How to Convince Biden to Quit

Biden has the right to stand down. The ballots are not been printed yet. That's all misinformation, right, we haven't had the convention yet. By the way, it's actually technically speaking not the Democrats only option. There is a conscious clause in the convention which says, if you're in you're good conscious, you think this guy should not be the nominee, then you are not legally bound to vote for him. Now, ninety eight ninety nine percent of the delegates where people

selected by Joe Biden. When you vote in the primaries, you vote both for a candidate and for his or her Dell gets the convention as chosen by the candidate, right, So they're loyal to Biden. But there also weren't really necessarily planned for a scenario like this. There might be regular, normy Democrats who are kind of local party leaders. If you look at polling now of Democratic voters, it's actually

pretty close. I think in one poll which was put up by group it's advocating for this, So take that with a grain of salt. Right, In one poll, a majority Democratic voters actually said they prefer to have an open nomination process to Biden. I mean, I don't know

what kind of cave people are hiding in. But like the concern about Biden's age and the debate is certainly not confined to uh, just elites, right, I mean, it's with registered impuls of voters for a long time, for months, for years, voters have said, sorry, we tolerated up to age eighty one, which he is now, right, but another another six months this plus another four years eighty six, that's not going to work for us, right.

pick the candidates what the convention was for? You know, Since then there hasn't been a situation where the superdugets had to be invoked, although it was close in some years, right, you know, Hillary versus Obama was fairly close. For example, there was talk on the Republican side where Trump at one point had a plurality, but not a majority of delegance. In twenty sixteen, he wound up though sweeping the last twenty percent of states to have a clear majority in

the end. But look, I mean, the reason you write emergency procedures is for emergencies, and Democrats are in kind of an emergency. I'm not going to be one of those peoplehos like, oh Trump gets elected, it's going to be the last election. I think it's probably hyperbolic, right, but like one of your goals as a party is to elect winning candidates and win elections, and Joe Biden's

probably not going to beat Donald Trump. And in fact, even Democrats if you read the reporting, even Democrats who say we can't switch candidates, if you talk to them privately, they say, we think Biden's gonna lose. We just don't think we have a choice, right, we want to save down ballot racist things like that. It's just not very rational.

can't gain momentum. And so many times then in these decision making processes, and by the way, right right now we're talking about the presidency, which is huge, but this happens in boardrooms, this happens in corporate decision makings, This happens everywhere when everyone is thinking something privately but they can't say it publicly because they're too afraid of the repercussions. And the calculus just doesn't work out if we put

it in our game theoretical framework. Right, you start looking at the payoff matrix and you say, okay, what's my payoff matrix? If I'm the person who speaks out and then people don't support me and all these things happen, and then I'm the one who loses. And Biden is

actually playing into that because he's stacking it. He's explicitly saying, Okay, your payoff matrix looks like shit because you know I'm going to do this, and you don't want to be the person who betrayed me, right, you don't want to be Buddhists in this scenario.

to be what I would call knits meeting there. We've used that term before on the show, right, And it's like a neurotic riskivers person, and elected Democrats are like

neurotic and riskivers and also very people pleasing. You advance in the party by by building alliances and the different constituents and commitments you have finding ways to balance those pleasing donors, which sounds like the worst thing in the world to me, right, to have like some rubber chicken dinner where you're pleasing these donors who are rich but have dumb opinions about politics most of the time.

The first move is said, get Biden to take the hit gently and then maybe not so quite so gently, where you start to have anonymous leaks and then you have backbenchers meaning relatively obscure members of Congress kind of saying, hey, you should think about this. As far as I know, as far as any reporting has suggested, there has not been like a posse of senior leaders who has gone to the White House and said, Joe, we're not fucking around.

You're gonna lose, You're gonna embarrass your party, You're gonna embarrass your position in history. It's time to stand down. So far as I know, that hasn't happened. Really, they have kind of gone halfway up the escalatory spiral, but

they haven't really used their best ammunition yet. Never mind these nuclear options like the conscious Clause or the twenty fifth Amendment is an amendment to the US Constitution that CanCERN if a president is unable to carry out his duties and the cabinet can say that the vice president ought to take over. I also think that like they haven't fully played the Kamala Harris card, and I want to talk about Harris in kind of the second half

of this segment. But like you know, one of the ironies is that the Congressional Black Caucus has been what's helped Biden to save ground, to salvage ground so far right, I don't think there have been any Congressional Black Caucus members who have come out yet and said that Biden should step aside. There have been many who said that he should not step aside, and so you know that has been very helpful to him. But if Biden were to step aside, the most likely replacement would be, you know,

the first woman president or the first woman. I guess, you know, I know you would take over immediately, But like, but Kamala Harris, who could become the first woman president and a black woman and an Asian woman as well, So it seems like I don't really buy. Look, my preference is that you'd have some type of voter input, more open nomination process. But like, it seems like, do they really prefer Biden to a black vice president who was at this point in her life much more capable

than he is? Right, eighty one year old Biden's not more capable than Kamala Harris. I mean, he's not right, he's not prosecuting the case against Trump. He's not capable of like being up time when you need a potential crisis. I mean, you can think Kamala Harris is a mediocre at best politician, which I do, and she might not

be your cup of tea. But like, but it's just a bizarre argument that like, you know, so I think if if they said, Okay, we might not have enough leverage to have this West Wing Aaron Sorkin fantasy convention, that Nate Silver might like, right, do you not have the leverage to say, let's agree that Kamala Harris is a less bad option, right, she is capable of actually prosecuting the case against Trump. You're not lying to the American public about her fitness for office, and you know what,

she'll probably lose, but like, but Biden's probably gonna lose too. Like, what's the world in which Biden wins that Harris doesn't win. I mean, it's like the world where Biden win, involved world where the polling is so far off that we don't know what I'm gonna begin with, or where like Trump goes to jail or something, and like, like any Democrat can win into those conditions, any any halfway competent democrat. Maybe we're not gonna get more than a halfway competent option.

But like, I mean, look, we're in Nevada, not Nevada, right, Nevada Nevada's And you see ads in Nevada because it's a swing state, which New York is not. Saw some Spanish language ad for example, where they're like, you know, Joe Biden is very competent, he is a steady hand, and like he does not have a steady hand. I mean literally, I'm not sure he has a steady hand. Anymore. I don't mean to diagnosed semtically, but like, but you can't project we are the campaign that is just a

steady hand competence, no chaos anymore. Right, that cat is out of the bag. It's too late for that. You're selling people on a lie like it just you know, the honest thing to do is to say, we chose this woman to be vice president, and she has served as vice president for three and a half years. Now, at any moment she could become president. Joe Biden could have a heart attack, there could be some type of

attack on whenever Joe Biden is located. We elected people elected Kamala Harris to be vice president and clearly you're in a situation where she is more fit to be

president than Biden over the next four years. And like, what's it say about her or what's it say about like how cynical the decision was, Like maybe you picked her in June twenty twenty because you're in a period summer twenty twenty when you're in a period where there's a lot of this racial reckoning, so called right, but she is a center from California, She's been in this attorney right, she is like someone who I think is

generally regarded as being very smart and competent. The problems were mostly the fact that like that, like politically she wasn't a very compelling hand ain't unless have some upside potential, But like, what is it saying that these people don't trust her in a circumstance where she you know, I think obviously it seems more fit for the job now, let alone for four more years.

The first is that Democrats are saying, you know, Biden is a good man, like we can convince him to step down by kind of these these subtle hence, these subtle you know, he'll see the light. What they don't understand is that when you attack someone's core identity, right who they are, how they see themselves, what their reason for being is. That does not work, and what ends up happening is you double down and you really do

not see kind of the light. And I think that's that's even worse with Biden right now, because he is degrading a little bit when it comes to cognitive capacity. We all know see the world through rose colored glasses, you know, have this kind of better than average effect where we think we're you know, better, et cetera, et cetera. But in the case of someone who is president right, who has that kind of hubris, who's been reinforced over and over and over, that's going to be completely doubled.

I've wrote an article a number of years ago from The New Yorker called I Don't Want to be Right, and it's basically about how difficult it is to get people to change their minds when the essence of who they see themselves as is attacked. And so relying on Biden and trying to appeal to his good nature to step aside, that is not going to work. And we see that actually backfiring right now. We see Biden saying,

you know, I'm not going to step aside. I'm going to fight, and it's obviously not helped that he has people around him like Hunter likes Joe Biden who are telling him, Oh, no, this is great, this is wonderful. And then the flip side of that is that you have this party that is a.

No red flags are actually red flags, and instead they're going to kind of go through this cognitive dissonance reduction so that they end up saying, no, this is still the best candidate, this is wonderful, this is great, like no matter what, we're voting for him. And I actually see think we're seeing a little bit of that in the Democratic Party, where it's not a cult, but it's more like Stockholm syndrome ish where they're also rationalizing away

the red flags. And I think that actually intersects with what you were talking about with the risk aversion factor, because they're scared and they're scared of taking this kind of this gamble. They're scared of doing something unprecedented, and that is self reinforcing. So you have that, and then you have the kind of the delusion of no, everything's going to be okay. This isn't actually a red flag.

He just had a bad day. And the more you rationalize, the easier it becomes to rationalize, and the more you actually start believing that this is reality. Because in the immediate aftermath of the debates, you were like, holy shit, were fucked right, And then like the next day you're like, oh, well, maybe it wasn't so bad. And then two days later

you're like, Okay, really it wasn't so bad. You know, you kind of start rewriting history, you start rewriting the way that you perceive it, and you end up in this place where you're pretty divorced from reality. And that is a really dangerous place to be. And I think that might be kind of where we are right now.

and get that, get that out of the way. But then I think you need to be straightforward with him, and you need to do it in a way that does not attack who he is, but actually reinforces it and says, you know, you want to go down in history as the great president who stopped Donald Trump. The only way to do that is by stepping aside. These are all the amazing things that you would be doing. This does not make you look weak. It's not because

you're old. Of course, we know you're competent. Of course, we know what you're doing the other people are idiots, though, and you need to understand political perception. You need to understand, you know, how people are reacting. They're not rational, but it doesn't matter because you know that's who we're dealing with. So you need to be the bigger man and do the right thing. And you're smart enough to do it.

You're competent enough to do it. You know, you're brilliant, use your brilliant mind to step aside and do the strategically correct thing to save the country from the brink of disaster. So you're doing several things right. You're playing to his ego. You're not saying he's weak, you're not saying he's too old, you're not saying you're not attacking him in ways that make him feel attacked. And instead you're trying to say, okay, how do you cement your legacy?

And honestly, I might even do something like pull the RBG card and say, you know, let's let's look at RBG. You know someone who was this absolutely brilliant mind.

happening here. And you can compare, I mean, if you compare, Biden, like, I think the key also is to find other good historical precedents of people who he admires and who he thinks you know, are strong leaders who did something like this, who you can be like. You know, you can be like or you can be like RBG right, like you

can do you can do these things. And it's not about you the whole thing, right, we always talk about you look at all these presidential addresses over you know, hundreds of years, and it's all about it's not about you,

it's about the country. It's about the greater good. And so to try to kind of get to that and have him hear it, and the only way he's going to hear it is if he doesn't feel attacked, and if he doesn't feel like you're disrespecting him, if he doesn't feel billittled, if he doesn't feel like you're talking to him like an old man. Because he does not see himself that way, I think it's really important to

project to him the way that he sees himself. He sees himself as still that young, capable senator who can do anything. In the debate, that became very clear because when he was asked, you know, what do you say about the age about the age complaints, he was like, well, I used to be the youngest, and everyone is complaining about my age. Well, that doesn't answer the question, but that actually gives you a really really interesting psychological lens

into what's going on in his head. In his mind, he's still the youngest, he can still make it work. He just has off days. He is doing that exact same rationalization, and I think he truly truly believes it. I do not think he thinks he's slipping, and he can rationalize away like one bad day, et cetera, et cetera. And if he actually has diminished cognitive capacity, then once again it's going to be much that much more difficult

for him to see reality. So the way the best con artists operate is to sell people the vision of the world that they already believe is true. And so here I'm suggesting we use the persuasion tactics of con artists to try to gently get persuade Biden to do what's best and make make him think that it's his own idea. That's the other thing that they do. Right, Instead of saying like give me your money, they make me say, Nate, you know, I think you really want to give me your money.

they think. But I wouldn't want to make a decision on behalf of Joe Biden, the greatest man who ever lived. It's like that kind of shit, like that.

instead of course he has to be our nominee. It's not actually that many as a share of the caucus, but like, you know, but they're not worried about the preference cascade game. They're coming out and saying what they actually think, or maybe actually they're saying things that they don't actually believe but like but that they don't bear as much of a personal cost, or at least they don't think so, or or the presidents calling in favors

or whatever else. So he made this aggressive move to like reverse this momentum and staunch the bleeding for how long I don't know. I mean, the fundamental problem is that he doesn't have the goods, right, He doesn't have the goods to run a normal campaign, and his slim chances, which aren't zero, but slim rests on you know, something about the information environment that we don't understand, or something that hasn't happened yet, some other dilemma that makes Trump

even know nothing seems to change Trump's numbers. On principle, you could imagine. I'm not sure what that way now.

like running some anti elite campaign. First of all, he calls into like fucking like mourning Joe the like breakfast cereal of like the most elite political elites in the country, right to complain about how I mean it's very Trumpian or Nixonian. It's Trumpian. I mean, it's not like I'm not playing around with this. I'm being fucking both sides. I think. I think Joe Biden has acted more and more like Richard Dixon and Donald Trump in recent days.

But like you know, he was appointed to positions by decisions made by elites. He finished in eighth place in the two thousand and eight Democratic primary or something, and and Barack Obama appointed him as his vice president. Right in twenty twenty, there was an intervention on his behalf. I think he might have eventually won maybe anyway, it was probably pretty close between him and burning other people. But there was an intervention by all these party elites

to like Maximiz's chances as much as possible. So who the fuck is he is to think that he didn't earn this for being like the most impressive order or in America or the smartest person, right, I mean, if we're being fucking honest, like of the of the forty six hownty persons that it's at forty six, I'm losing my train to that. Yeah. Yes, in terms of what he's accomplished outside of politics, he's like not in the upper half of like no.

it happen. Right, So let's forget Biden. Like he's not gonna he's gonna say like I made it happen. But what the party needs to understand is that collective action is actually possible. And we just saw it in France, where that coordination worked and the fact that the candidates worked together, that they put aside their egos, that they stepped aside, you know, that they did what was right, and that, as you said, they behaved like adults. Why

can't our country behave like adults. They're behaving like fucking children. Like it's really like both parties and you, you know what you said. The reason that I started saying that some of the things I was saying about connartists and cults, et cetera, and Trump, I'm now applying to the Democrats, that is because I kind of agree with you that Biden is acting in those ways more right now than

he ever has in the past. And of course all politicians have a little bit of kind of that bent to them because you have to convince people to do things all the time. But he now is becoming increasingly divorced from reality and from what's going on. And as soon as your decisions become driven by ego as opposed to, you know, by what you should be doing as a politician the country, et cetera, et cetera, that's when things

start to go wrong. So I but, as I said, let's let's call on the Democratic Party to actually remember who got him there, and that they are capable of doing big things like this, and that we now we see evidence that this works, and it's worked in other countries, and it's worked in our country, and why not try it again? Because yeah, it might not work, but what we're doing right now shures hell ain't working.

absolutely play hardball. And this is where you just go down and dirty and you do what you need to do to get them to act and to actually light a fire under their asses so that they do what needs to be done for the good of the country, because right now, you know, they've been left alone and that's not working. Whatever's happening right now is not working.

more challenges with day to day tasks. And I cannot get conscious not convey this to the American people anymore, Right, And I think he should step aside and let his extremely talented elected Vice president Kamala Harris be the nominee instead. Right, First of all, if if your cards play right, you

might look like a genius for doing that. Although there's one other problem, which is that, like if let's say Kamala Harris has like a I'm going to give you if you've listened this far, and I'm gonna give you some numbers. Right, Let's say she has a thirty five or forty percent chance to win, and Biden has a twenty percent chance to win if he if he's forced to stay in, Right, I think it might.

the model. Right, if you took Joe Biden right now in a hole and replaced him with an average Democrat John Kerry, maybe Joe Biden twenty twenty, who was notably a better performer, right, you know, if you put like an average Democrat in his shoes, Hubert h Humphrey or something, then I think twenty nine percent, the most recent reading, you know, might be reasonable. However, I don't think he's capable of running a normal campaign at all. He hasn't

been so far. Every media cycle has been distracted, was going to turn into a distruction about like his age and performance and things like that. There's another debate coming up, so like, I think the chances might be if i'm you know, if i'm kind of I mean, my gut is the chancellor zero right now. I don't weigh my gut that heavily. My gut is like, there's just no fucking way then America is gonna like this guy for another four years, just fundamentally untenable. And he's already behind.

Now he's fallen further behind. So if I average twenty nine percent zero, then you get in the fifteen percent range or whatever. Right, a kind of balancing head and model. And the reason why in this case I think it's important not to go up pure model is that there's not a precedent in circumstance for this, right, there's not a circumstance where like the canon is so obviously not

ready to run a normal campaign anymore. And I think also like in a more technical matter, like we still haven't had that much high quality state polling since a debate, the model's being a little bit conservativebout it. So I bet on the model being twenty five percent anyway, that's where I get to, like fifteen or twenty percent. I think it's not zero, but like in Harris, I think might be double that roughly.

one years old and is in rapid decline. I think, yeah, that's obvious to anyone with a fucking brain and like it just you can't sell that much of a shit sandwich to voters. It's not something you can compartmentalize because it gets into the very way that he speaks, the very way that he conducts the business of the White House. It's not like he you know, it's not like he screwed some intern and then and you can put that out of your mind.

lacks it too. Trump should step aside, blah blah blah. That ain't happening, So like let's let's not let's not worry about that. To the people listening right now and being like, well, you know, what about No, not what about?

So there's only one party that exists that has the option of actually giving us a good candidate that we want to vote for, and that's the Democrats. So please, Joe Biden, now is the time be a hero withdraw from the race and do it now.

table thought this was very, very amusing. But I kept building back and being able to survive, and honestly, that's the key. So right now I'm going to have about fifty big lines heading into day three, which is totally fine, right, It's solid, it's not huge. I'm not one of the big stacks, but I'm not one of the micro stacks. And what's really really important to remember in an event like this, which lasts over many days, is survival matters.

but yeah, I don't have a great narrative. I mean I was kind of just you know, remaining very patient because you can just like, oh, I lost like ten pots in a row, and because you have so many chips, and like you actually it's not affecting you all that much. But at some point, kind of late on day two. If you'd ever played the event, that's when the blinds start to creep up enough. You know, goes from one thousand big bline to fifteen hundred and then two thousand

in two levels. Right, that's a doubling in two levels. And that's where a lot of people like me start to get knocked out or in a situation where where there was actually a cost to being patient, right where it's like, yeah, I just you know, I went I know if I wanted to technical about the terms, right, but like I shoved, I went all in with with the okay hand because I thought I had a lot of full equity. I've been playing very tight. I thought

I had a good image. But you can have a good image of the m the theifona has kings, then it doesn't matterimes you.

put yourself in the situation to win. And I think that everyone would do well too to remember that lesson and to not be.

taking risks they shouldn't to try to build back up, and that's not a good mindset. So I will try to be zen going into.

different type of looser tight yep. I mean in terms of, like, in terms of your vibe and your mood. I I don't think there's any harm from looking at the main event as quote just another poker tournament, right, I think that's more good than harmful. Now that might mean that, like now, strategically, their differences I don't apply to any

other tournament, right. And there are things like it's more worth it to get your rest and your fitness and eat well instead of the cheap burger or whatever right on the break, right, the expected value difference is higher. But like you know, people who have success in the main tend to have repeated success because they've been there before. And I have anything to prove, and like, I think that's usually that's usually helpful any tournament where patience is very rewarded.