And these people stay home and it's over. And they're aware of these numbers. They watch these numbers. They thing is, white educated voters really hate Trump in the Democratic coalition, and they will vote. They will crawl over broken glass to vote for Biden next year. Young people and Latino, especially non-college Latino and African-American voters, they're not really thinking about Trump. They're thinking about, for young voters, climate and abortion, other things. And now people are really thinking mostly about price hikes that they think will never go away and they're going to be stuck with for the rest of their life, this inflation. So the idea that you can count on Trump rage next year, it could be. I mean, I think the Dobbs decision will bring a lot of turnout.

But how can you rely on that, knowing that next year, Joe Biden, who can't talk to reporters now extemporaneously, cannot talk to, can't have press conferences, can't talk to voters. I mean, how are they going to make that case next year? They're going to try to just pray that everyone is really mad about Trump, and they're going to go to the polls. It's just such a huge risk. And that, and, you know, those same people advising the president and the president himself that, you know, there'll be quite a legacy, you know, if Trump gets reelected, because I, history, I do not believe, I hate saying this, you know, history will not treat them kindly,

but I do believe history will not treat them kindly. It will not. And you know what, personally, it will crush me for Joe Biden. I really want the dignified end for him. I think, you know, I think Mike Pence right now, when people say, what is Mike Pence doing? I'm not defending him, but I see what he's doing. He wants the dignified end. He knows he's going to be out of the primary really soon, probably before the next debate. I don't think he makes the next debate stage, but he wants to rewrite his last chapter. And after what Joe Biden has done and what he's lived through and how much concern he

has right now for his children and grandchildren, I don't want that to be his end. I really don't. the other candidates and said, would any of you have done anything differently than I did on January 6th? But that was very, that was amazing. Um, and, um, I think you're, you're right. Um, so, uh, AB we'll leave it there. I was looking for some, um, I saw this Yahoo news poll, this, uh, you gov Yahoo news poll that showed something like 60 to 70% of voters are looking to the next election to the 24 election with quote dread yes uh they were given a few options of what mindset they have as they approach the next election and dread was they basically captured where most voters are which is like i think like one of the first times in american modern political history where people are looking to a future president like presidential dread. And this conversation, while illuminating,

still leaves me with some dread. Got to be honest. Me too. But I enjoyed it. And thank you for having me. All right, good. Therapy. It's therapy.

View it as therapy. That's how I view these conversations, a little bit of therapy. I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There's lots of therapy in this part of town. So I hope it was useful for me. We will have you back on. We will post your piece that we talked about in the show notes.

Hopefully people read it. A.B., thanks for coming on. Thanks so much, Dan. That's our show for today. To keep up with A.B.'s's work you can track her down on the website formerly known as twitter at the ab stoddard that's the a b the letters a and b s t o d d a r d and you can find her work also at the ball work online and that's at ball work online and we'll put the pieces that we discussed in the show notes

call me back it's produced by lan benatar until next time i'm your host dan senor