The President Has No Clothes: Biden Should Drop Out

And then I said we are so fucked. And that is when I knew Nate that we had to talk today.

mind in the direction that I think is persuasive. But like among the media slash pundit class, you have to be really bad when the incentives are so strong to spin. You have to be really bad to get to a point where even the spinners kind of give up.

and there's a social stigma of saying it. Well, there's no longer a social stigma of saying that Joe Biden should drop out, right, That's like, that's like almost like the normy not normally damn voter you although actually it is Actually I take that back, because like if you look at Poles, and overwhelming majority of voters and the majority of Democrats, not an overwhelming majority of Democrats have said that they think Biden is too old to be president at least for another four years.

person continue to run for president right now. People are fucking stupid and stubborn, especially old people. Yeah, and they may make a bad decision, but like, if you care about like, uh, defeating Donald Trump, if you care about the kind of you' sure the Democratic Party, and if you care about listening to like the voters who have done you the favor of telling you this for a year, that like, yeah, hey, common sense, you know, eighty one is too old to be president and president was eighty six.

I'm sorry, but like this is kind of not that close a decision anymore, I don't think. And in some ways, like I told, like a I'm rambling. I'm sorry, you know, it's I.

it's the thing that saves Democrats from a disaster. Although I still think and the other nominee against Trump would also be, you know, in a difficult position.

I'm doing it. And I was doing that yesterday, Like I was sitting on the couch and like at some point I just went like this, you know, I shielded my eyes and I was like, oh my god, this is this is just it was painful, Like it was

actually physically painful to watch, especially at the beginning. I think he got a little bit better, but he was just struggling so much, and you could really see his age and Trump, I mean, Trump was making no sense either, but he was confidentially making no sense and lying, and the fact that a candidate couldn't beat that, couldn't point out the inconsistency, you know, the old I was a

debater all through school. Like the debater part of me, I was like, I wanted to be like, oh my god, you know you have to you have to do you have to interrupt him here, you have to try, you have to do this, you have to address this. And then Biden just flubbed his biggest points, you know, abortion, He just suddenly pivoted to immigration. You know, it was just it was just really really sad, heartbreaking and also scary.

Like I said, I felt like I was watching just this slow motion train wreck horror movie where I didn't even want to see what was happening on screen. Now, what you were saying, kind of the second part of your ramble about people, you said you were rambling. You called it a ramble, So I'm just referring back to what you said. It was a very cocerent ramble. I didn't think you were. I didn't think you were rambling, but then you said I'm rambling. So that's why I'm calling it.

And other people felt that way as well. But anyhow, what I was going to say is the second part of what you were talking about, kind of the stubbornness. And I've actually seen reactions to people saying, well, you know, it's what will this say about the Democratic Party that

they've been like hiding this and blah blah blah. No, so let's go back to something we've talked about on this podcast before, which is the sunk cost fallacy like this is probably the single most important sunk cost fallacy that you could face and you know in politics ever, which is that you know some cost fallacy to remind our listeners putting good money after bad, good time after bad, good energy after bad, basically saying that because we haven't

done something to this point, or we have done this and we've already invested, we can't change right. We have to keep going and we have to just continue on the path we're on. Whereas the rational choice might be to say, Okay, you know what. I can't change the fact that we didn't replace Biden immediately. I can't change the fact that we didn't convince Biden not to run for a second term and to step down immediately. I can't change the fact that back in September, when we

had more time, he didn't step down. What I can change is what I'm doing right now. And that doesn't mean I'm nefarious. That doesn't mean that I've done something stupid, that I've been hiding things. All it means is that the information the dataset has changed the reality right now isn't the reality of a year ago or two years ago, which, as you pointed out in your newsletter, happens because decline does happen kind of suddenly, and you know, it's not

like it's a very gradual process, you know. And we I think we witnessed it yesterday. But what you should say is, Okay, this doesn't say anything bad about me. What it says is that I'm smart, that I understand what's happening right now, and then I'm willing to change my mind. And that is a sign of intelligence and savvy.

And as you say, having Biden step down is not guaranteeing a Democratic victory, but having him not step down is almost almost, I mean not quite, but almost handing the victory to Trump.

head to head poles against Trump. At that point he might follod it twenty percent or something in our model, and twenty percent is still meaningly above zero. But look, as you were saying, like, I mean, there's two things here. One is that there has been a lot of new information revealed.

time to think about it on the river. Maybe you're a little bit tilted or something on the turn, maybe you were distracted, maybe you're playing poker online multi tabling, playing more than one table at once, so being able to say, look, I have thought about this more, and I'm changing my mind, certainly when there's new information, but even when there's not is also assigned.

the higher quality polls are fully priced. Ten.

like cancer, he probably would. So how is this guy supposed to show the dexterity and energy and flexibility to mount a comeback against a guy I mean, look, whatever you say about Trump, he immediately sens.

I mean, I don't want to name anyone in particular, but like they can have days maybe half the time, two thirds of the time, three quarters at the time where they act like their old self, or maybe they do in most capacities in their life. But it's not good enough when you're the American president and the president

for another four fucking years. It's just irresponsible. The people in the White House who have not spoken about this publicly should be shun from public life frankly, you know, I mean seriously, some of them will write, you know, big magazine expose's and get book deals and things like that,

they're fucking cowards. If you're in the White House and you think you're a fucking patriot, come fucking forward and tell us what Joe Biden's really like, right, don't get a fucking book deal in two years and then say how much you knew all along? You're a fucking coward. Yeah, not like willing to speak or defend him. Er say, look, I'm being honest and I'm going to tell you that, like it's actually not that bad. That's fine too, but like there's a lot of fucking cowards at the Democredit Party.

High pressure, Like you know, you need to perform. And the thing is, if you're running to be the president of the United States, that's when you need to perform well. You need to perform well under those high pressure situations. I don't give a fuck if you're fine on your off days on the weekend, when you have, you know, hours and hours to think about it. I need to know that you're also fine in a crisis situation, when the lights are on you, when you have to respond

undertime pressure, when you have to make hot decisions. I want to know that that's when you shine, that you're not going to choke. And what we saw last night is Biden absolutely choking. And by the way, it also kind of reminded me, you know, back in school in political science class when you probably watch these clips two of the original Kennedy Nixon debates, where like Nixon just looked horrible on camera, right, and Kennedy just won because

you looked so much better. Sorry, you were going to get another debate and there, Yeah, Bida just looked awful. He just looked like when you looked at the split screen, he looked lost, you know, he just looked like he didn't know what was happening. He was gaping. He just didn't He had no presence, and Trump has presence. I mean, I hate Trump. He was lying. There was not a single true word out of his mouth. But as you said, his political instincts were on. He you know, commanded the camera.

He had this chesshire cat grin like yes, I'm about to get all the whales money right here, like keep it coming, and he had the barbs like the you know, I don't know what he said at the end of that last sentence. I don't think he knows either. I mean, that's those clips are going to go viral, and that's going to really be well awful. I said a lot of different things there, but I think they're all really.

they're like parashooters. This all sounds very weird. You know, international organizations in Europe is weird, right, So like, of course it's weird, but like, so what will happen is like the fact checkers will show the full clip in context, which also looks pretty fucking bad. Right. It also makes by the fucking old and loss not as bad as the GOP edited special directors cutversion. But the GFP fucking knows, because they seem to care about winning more the Democrats

to they know that. Like they're going to have this double hit with these videos where the added version and all the fucking precious fact checkers dutifully show the real version, which is also fucking bad for Biden because he's fucking eighty one years old and he's clearly diminished. He is maybe above average for an eighty one year old, but

he is very much diminished. I mean, what really freaked me out about Biden was, you know, Ezra Klein wrote this column maybe back in March or something, saying Biden should consider dropping out and having this emergency lever pulled at the convention. And he just linked to some videos comparing Biden's campaign announcement in twenty twenty versus twenty twenty four.

expect as an runningly you know, probabilistic prior. You would expect that to be true when someone goes from age seventy eight to eighty two or seventy seven to eighty one under the pressures by the way of the US presidency, not the least successful job in the world.

to pasture. I have, you know, my thesis advisor, my graduate advisor in grad school, Walter Michelle, was in his eighties right and was one of the sharpest people I knew, and I became friends with one of his closest friends, Danny Connoman, you know, non Bell laureate who was then in his seventies, sharp up until both of them sharp until they're dying day and incredibly sharp. You know, you

could have very deep debates. But first of all, they're in academia, right, They're not running for president, and the fact that their exceptions doesn't mean that we should be looking at the data that's in front of us and saying, oh, but it's ageist, right, No, this this goes for both of them, by the way, And you could see Trump, like, let's just say that Trump did decline throughout the debate, and you could see that someone at some point, you know, I was looking at kind of Twitter feeds and I

don't remember who tweeted this, but someone said, oh, I now see the difference between seventy eight and eighty one. It's forty five minutes. And I thought that that was that that was pretty pretty spot on, because Trump did start rambling and kind of losing it a little bit near the end. But people are going to so let's talk about also how memory works from a psychology standpoint. People are going to remember the beginning, right, people that

first impression. People are going to remember how they performed when they turned on the television at the beginning, and that was abysmal. That was the worst moment for Biden. He had his kind of freezing moment. It was just like at that point, that's game over. And a lot of people turned off the debate at that point as well because they were like, I don't want to watch this. This is too depressing. I'm done, and that's that's not where you want to be.

like that pretty quickly shout out to prediction markets. But like, yeah, look, I think a lot of people, uh, after the first fifteen minutes, speaking for myself, kind of got lost in a series of conversations and texts and things like that and social media chatter and like because there was no recovering from from that point, right, Like I mean now, because it's like not this is why it's like people are going to say, oh, well, Obama lost the first

debate in twenty twelve and then came back to win. But there are a couple of things, you know, what Obama lost the debate in a way that was much more easy to write off to being a one off, arrogant maybe performance. And second, Obama was ahead at the time that he lost that debate and not behind, so he could he could recover. You know, Biden has been hidden in some ways from doing all the things that

a president normally would do. He did not give a softball interview during the Super Bowl, for example, which every president has. He've been prompted three times, and Biden did, I think two years ago. So you know that wasn't a good sign. He has reviews to give us a down interview with the New York Times, which has beef with Biden, but it is the most widely read publication among influential Democrats and influential people in general. And so why would you not want to let the New York

Times grill you? He did not, more understandably in this case, did not want to debate Dean Phillips, Sir Mariam Williamson. But like, look, if you had had a primary. People say, well, if you'd had a primary, then Biden would have won these more popular than like Devin Newsom or whatever. I'm not sure he would have won if he had even one of these debates, and the primaries must to have like six or seven debates, right, the recent had a primary would be to vet Biden and see is he

prepared for like the begures of a campaign. And this is the first real tests and he just has to be the worst general election performance in history in a debate. It can't be closed. Absolutely, Michael Bluemberg have to have Michael Bloomberg. We probably have Bloomberg fans in the Risky Business audience. You know, interesting guy accomplished a lot. Bloomberg was the next worst performance I've seen in a debate in twenty twenty. And then there's a Marco Rubio thing

here or there. It's probably in third place. Right, but like this was like again the fact that like if I hit to pinpoint, because I'm hypersensitive to like calibrating what everyone thinks about everything on like Twitter and social media, right, if I had like circle, here are ten people that would never ever say that Biden should step down. The debates going badly. That's going really badly. Like any of those ten people are like this sucks, he needs to

get out of there. I mean, it's it's you know, the elected officials and like Nancy Pelosi's haven't said very much yet, but like, I don't know the folks I was watching the.

or something. It was like a twenty fifth Amendment or something. But like, you know, basically Joe Biden has to agree to step down. And so there's kind of two levels, like will there be some elder counsel of Democrats that comes up to him and says, Joe, you gotta go, and then will he listen to that? I think it's more well, I'll maybe be careful. I think it's fifty to fifty. I would buy p drop at forty two,

and it was like twenty five percent last night. I was telling people I'd buy that too, because like, he doesn't have any answer his argument, and the polls are going to come out in a week or two, and like maybe I'm wrong, maybe he'll only be behind.

will do in people like that. You could also have, you know, Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris, who are I suppose the two most likely replacements actually in the reverse order. I think Kamala is quite a bit like more likelier than Gavin Newsom. But we'll see as someone by the way, who think she's a very accomplished person but a terrible politician. I'd still rather have her than Biden at this point. A least she's a blank spite. At least she has

some upside. At least it's a fresh look, right, I would rather have Kamala Harris and increase my variance instead of have this seemingly losing not inevitable but like difficult path. They are being good foot soldiers for Biden and saying, well, you know when it's a bad day now, and then I'm sure behind the scenes though, pop are like, be you a Kamala Gavin at your moment?

I will step down. What do we think kind of is the best path forward? I would love to kind of talk a little bit about kind of what those scenarios look like, whether it's Kamala, whether it's Gavin Newsom. Last night, you know, as I texted to you, you know Mayor Pete question mark because I you know, I've seen Mayor Pete debate and he would have. Now he is a debater. He is someone who would have wiped

the floor with Trump in a setting like that. You know, there are names of people who have followings, but who obviously have issues of their own. So what do we think, like, is what's a viable strategy going forward? Like, let's imagine that you and I get to advise the Democrats. Wouldn't that be awesome?

are called caucuses. They have to pay for it, but Democrats could say, let's schedule let's pick six states that are demographically representative cross section of the US or the Democratic Party at least, right, have this debate and then have a non binding party caucus. Party one caucus in

these six states will pay for it. We'll get some rich guys to pay for it, right, and that will help inform super delegates for what the public preference might be and at the public references and the US then maybe you default to Kamala out of some sense of shiating the VP obviously, but like, I don't look, if you're going to take the drastic step of replacing the president, I don't think you want to tiptoe around the fact that Kamala Harris has also unpopular, and like, what's the point, right,

if you're going to replace the president. You know, I think she should have to fight for it as she would have if Biden has said what you should have done a year and a half ago, I'm not gonna run for a second term, no one would have handed the nomination to Kamala Harris. You would have had to

earn it, and she might have earned it. Candidate's get better sometimes their second run for the White House, and there are attacks on her qualifications, and I think sometimes are unfair, But like I think you have to like try to have some element of that process. And look, you're almost free because like I don't think any of this is about fifty percent, right, I mean it's a matter of like are you getting cashing in your forty percent equity instead of twenty percent?

to be chaos at the convention. Right right now, there is just enough time to get some sense or like even just in polls and they'll remember, you know, someone like a Kamala Harris is much better known than like a Gritch and Whitmer or something like that. But like some type of open audition process, I think, yeah.

consensus about who should be the nominee. Because I do think that at this point, because it's so late in the game and people are fragmented and this is an unprecedented, incredibly risky move, there does need to be a united front and people do need to rally around one candidate as kind of the choice and the person who's going to get kind of the support and who's going to be able to represent well. So I do think that

this needs to happen sooner rather than later. Otherwise it's I think it might end up being a risk that just is sure. It can't be worse than buy it, But the chances of winning are going to be lower because that you know, any cracks kind of in that front are going to be exploited. We've seen that, you know,

the Republican Party is very good at exploiting cracks. And there are a lot of undecided voters who look at something like the debate yesterday and don't really kind of don't know that Trump is actually lying his face off in every single sentence and look at these two people and say, you know what, I'd rather have the guy on my on the left than the guy on the right, because you know, he's just making more sense to me. And what is it that he said about immigrants, you know,

taking my jobs and killing people. I don't want that, right, Like, there are a lot of people who aren't going to do that secondary fact checking, So you need someone to do it who's able to kind of do it in real time, someone who is able to to rebuff and

actually kind of show Trump for what he is. The other kind of the other thing in my mind, though, is you know, last time Trump won, he ran against Hillary Clinton, and one of the reasons that he was able to win is because she was very qualified, but unpopular and didn't run a good campaign. And I think a lot of people didn't want to vote for a female, like as a female, you know, I I was definitely

tuned into that. So I think there is kind of a it's a little bit risky to put a Kamala Harris or Aggretchen in there, because you know, once again he'll be running against a woman, and I don't know if that's the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump.

agree on some consensus choice. If if Kamala Harris were a little bit more popular and people are more confident in her quote unquote electability than.

feel just as despondent as I did before. But I'm really glad that we had a chance to talk this through and to talk through some of kind of the big issues, the big psychological issues, and there are obviously psychological issues for the voters too in terms of swapping out Biden right now. So I think that that's you know, these are all things that we'll need to revisit, and I'm really interesting. I'm really interested to see kind of what the actual response is going to be in the

next few weeks. I would say pe drop is actually probably lower than the prediction markets have them right now now, because you know, ego, ego, ego, ego, ego, and you know, Biden clearly has has a lot of it, and he doesn't want to drop out, and he's surrounded by people who've been shielding him and who've been saying, you did such a great job last night. You know, good job. How Trump didn't say, I.

unanymity among the kind of political and pundit class. And look in twenty twenty, the kind of democratic elites came together in this messy nomination process where it looked like Bernie Sanders might win, and like literally all got together and they all flew somewhere like Pete boodhag Edge and Amy Klobishard dropped out and endorsed Biden right and James Climber and the very influential congressman who is maybe the most admired black Democrat endorsed Biden, and he kind of

zoomed from kind of this muddle and like second place to winning actually very easily on South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. So it is a group that has someone shown itself capable of making adult kind of group decisions. And again, the problem is that, like you can hit this story about Biden's age every single day, However many days are left one hundred and something whatever in the campaign.

be devastating. And you know, just the before and after clips of Biden then versus Biden now, and there's a cascading effects I think, and you know there will be. There's also, by the way, they're also opportunistic effects.

that they want to vote registers a third party. That probably wouldn't work because it's too late to collect enough signatures in certain states. But yeah, if you need it to, you could kind of poison pill Biden, right, You could like threaten to leak unflattering things that would ensure that he would lose and so therefore he's forced to resign and Biden.

and we're kind of fucked. But you know, let's let's tune in in a few weeks and see where we are and see what happens. And I hope that, you know, people listening to this and listening to the unanimity of voices will actually finally do something about it, and we'll be in a better situation, or at least a situation where variance is on our side, where when we when we next revisit this topic.

in the world. I would propose a constitutional amendment to say you cannot begin your presidential term.