The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, Joe Biden must step down

Episode Date: July 9, 2024

**Munk Debate members can vote on who they think won the debate at www.munkdebates.com**   Joe Biden’s disastrous performance in his debate against Donald Trump has convinced leading Democrats that Biden cannot be their nominee in November. There are now too many voters concerned about Biden’s age and mental fitness for him to win. A younger, more dynamic candidate would redirect the conversation towards central policy questions and offer a viable alternative to Trump. Furthermore, even if by some miracle Joe Biden did win in November, he has proven himself to be incapable and unfit for office. But there are others who argue replacing Biden would be a huge mistake that Democrats would soon come to regret. They say polling still shows Biden to be the party’s strongest candidate. The messy process of choosing a new nominee would take precious time and resources away from the campaign. And there’s always the risk that a new, untested nominee would stumble on the national stage. A ticket without Joe Biden will all but guarantee a Trump victory. Arguing in favour of the resolution is Mona Charen. Mona is a syndicated columnist and policy editor at The Bulwark and the host of the podcast Beg to Differ. Arguing against the resolution is Allan Lichtman. Allan is a Distinguished Professor of History at American University and the author of Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House. SOURCES: CNN, BLUX The host of this Munk Debates podcast episode is Ricki Gurwitz Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Producer: Daniel Kitts Editor: Kieran Lynch  Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issue of the day. To arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved. Joe Biden must step down. Child care, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our health care system,

making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with. While Joe Biden's disastrous performance in his debate against Donald Trump is leading many Democrats to consider an enormous gamble, replacing their 81-year-old presidential nominee with just four months to go before the November election. There are now too many voters concerned about Biden's age and mental fitness for him to win, they argue. A younger, more dynamic candidate would redirect the conversation towards central policy questions and be able to go up against Trump's aggressive nature. Did anybody last night watch a thing called the debate? That was a big one. But as you saw on television last night, we had a big victory against a man.

that really is looking to destroy our country. He's the worst. He's the most corrupt, the most incompetent president in the history of our country. But there are others who argue that replacing Biden at this late stage would be a huge mistake

that the Democrats would come to regret. They say polling still shows Biden to be the party's strongest candidate. The messy process of choosing a new nominee would take precious time and resources away from the campaign. and there's always the risk that a new, untested nominee would stumble on the national stage. A ticket without Joe Biden, they argue, will all but guarantee a Trump victory.

On this installment of Monk Debates podcast, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion. Be it resolved, Joe Biden must step down. Arguing in favor of the resolution is Mona Sharon. She's a syndicated columnist and to the policy editor at the bulwark, which provides analysis and reporting on politics in America. She's also the host of the popular podcast, Beg to Differ. Arguing against the resolution is Alan Lichten. Alan is a distinguished professor of history at American University and the author of predicting the next president, the Keys to the White House. Allen's Keys method, which uses different markers like the economy,

incumbency, social unrest, and third-party challengers, is used to predict which candidate will win the election and has accurately done so since 1984. Mona, Alan, welcome to the Monk debates. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our resolution today is be it resolved, Joe Biden must step down. Mona, you are arguing in favor of the resolution. I'm going to put two minutes on our show clock. Give us your opening statement.

We are living in an unprecedented moment that could not be more weighty. It was always a dicey proposition whether the Joe Biden of 2024 could do what the Joe Biden of 2020, thankfully did, which was defeat Donald Trump. And there have been rumors and swirling concerns. for a number of months, even years about his age, vast numbers of the American public, including Democrats, felt that he was too old. And the debate was supposed to settle the matter. The debate was the moment where Biden was going to reassure his backers

and also people who were on the fence, that, yes, he still has it, that yes, he is still the Biden, at least mostly like the 2020, Joe Biden. And instead, it was a catastrophe. that showed not only is he diminished, but radically diminished and to the point where people are worried about him, even serving out the remainder of this term, far less being reelected. In light of that, it is an emergency break glass moment for the Democratic Party and arguably for the country. There is still time to replace him at the top of the ticket, and that is absolutely

necessary for the health of this republic. The only overriding issue here is defeating Donald Trump. And so the Democratic Party needs to take the shades off its eyes, stare reality in the face, and move. Okay, thank you, Mona, for that opening statement. Alan, you are arguing against our resolution today. Be it resolved. Joe Biden must step down. Let's have your opening statement. Mona, I have great respect for you as a principal conservative who's turned against Donald Trump, but you are not the best messenger to be giving advice to the Democratic Party. You didn't support Hillary Clinton in 2016. In fact, you said both Trump and Clinton were disgusting. Now, all of the commentators, operatives, journalists and yourself have in common zero track record

in a scientific system for predicting elections, and yet you all claim to know, what the Democrats should do to predict their win. I do have a system called the keys to the White House that's been right since 1984 in the way it works. If six of my 13 keys go against the White House party, they are predicted losers. Biden checks off the incumbency key and the context key. That means six more keys would have to fall to predict his defeat. Biden gets bumped. They lose the incumbency key and they lose the contest key because there's no error parent. Only four more keys would have to fall. And in every election, since the turn of the 20th century, when there's an open seat and an uncertain or contest nomination, the White House party has lost every time. The other thing,

all the critics have, they're not medical professionals, they're not capable of judging Biden's mental state. Was the debate more indicative? Or was the debate more indicative? Or was the State of the Union more indicative, was the fact that he recently took two very successful, strenuous foreign trips more indicative. Was the fact that we're on the verge of a seat's fire more indicative? None of the critics have pointed any effect on his presidency about his supposed decline. Thank you, Alan, for that excellent opening statement. Okay, Mona, we're going to head to rebuttals now. So this is your chance to respond to anything you heard in Alan's opening statement. Sure. Okay. First, I am less convinced than Alan is about the usefulness of the keys

to understanding and predicting an election. I think elections are much more complicated and the keys are a little inflexible. So, for example, one of the keys that Alan Lickman cites is the economy and recession in the election year. And you know, you could say, well, no, we're not in a recession. that's a point for Biden. But what it doesn't account for is inflation and the sense that people have that the economy, despite growing and despite full employment, the greatest employment numbers that we've had in 50 years, despite that, the voters are very, very dissatisfied with the state of the economy. And all the polls suggest that. Why? Because prices are high. And so I think that the over-reliance on these metrics can steer you wrong. The other thing is that when you're looking at elections

over the past number of years, even if you start in 1984, there haven't been that many elections. It's not a big set to draw conclusions from it. It's not as if it's a drug trial where you're looking at hundreds of thousands or millions of results. You have a small set of results. And they can be tilted by lots of other things, including the people's subjective sense about how capable a president is of functioning. And one thing that Americans want from their leaders is vigor and a sense that they can feel secure that the person in the White House is competent to handle an emergency, for example, or even to handle the responsibilities of his job.

Now, Alan Lickman mentioned that the president had taken two foreign trips. And he even blamed his foreign trip for his poor performance in the debate, saying that he was too tired. Of course, he had returned from his most recent trip 11 days before the debate. So if he cannot recover from a foreign trip after 11 days, what does that say about his fitness going forward?

So, look, I have the greatest respect for what Biden did in his first term in many respects. I think he was a successful president, and I think he is a good man who I'm grateful for, to for what he has done for the country. I am also certain that the Biden who appeared on that debate stage cannot win. And furthermore, I think the Biden people know it too. Because if they

didn't, if they thought that wasn't true, he would be everywhere. He would be doing interviews. He would be doing spontaneous sit downs, not 15-minute little scripted interviews with George Stephanopoulos. he would be reassuring us in a freewheeling press conference that he's still the Biden of 2020. And the fact that he's not doing it shows us, I think, that he can't. Thank you, Mona, for that rebuttal. Alan, now is your turn to respond to either Mona's opening statement or her rebuttal. Mona has questioned the keys to the White House. But the keys to the White House, unlike any other system, have been right for 40 years.

and elections in a row. So you can quibble, you can try to argue against it, but you can't argue against the track record. Moreover, Mona incorrectly indicates that the keys are only based on 10 elections. That's wrong. In developing the keys, I went all the way back to 1860

to the horse and buggy days of politics. So I have an extensive record of presidential elections to look at, and the keys of hell since 1860, through enormous changes in our society, in our politics, in our economics, in our demography. And, you know, the fallacy that Mona represents is she has no system for predicting elections. She's like the other pundits. It's entertaining. It's sports talk radio.

It has no scientific basis whatsoever for her to say who is going to win or who is going to lose. or make predictions. And like the conventional analysts, our analysis is entirely poll-driven. You know, the polls show that people are unhappy about inflation. Are we going to predict an election based on that? Of course not, since there are all kinds of cross currents in the economy. And there's no evidence that polling data on the economy or anything else predicts an election. Remember, the same conventional pundits who are telling us Biden can't win also told us Trump can't win. In fact, after the access Hollywood tape, they pronounced Trump dead, just as Mona and other critics.

After one debate, we want to pronounce Biden dead. Just doesn't work that way. One point of my agree with is that Biden should be out there in a freewheeling way, demonstrating that. is capable. And let me say, in terms of what it takes to make a good president, debate performances way down the list, far more important is experience, values, judgment, which Biden has demonstrated. And all the critics, you know, this one debate, have not pointed to a single flaw in the Biden presidency of three and a half years plus that somehow is reflective of any kind of. of cognitive decline. And all of this moment plays right into the hands of Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is loving this, loving seeing Democrats in disarray, loving seeing Democrats and other critics turning against one and other. And the media is utterly complicit in this. All the stories from the debate have focused on Biden. The focus on Biden is perfectly legitimate. But what they have ignored coming out of the debate is that Donald Trump poses an existential threat to our democracy and our survival on this planet. He is trying to con and lie his way into the presidency more than 30 lies in the debate, one lie every minute and 20 seconds. He has indicated he would govern as an authoritarian. Okay, but Alan, let me just stop you there.

I'm about to finish. Last half sentence imperiling our own. planet. Okay, but this debate isn't about Donald Trump. This is about Joe Biden. And I want to just ask. You can't separate it two. I'm sorry. That's ridiculous. Okay. This is not one-sided thing. You've got to compare Trump and Biden. Okay. Well, on that, on that note, on that note, your method has accurately predicted every president since 1984, right? It's predicted every election outcome. That's good. Except for 2000, right? Is that right? No. I was right about 2000 because as I proved in my report to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, that was a stolen election. Biden should have won that election going away. It's still on my website, Mona. Excuse me,

it's still on their website. You can consult at any time. I think you mean Gore. You mean Gore. You should have won that election. You said Biden. Yeah, I'm sorry. No, that's fine. But, Alan, let me ask you something because, yes, that's true. You have predicted every election outcome. I think many would argue that these are extenuating circumstances. And we've never had a situation quite like this before where one of the candidates is so visibly in cognitive decline. Oh, are you a physician?

You're in a position to judge the mental health of Joe Biden? Are you in a neurologist? Oh, please. Are you saying that only a physician can recognize mental decline? Absolutely. That an ordinary person can't use their judgment? No debate, not the full record, and you are not confident to do it. I do not.

Let me ask you a question, Alan Lickman. I have a question. And you shouldn't either. Why do you? Let me ask you a question. Why do you think Joe Biden passed up an opportunity to do the Super Bowl interview, which reaches tens of millions of viewers, and is usually a matter of a few softballs. Why do you think he passed that up? I have no idea. I'm not an insider. I don't know

what the strategic was, but, you know. Doesn't it worry you a little bit? Are you worried? Should get it. This is what FDR did. You know, FDR's critics said, you're a cripple. Country's going to see you as a cripple. They're going to see you as impaired. They can't stand up to the rigors of the presidency. So don't campaign in 1932. And FDR said not. and you run a vigorous campaign. I think that's what your body should do. So let me respond to the FDR thing, and then I want to talk about something

that you said earlier about Donald Trump. The fact is that FDR went to great pains to hide his disability from the American people, and he was successful in doing so. With the cooperation, by the way, of a compliant press who never showed him in his wheelchair, he was always pictured either behind a desk or standing at a podium

had a podium where he had those very uncomfortable braces, et cetera. He knew that if he were perceived as crippled, it would hurt him politically, and he effectively concealed that. By the way, concealing a physical disability is much less serious than concealing a mental one. Now, regarding to Donald J. Trump, you're saying that he would rejoice in democratic disarray if Biden were to withdraw. I have to tell you that every evidence of our senses right now is that Trump is thrilled with Biden's decline and wants nothing more than to run against Joe Biden. Also, you do a lot of railing against the pundits and you say we're basing things on polls or on our, we're talking out of our hats, et cetera. So first of all, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't just lump me in together with a whole series of people who

have very different views on things. The pundit world is extremely broad. and it's not uniform in its pronouncements. I was one of those people who was keen to believe that Biden could do it. I was heartened by the State of the Union address. I thought that the stories about his mental decline were mostly propaganda coming from the other camp. I cannot deny the evidence of my senses now, though, after that debate, which was not just one bad night. It was the most catastrophic performance by a major political figure in any of our lifetimes, and it's something from which he cannot recover because everyone is going to be waiting for the next one.

Even his most faithful staff say he has good days and bad days, which means he may have a perfectly good interview with George Stephanopoulos. He may have a rally where things go well, but inevitably there is going to be a repeat of what we saw in that debate because these things are inexorable and you cannot fight with Mother Nature. Let me say, first of all, Mona, unfortunately, your accounts of FDR is bad history. I've studied FDR on a political historian. The nation well knew of his disability. It was not a secret. There were very few pictures of him in a wheelchair, but the nation was well aware of FDR's disability and the views of people with disability in the 30s were very, very different of what the views are today.

And in terms of what Donald Trump wants, I will set forth a plan B. My plan A is for Biden still to run. And as I said, I agree with Mona. He needs to get out there as much as he can. But Mona hasn't answered and no one has answered the fact that one debate does not outweigh three and a half years plus of a presidency. And no one but no one has shown any cognitive problems of Biden has affected his presidency, has affected his ability to deal with our allies.

He has more domestic accomplishments than any president since the 60s. He put together, the coalition that stopped Putin from conquering Ukraine, and he may be in the verge of achieving a ceasefire. That's less important than a bad debate, and it wasn't the worst debate. 33% according to the CNN poll said he won the debate. In Barack Obama's first debate with Mitt Romney, only 20% said he won the debate. And we heard the same thing, you know, panic among Democrats or Biden's finished campaign in free fall. But here's my plan B.

If all of you critics see in a misguided way in pushing Biden out, the worst thing that could happen is for Biden to step down and lose the incumbency key and have a big brawl and lose the contest key. So what you'd have to do, plan B, is resign the presidency itself for the good of the country, which would be a contrast to Donald Trump, who only does things for the good of Donald Trump. Harris would become president, kick off the incumbency key, and he would instruct all of his delegates to support Harris at the convention, so there would be no party fight, and you would tick off the contest key as well. That is the only plan B that would preserve a remote chance for the Democrats to win, more than a remote chance. would put them, I think, in an excellent position on the keys to win.

Okay, Alan, I just want to ask you about Kamala Harris specifically because many people think she's unelectable. In fact- Here we again, you know, people talking off the top of their heads. They have no idea who's electable or who isn't, you know, modus said the pundits are diverse. The pundits were united. The pollsters were united in 2016 saying Donald Trump was unelectable. particularly after the Axis Hollywood take, and it was certain Clinton would win.

The eminent Princeton University consortium headed by the great professor Sam Wang said 99% that Clinton would win. And Wayne said, I'd eat a bug on national television, which he lost. And he did. So forget the polls. Well, hang on. Nate Silver said the opposite. The Brimrose gap of error. you lump everyone into the same category.

You're not making distinctions, and that's very misleading to the audience. One of the most widely watched, let me finish, let me finish, one of the most widely read sites on polling is called 538. It used to be run by Nate Silver. Nate Silver, in 2016, evaluated all of the polls, which are not so that you throw out outliers and so forth. and based on that evaluation, he said that Clinton had like a two-thirds chance to win. Things that have a one-third chance of succeeding happen all the time. And so to say that there is more likelihood in one direction than the other is not to say that it's impossible for a different outcome.

And so I think you're oversimplifying, saying everybody was saying X or everybody was saying why. And then, furthermore, as our moderator pointed out, are you saying that we should just ignore the fact that 80% of the public has been saying, this was the most recent number in a recent Wall Street Journal poll, but also polls that have been released over the last several years have said unequivocally, most voters believe that Biden is too old to run again and were dispirited by his decision to do so. We don't govern. by polls and we're wrong about Nate Silver. He had a approximately 78% chance of Clinton winning. Not a single pundit gave Donald Trump a better than 50% chance of winning. And then when

Clinton loses, Nate Silver says, see, I told you a 22% chance she would lose. So he can never be right and he can never be wrong. That's the great fallacy of polling. Now, it was the delegate gets themselves. It was a vote of the Democrats that nominated Joe Biden. It wasn't, you know, Alan Lickman, it wasn't Mona Sharon. It was a democratic process. Now you're saying, based on polling, which is not the voters, and has huge margins of error, we should bounce the democratically elected nominee of the Democratic Party. That just makes no sense. That just makes no sense. We don't govern by polls. We govern by a democratic process.

Alan, just a second. I want to ask Mona about Kamala Harris as well because it's an important piece to this conversation about who could potentially take over from Joe Biden if he were to step down. So, Mona, do you believe that Kamala Harris could win in a general election against Donald Trump? I think it's possible,

but I'm not sure that she's the strongest Democrat. and in light of the emergency that we are facing this year, with the prospect that Donald Trump, who is a criminal, a liar, and an aspiring autocrat could be elevated to the presidency again is an emergency that requires all hands on deck and it requires the very best talent that the Democrats can muster. All of this year, you know, they have been saying, well, you know, we just hope, we just hope that Biden can do it.

We should be certain. We should be in a position of knowing because the alternative is unthinkable and really does involve on this, at least, Alan Lickman and I agree. It involves the fate of the country. It's that serious. And so I think at this moment, it would behoove the Democratic Party for the sake of the country, not just for themselves and their interests, to look at the whole bench, to look at the governors of swing states, for example, both Michigan and Pennsylvania have eminently reasonable governors who would make winning the election easier because they would pretty well guarantee

that the Democrats would win either Michigan or Pennsylvania. And so that is compelling. I would like to see, as Representative Clyburn said, a mini-primary so that the Democrats choose the person who is best able to take this battle to Trump and to win. And I do think there would be tremendous amount of enthusiasm in the electorate for a younger dynamic candidate. And it might be Kamala Harris, but it might not.

How about an open convention? What do you see as the kind of benefit or drawback to that scenario? The benefit would be that it would be the most exciting political news in probably half a century at least and maybe longer. conventions have been dull as dishwater for years. Very few people have been tuning in because they're just television shows. If it were a real contest, if it were an old-fashioned convention, the likes of which we used to have in American history,

where the outcome was uncertain and the delegates were actually going to be making a choice, you would rivet the attention of the American people. It would blot out Donald Trump from the news for a goodly portion of time and whoever came out of that victorious, if the party united behind that person would then benefit from weeks of coverage and elevation and then the name recognition issue would go away. Money would flow to a candidate under those conditions. So I do think there's a chance that an open convention could lead to a happy outcome. Alan, what are your thoughts on an open convention?

Yeah, there you go again. Off the top of the head punditry about what creates electability when you have no basis for deciding who's electable. Remember, the Democrats thought they had nominated some very electable candidates like John Kerry in 2004 or Hillary Clinton in 2016, and all of these so-called electable candidates lost. It was off the chart. candidates like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who won. Plus, your commentary is totally unhinged from history. History teaches us when we have an open seat and a contest like you're proposing, the White House party in over 120 years has never, ever won. In effect, you want to recreate the same conditions of 2016 that initially elected Donald Trump in the

first place and would virtually guarantee the election of Donald Trump once again. So in other words, according to Alecman, instead of responding to the evidence of our eyes and ears and to polls and to history, we should instead adopt his. rather eccentric, keys to the presidency approach, which, by the way, if it were so infallible, you would think that every political operative in the world would have adopted it by now, but it's not infallible. It's been wildly off base by huge percentages in many instances, and I refer people. By Megyn McArdle. She pointed out that you're, that you're an answer of the, excuse me, are you trying

to browse you now? You're going to let me listen. Alan, let her speak. So I refer you to the critiques of both Nate Silver and Megan McArdle, now columnist at the Washington Post. She did a piece for the Atlantic number of years ago where she used your keys and found that they were wildly off, for example, by the percentages that your system would have predicted for Herbert Hoover's results,

for Coolidge's results, for Nixon's results in 1972. off by quite a lot. There is a huge amount of variability which you don't acknowledge and it has to do with candidates. One of your keys is, does the candidate have charisma? How is that anything but subjective? I don't understand how you can say, this is scientific. I base it on whether the candidate has charisma, but there's no way of making a scientific judgment about something like that. Your science claim is bogus. All right, let me respond to that. First of all, you don't even begin to understand the keys.

The keys do not measure percentages. They tell you who is going to win and who is going to lose. They're a binary system. So you're critiquing my system without it been the faintest understanding of what it represents. And I have won numerous awards for my system. I have twice keynoted the International Forecasting Summit based on my system. I have public in the Practical Journal of Forecasting, in the International Journal of Forecasting. I have presented my system before the American Political Science Association.

The Dean of American Political Science, Gerald Pomper, has lauded the system as the only one that's been correct over the past four. 40 years. So you cite a couple of journalists and Nate Silver, who of course is going to attack me because he is totally pole-driven and doesn't want an alternative. But I wasn't relying just on the keys. You say I'm unhinged from history, just the opposite. You've never answered my point. You said I was unhinged. I didn't use that language about you, but that's okay. In over 120 years, the conditions you want to create of an open seat and a party, brawl in every single case has resulted in the defeat of the party holding the White House, including 2016.

So you're referring to episodes where sitting presidents were challenged in primaries and weakened. No, no, open seat. Sorry? An open seat. Okay, and open seats. Fine. But this, but the situation. For the sixth faster.

But your keys, your- holding the White House that never won ever. Your keys are not helpful when we are facing an unprecedented situation with a president who is clearly ailing and another candidate who is completely unacceptable. So as Lincoln said, as our cause is new, so we must think anew. And in this moment, the Biden collapse before our very eyes requires a lot. us not to consult a matrix that a professor made up, which, by the way, if the professor's matrix were correct, I say again, why are you not very rich having been consulted by every

presidential campaign in the last number of years? I don't know that either. Okay, we're getting very, we're getting very personal here. I just want to bring us back to resolution because we are almost at a time. But I would just say, rather than facing the unprecedented nature of, the situation and saying, in this case, with an ailing president who cannot do the job of campaigning, and however much he may have done as president, you say three and a half years, the fact is the 2024 Biden is not the same man who beat Trump in 2020. He is radically diminished. And that is

something that we cannot ignore and we cannot plug it into a system of keys or any other system. We have to use our intelligence and evaluate things based on the reality before us. And the voters are adamant. I mean, even among Democrats, a significant percentage would like to see Biden step aside. And a CNN poll found that Democrats and Democratic-leaning registered voters, 56% said the party had a better shot at the president with someone other than Biden. Now, you're going to dismiss this as polls. but polls are not, have not been shown to be useless. On the contrary, they are very useful tools for gauging public opinion. They're not infallible and they don't predict the future, but they do give

you a snapshot of where things are. And I would point out that throughout the past year, going back to October 2023, the average of polling has shown that Trump has been ahead all this time. And here was Biden's opportunity to flip the script. It's why he agreed to the debate in the first place happening so early in June. He understood he needed a breakthrough to reassure a nervous public and a nervous party that he was up to the task. He failed spectacularly. And so now the situation is radically different. And it requires real statesmanship on the part of the Democratic Party. You know, every four years, someone tells me you've got to change your keys. We have an unprecedented situation.

We have an African-American running. We never had that before. We have a woman running. Never had that before. We have social media. Never had that before. So we are running out of time. Now, before we go to closing statements, I want to get a quick personal prediction from each of you.

Mona, do you think Joe Biden will step down ahead of the election? I am leaning in that direction, although I'm discouraged by talk that his family is pushing him to stay in. I'm concerned because his family is concerned about him and what's best for him rather than what's best for the country. And I think their concern should be what's best for the country. But I do think that when you have leaders like Nancy Pelosi saying that it's a reasonable thing to talk about the concerns about, the concerns about his fitness. When you have Jim Clyburn, who basically put Biden in the presidency by backing him in South Carolina in 2016, you are seeing a movement that will be very, very difficult for Biden to resist. And I would just say one more thing about Biden, which is one of the things that has

characterized him throughout his career is that he has tried to remain in the center of the Democratic Party. And if the Democratic Party is saying with a loud voice that this is what they want, I think eventually he will concede. Okay, Alan, same question for you. Yeah. I was more and I'm kind of astounded again that someone who called Hillary Clinton disgusting and didn't support her. I was now telling the Democratic Party what they must do. I think there's a fair chance, you know, that he will be pushed out. If that happens, the worst thing, not just based on the keys, but based on history, which Mona never addressed would be to him just a step down and have a big party brawl that would recreate the conditions under which the White House Party has never won. The only responsible thing to do would be for the good of the country, resign the presidency, let Harris become president, take off the incumbency key, and avoid a party fight.

Under those conditions, the White House party has won more than three quarters of the time. We usually end with closing statements, but you both gave quite succinct closing statements in my final question to you. So I think we'll end it here. Mona and Allen, you know, this was a difficult conversation. It's something that it's hard to talk about, but I think most people feel it's necessary at this critical point in history. So I thank you both for engaging with each other today. Thank you. It was a great debate. Pleasure.

Well, that wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our participants, Mona and Allen. You've given us a lot to think about. If you have any feedback or reflections on what you've just heard or any of our other podcasts, please send us an email at podcast at monkdebates.com. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate and dialogues, one conversation at a time.

I'm Ricky Gerwitz. The monk debates are a project of the Oriya and Pearty. Peter and Melanie Monk, Charitable Foundation. The Monk Debates podcast is produced by Ricky Gerowitz and Daniel Kitts. Karen Lynch is the editor. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to leave a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.