I Worked for and Support Joe Biden. We Need Radical Candor From His Team—and Those Who Want Him to Quit the Race

We saw what we saw. Should the Democratic Party try to replace Joe Biden as its nominee—and if so, with whom? The stakes were sky-high last week, and this week, the Supreme Court made them virtually existential: It granted Donald Trump immunity for any official acts he might take if returned to the White House. Literally, any alternative would be better than that: America has had presidents with severe physical and mental impairments, abominable judgment, or the morals of an alley-cat—but we’ve never had a president hell-bent on destroying the nation’s democracy. The Democrats have only one question: Who will most likely prevent a Trump victory? To answer that question, both the Biden-should-stay and the Biden-must-go camps must display some uncomfortable candor. I’ll start.

I staffed Joe Biden for over nine years as South and Southeast Asia pointman on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee he chaired. It was a small staff—about two dozen people—so I had close and frequent interaction with him. I had 20-hour days with him on trips to Afghanistan and other Asian nations. I’ve seen him at his best and his worst. But the wizened figure I saw on the podium last week was a man I’d never seen before. My question for my old boss is this: Was your performance at the CNN debate an aberration or the new normal?

Until the debate, I hadn’t been concerned about Biden’s age. Sure, the president, 81, was physically showing the effects of the years, but there was nothing to suggest any loss of mental acuity. The grist for online ridicule was nothing more than I’d seen (and over which Biden has ribbed himself) for decades: Verbal bumbles, circuitous paths to the end of a story, incomprehensible phrases that kept cropping up repeatedly (“dog-faced pony soldiers).”

One bedrock for my pre-debate confidence: Biden has always been a clutch player. Politicians like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton bring their “A” game almost every night. Biden doesn’t. In basketball terms, he might have a series-long cold spell—but during the championship, he’ll uncork a game-winning “trey” at the buzzer. He’ll deliver a string of mediocre speeches, and just as his supporters grumble, he’ll devise a stirring, stunning performance that reminds them why they signed up with him.

Is Biden still clutch? The campaign needs to be unflinchingly honest. The day after the debate, game-time Biden reappeared at a rally in North Carolina. But what about tomorrow? The next four months? I can’t answer that question—but some people can offer an informed assessment. Those who interact with him daily can disclose what they know on a spectrum between I’ve never seen this before to Debate night comes once a week.” Biden must encourage them to give honest, if painful, appraisals. His campaign can’t keep telling its supporters to shut up and get back in line. It’s insulting and won’t work. Most Democrats may stick with a candidate whose ailments are more serious than they thought— but not if they’re labeled “bedwetters.”

If the Biden campaign owes the public awkward truths, so too do pundits urging the president to step aside. That elite group ranges from tenured columnists to TV titans to the editorial board of The New York Times. These (mostly) sane, sober analysts know the danger Trump poses. They should do better than demand the nation jump into an abyss whose depths they refuse to delve. Because the alternative to Joe Biden that they propose is… precisely what?

The most logical replacement would be Vice President Kamala Harris. If Biden stepped aside and gave the Californian a ringing endorsement, the party would rally around her. She would have access to the Biden-Harris war chest, unavailable to other wannabes. Unlike other candidates touted by the star-struck punditocracy, she’s banked the votes of 81 million Americans. But thanks mainly to Fox News demonization, Harris polls worse than Biden. Any move to install her must acknowledge that Harris might have at least as difficult a path to the Oval Office as Biden himself, just as they need to recognize the financial hurdles and resentments that might follow her being passed over in favor of the Governor of the Month.

For this reason, most of the Biden-must-go crowd aren’t urging him to step down in favor of the person he’s selected (twice) as his constitutional partner. Instead, they celebrate the soft-focus panoply of political talent available: Gretchen Whitmer! Gavin Newsom! Wes Moore! Let a hundred flowers bloom!

There are many inconvenient truths about an open convention. First, it would be undemocratic. Over 14 million people voted in the Democratic primaries, the overwhelming majority for Biden and Harris. Representative Dean Phillips even ran on a platform of “Biden’s too old”—and finished behind a fringe candidate who wasn’t even in the race. So, now, selection should be left to…a few thousand delegates who have earned precisely zero votes except as pass-throughs vowing to back the Biden-Harris ticket?

Another awkward fact is that no potential replacements have suffered the vetting-by-fire of a presidential campaign. Statewide races aren’t remotely comparable. Look across the aisle: A popular governor might seem formidable until she boasts she can make hard choices like (say) murdering her puppy. In 2023, Ron DeSantis looked like a giant slayer; in 2024, he was revealed to be Ron DeSantis.

Perhaps the most unsurmountable of the unacknowledged impediments to dumping Biden is that nobody other than Joe Biden has proven capable of uniting the unruly coalition that is the Democratic Party. If Harris were passed over, would African Americans (particularly Black women) line up behind Josh Shapiro or J.B. Pritzker? Would Bernie-stans and AOC acolytes turn out for Wall Street-friendly Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo? In 2020, even like-minded centrists Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg got into normie-on-normie knife fights whose wounds have still not yet healed. The blithe notion that an open convention would produce a unified party—in less than three months—seems like fan-fiction fantasy.

Where does that leave us? I think the best ticket to defeat Trump is some version of what we have now. If Joe Biden can reassure the public that he’s at least 70 percent all there, he should stay—with a new emphasis on Harris’ ability to take over from him should the need arise. The president must make clear that he won’t become an Oval Office version of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose hubris gifted Trump his third Supreme Court appointment. And if he can’t credibly provide such reassurance, an endorsement of Harris is less of a gamble than a free-for-all of an open convention.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Biden is closer to 100 percent. Or perhaps an open Chicago convention of 2024 wouldn’t be a replay of the Democrats’ convention there in 1968 (for non-history buffs, it went poorly). Both sides: Persuade me. Do it by telling and owning your awkward truths. Do it now.

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