By Les Leopold / Substack
The spinmeisters are twirling away trying to convince us that President Biden only had a bad night. It happens to all of us, doesn’t it? But last Thursday he looked old and spoke even older in front of 51 million viewers. Honestly, if you had a relative who was that bewildered and lost, wouldn’t you seriously be considering assisted living?
But Biden’s “just one bad night” did us all a big favor. There now is a possibility, still slight but getting greater every day, that he will bow out of the race.
On November 20, 2023, I wrote a piece that asked Biden to not run again. I took heat for that, even from my friends and colleagues. I heard all kinds of arguments, ranging from “He’s a great president and deserves another term,” to “It’s too late to do anything about it.” I was also accused of being a defeatist and some said that I was undercutting Biden and helping Trump win.
Biden’s energetic State of the Union address led to more finger wagging: “See, Biden clearly has the wherewithal to crush Trump,” friends said. I was not convinced. But, after Biden’s pathetic debate performance, a lot more people have become unconvinced.
It is past time to listen to what the Democratic rank and file have been saying all along. They want someone younger to do combat with Trump. Biden’s approval numbers are pathetic – 37 percent as of June 24, and 72 percent now believe that he does not have “the mental and cognitive health to serve as president,” according to a post-debate CBS poll.
Unfortunately, the primaries have been completed and no significant Democrat has showed the nerve to oppose him. That leaves it up to Biden to decide, and in the aftermath of the debate debacle he and his team say they’re running harder than ever. Like lemmings, I’m afraid, following each other over the cliff!
But that could change as his poll numbers further deteriorate, making Democratic leaders worry they will go down with Biden in the fall.
The Misreading of 1968
Pundits have encouraged the Democrat’s cowardice by claiming that when a sitting president is challenged by one of his own party defeat always follows. The poster child for this story is 1968, when Senator Eugene McCarthy (D, MN) took on President Lyndon Johnson in the primaries. McCarthy’s strength led Johnson to withdraw. Party regulars then engineered the nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who lost to Richard Nixon in the general election.
Does history teach us that McCarthy, by challenging Johnson, caused the Democrats to lose, and is this a sufficient reason for why Biden should continue to lead the ticket?
No, the pundits have it wrong.
In 1968, there were 536,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam killing and being killed in large numbers. The massive Tet Offensive, launched on January 31st by the communist forces, showed the American public that the Johnson administration had been lying about our battle successes. Even the esteemed CBS anchor Walter Cronkite reportedly said, “What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning the war!”
Senator Eugene McCarthy, defying his party leaders, challenged the sitting president with a strong anti-war message, appealing to the support of young people in the growing anti-war movement. (About one million men were drafted into the armed forces from 1965 to 1968.) Thousands flocked to his campaign, going door-to-door in New Hampshire where McCarthy gained 42 percent of the Democratic primary vote. The next primary was to take place in Wisconsin, and following the close New Hampshire race, Johnson knew he would lose. On March 30, LBJ dropped out of the race, and on April 2 McCarthy won Wisconsin by 57 to 35 percent.
With Johnson out, Humphrey became the Democratic Party establishment candidate, but then Robert Kennedy jumped in, making it a three-man race. On April 4, Dr. Martin King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and riots broke out in 100 cities across the country, leading to 43 deaths and the military occupation of several US cities. In the June 4 California primary, Kennedy defeated McCarthy and become the candidate best able to defeat Humphrey on behalf of the anti-war Democrats. Sadly, he was assassinated that night in Los Angeles, turning 1968 into an unmitigated nightmare.
To add to the chaos, the August 26-29 Democratic convention, held in Chicago, turned into a riot, a police riot, as the Chicago police—under the control of Mayor Richard Daley— viciously attacked the generally peaceful anti-war demonstrators. Anti-war convention delegates, and even CBS’s Dan Rather, were beaten live on TV as Daley turned his political machine into a ramrod for the Humphrey campaign.
After Kennedy’s murder it was a foregone conclusion that Humphrey would become the Democratic nominee. But the key political event at the tumultuous convention turned out to be the vote on a rather mild peace plank for the Democratic Party platform, something that the Kennedy and McCarthy delegates hoped would help end the war. But LBJ, pulling the strings behind the scenes, refused to compromise and the plank was narrowly defeated.
That fall, Vice President Humphrey ran against the former Vice President Nixon, who based his campaign on law and order by pointing to the riots and anti-war demonstrations that were tearing the country apart. Nixon also claimed to have a plan to end the war in Vietnam that he would reveal at his inauguration, which turned out to be an appealing lie. Humphrey, an organization man nearly to the end, stayed loyal to the unpopular LBJ positions and fell behind by 44 to 27 percent in a September 27 Gallop poll.
On September 30, 1968, Humphrey finally broke ranks with LBJ in a nationwide speech. He announced that he would put an end to the bombing in Vietnam and would call for a ceasefire. This brought McCarthy and many of his supporters, as well the Kennedy faithful, into the Humphrey campaign, narrowing the gap. But with only a month to go Humphrey didn’t quite get there: Nixon won 43.4 percent to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent, with segregationist George Wallace netting 15.5 percent.
There is little doubt that had Democrats supported the peace plank at the convention, or had Humphrey offered his peace plan sooner, he would have won. So please don’t use 1968 to tell us that if Biden withdraws, the Democrats are sure to lose, which is what Kaitlan Collins said on CNN the night after the debate.
I try to avoid the prediction game, but I am willing to go out on a limb on this one: If Biden stays in, we get Trump. If a younger Democrat becomes the nominee, Trump gets crushed.
It’s now up to Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party. Do they have the guts to tell Biden not to run? Do any of the younger presidential hopefuls have the nerve to speak out? Does Biden have the good sense to withdraw?
It’s also up to us. Do we have the energy to flood social media and our political leaders with a clear demand for Biden to step down?
Usually, pieces like this end by saying that a Trump victory threatens democracy. But by refusing to listen to the vast majority of their own rank and file, Democratic Party leaders are also defying the will of the people.
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Les Leopold
After graduating from Oberlin College and Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, Les Leopold co-founded the Labor Institute in 1976, a nonprofit organization that designs research and educational programs on occupational safety and health, the environment, and economics for unions, worker centers, and community organizations. He continues to serve as executive director of the Labor Institute and is currently working to build a national economic educational train-the-trainer program with unions and community groups.