What A Biden Turnaround Might Look Like
Lessons from 2016.
As negotiators like to say, nothing’s agreed to until everything’s agreed to, and everything won’t be agreed to until delegates vote.
But given where things stand—the high likelihood that President Biden can’t be persuaded to suspend his re-election effort—I’d like to offer recent history as a parable. The campaign may have no plan, but it’s still critical to think through how a losing and wounded candidate who appears to have no good moves left might pull off an upset.
Some of the people trying to make sense of the Democrats’ predicament have appealed to the lessons of 1968: LBJ chose not to seek re-election, [critical events redacted], and Hubert Humphrey went on to lose to Richard Nixon, though quite narrowly. Others, including me, have looked to systems where party leadership succession is more common, and found pretty persuasive evidence that it can help unpopular incumbent parties turn public opinion around.
But as of July 10, 2024, Democrats aren’t interested in history like that. They’re interested in the opposite: What happens when a party loses confidence in, but nevertheless closes ranks around, a badly wounded nominee? Can a situation like that be salvaged without asking anyone to sacrifice anything?
The answer is almost almost always no. But there’s an important recent exception.