Republicans' Bogus Claims that Democrats Acted Illicitly in Replacing Biden

Shikha Dalmia on MAGA voters’ disregard for governing fitness and Berny Belvedere on how replacing Biden is perfectly legitimate

Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden (White House)

Both Parties Are Being Responsive To Their Voters—But Only Democrats Care About Presidential Fitness

by Shikha Dalmia

Those who like political theater got their money’s worth this past week. First, there was the spectacle of Donald Trump, white bandage on his right ear, accepting the Republican nomination for president at the party convention after surviving an assassination attempt. Trump’s one-and-a-half-hour final droning attack, late at night, was too much of a good thing, to be sure. Still, you’ve got to admit, there was something Shakespearean about Nikki Haley, his last slayed rival, humiliating herself and kissing his ring after his nasty attacks on her and her family. And JD Vance, his VP pick, singing valentines to him after once calling him the “American Hitler.”

Then, just as that giddy confab wrapped up, Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States, relinquished his presidential bid in a social media post—and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, shortly thereafter.

But setting aside the theater, what do these developments tell us about the voters of both parties?

Trump and Biden are both manifestly unfit for office although for entirely different reasons. But if the former is “in” and the latter is “out,” it isn’t because the Democratic Party oligarchs engineered Biden’s deposal—as Stephen Miller, Trump’s odious immigration czar, harrumphed on Fox News. It is because that’s what the Democratic base wanted. (For a thorough debunking of the notion that Democrats are acting “undemocratically” by pushing Biden off the ticket, check out Berny Belvedere’s companion piece.)

It is true that Biden won his party’s nomination by 87% of the primary vote—which is about 9% more than Trump. But as is the case with any incumbent president, Biden did not face a competitive primary so there was no one to split his vote share. Moreover, voter turnout in many states was far lower for Democrats than Republicans, one indication that Democratic voters weren’t enthused by Biden. Meanwhile, Republican turnout in some states such as Texas not only outpaced Democratic turnout but their own in previous years.

But Democratic voters have been voicing concerns about Biden since at least 2022 when some polls found that over 60% felt he ought not to run—not because they had quarrels with his policies but because they thought he was infirm and incapable. And after his disastrous debate performance a month ago, a New York Times and Siena poll found that 50% of Democratic voters immediately wanted him out of the race. Those numbers only grew in subsequent weeks. The party elders got the message and pushed Biden out to comply with Democratic voters’ wishes. Outside of Biden’s inner circle of loyalists, not too many Democratic leaders tried to convince the base that it hadn’t witnessed what in fact it had: their president in cognitive freefall. If they had, they might have faced a revolt by the base.

Contrast this with the Republican reaction to Trump’s many and massive transgressions. Despite his disastrous four years in office and his parting gift of an attempted coup—far more dangerous than any of Biden’s mental lapses—Republican voters are more united around him in 2024 than they were in 2016 when there was still reason to hope that he wouldn’t turn out to be as big a political vandal as he did.

According to a 2021 Suffolk University/USA TODAY poll, if he had formed a third party, 46% of his supporters would back it. Only 27% would stick with the GOP.

His medley of legal troubles didn’t diminish his appeal one iota. To the contrary. At its lowest ebb, he had the undying fealty of almost 40% of the GOP voters. The criminal cases against him for trying to overturn the election and whisking away classified documents only convinced more GOP voters to move into the MAGA camp. And a sexual assault conviction just proved to them that he was the victim.

So the GOP leaders looked at the polls, swallowed their misgivings, and learned to live with and eventually love Trump.

Trump’s primary GOP rivals wore kid gloves during the primary battle, fearing that calling him out vociferously for his unprecedented attacks on American institutions might get them thrown out of the party. During the first Republican debate, only former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson kept his hand down when candidates were asked if they would support Trump as the nominee even if he were convicted. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a close Trump ally who has now vehemently turned against him, last August enjoyed the lowest net favorability rating at that point of the cycle compared to any Republican candidate since 1980, according to CNN analyst Harry Enten.

So what is the point of all of this? Dems dumped Biden but GOP embraced Trump because they were both acting in accordance with their voters’ wishes. The only difference is that Democratic voters care about the fitness for office of their candidate, whereas Republican voters don’t give a fig. To the contrary, as Kentucky’s Republican Thomas Massie insightfully noted, GOP voters go for the “craziest son of a bitch” in a race.

This means that unless GOP voters return to their senses, the GOP simply can’t—and won’t.

Republican Outrage Over Biden’s Exit Is Self-Serving Nonsense

by Berny Belvedere

On Sunday, President Joe Biden announced he would not, after all, be seeking reelection. Not quite half an hour after his announcement letter went live, Biden threw his weight behind Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic Party’s nominee to face off against Donald Trump this November. Republicans by and large criticized both of these developments as anti-democratic.

The first complaint, which is about Biden dropping out of the 2024 presidential contest, has taken a couple of different forms. One is that the pressure campaign that power players in the Democratic Party subjected Biden to in order to get him to withdraw from the race represents a repudiation of the party’s own voters, since they had chosen him to be the nominee. Another version of this critique insists that the attempt to get Biden to drop out amounts to a “coup” against the president, since he had already freely and fairly locked up the nomination. The second complaint, which focuses on Kamala Harris, contends that she does not have, and in fact has never had, the support of Democratic voters—which makes the party’s immediate consolidation behind her undemocratic.

Neither of these claims stands up to scrutiny.

The pressure that Biden faced to step aside was by no means a trampling of the party’s own voters, since that pressure was itself borne of popular concerns about the president’s declining health and cognitive state. (Check out Shikha Dalmia’s companion post for more on that.) Moreover, it would have been a personal coup against Biden if donors and leaders had tried to depose him from office. But he is continuing to serve.

The more relevant point is that parties can choose whatever nomination process they want. Even if they dispensed with the primary process altogether, there wouldn’t necessarily be anything “undemocratic”—aka illicit—about whoever they chose. It’s the prerogative of the parties to set their own nomination rules. “Nominations belong to parties, not candidates,” insists the Atlantic’s Jonathan Rauch.

But even under the current rules, contrary to what some mistakenly think, the primary process doesn’t involve voters directly selecting the party candidate; instead, while voters indeed use the primaries to make their choice for candidate known, what they’re actually doing through the primaries is appointing electors who are supposed to officially ratify the voters’ intentions at the party convention. But if the nominee’s condition changes or voters lose confidence, there is nothing undemocratic about electors picking someone better who has broad buy-in within the party without conducting another primary election. If, in this case, they have miscalculated the will of their voters or acted in bad faith, voters could send a message by staying at home in November—or voting Republican. But Republican operatives are fearing precisely the opposite, which is why they are shedding crocodile tears on behalf of Democratic voters.

It is particularly rich that Republicans are complaining that there is something antidemocratic for the party to coalesce around Kamala Harris given that voters have never chosen her to be the nominee. She was, after all, on Biden’s ticket this time as in 2020. And if Democratic voters had considered her a deal breaker—given that the odds that she would have to serve as president due to Biden’s age and declining health were quite high—a potent primary challenger would well have emerged this time, as Andy Craig has argued previously on this site. The fact that none did suggests that even though Democratic voters at the time were not enthusiastic about the ticket they were also not disenchanted with Harris. So choosing her is hardly out of line with the will of Democratic voters. Hence, picking her as Biden’s replacement is in fact more democratic than going with someone totally different.

However, if at the party convention someone other than Harris ends up being the nominee, that would be perfectly legitimate too if he or she is selected via a process tracking collective Democratic sentiment in real time. If the party convention is contested and a new nominee is ultimately chosen, the process itself would confer legitimacy on the new leader.

By norm and precedent, Joe Biden had the most valid claim for his party's nomination and Kamala Harris the next most valid. But if we're peering into the nature of nominee legitimacy, any candidate whom the party picks through a fair process to contest in November is legitimate—whether it is “democratic” or not is irrelevant. Republican objections to what is, ultimately, the business of the Democratic Party are self-serving strawmen that deserve to be laughed out of court.

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