There is no sense in engaging in political analysis, commentary, prediction, or participation if you are unable to confront new information and adjust over time. This applies to academics, commentators, and even voters. In general, politicos of all stripes – and those adjacent to them – tend to treat changing one’s mind like it’s a bad thing, and that’s a problem. Voters who receive new data or life experiences adjusting who they would vote for means the system is working. Academics who can acknowledge when they’re wrong end up building more rigorous contributions to the field. And a politician who changes their views based on new information and the inclinations of their base is exactly what we claim we want, even if we don’t always react kindly to it.

Over the last two years, I – and we at The Postrider generally – have beat one drum pretty consistently: that, strategically, it made the most sense for Joe Biden to run for reelection. Well over two years ago, I explained why it made historical sense; just eight months ago I explained why the election was probably Biden’s to lose. Even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance, though I was under no delusions that the campaign was still Biden’s to lose, but I did believe that, if he addressed the age issue head on, he could craft a cohesive and clear strategy that would reinvigorate the campaign and give him fighting odds.

Needless to say, the president did not take my advice. Instead, he retreated to privately contemplate the future of his campaign amid a whirlwind of negative press, calls by elected Democrats to drop out, and dire polling that began to inundate him and his presidency. A bad press week became two, then three, and then it was over. On Sunday, July 21, the president stood down and dropped his reelection bid.

We may never know if this was the correct strategic choice – it is totally possible that Biden could have still won reelection. Donald Trump remains unpopular, and Republican complacency could have taken hold a la Democratic complacency in 2016, or some other earthshattering event (have we not had enough?!) could have redefined the race. My sense is that no matter what, Biden probably would’ve performed somewhere within a pretty narrow range. If he stood down and Democrats nominated someone else, the range of outcomes were far wider – it could go way worse or way better. In other words, the standard deviation on Democratic vote share with Biden staying in was small, and larger if he bowed out. My philosophy is that your goal in a campaign is to start with a baseline and minimize risk. Any world where Biden left the ticket was taking a sizable risk without a definite upside. As we got closer and closer, and polls got worse and worse, the risk became larger and the potential upside became clearer. Again, we’ll never know if we crossed that risk-reward inflection point, or whether Biden’s choice was right or wrong, but I still believe there are genuine arguments both for and against Biden staying in – anyone who claims it was 100% the right or wrong thing to do is making a dubious claim about an unprecedented moment in political history with high levels of uncertainty.1It’s funny, even in the worst of the worst moments for Biden in terms of polls, the race was still pretty close to a toss-up between him and Trump! Some models may say it was more like a 25% chance or a 33% of a Biden win post-debate, but the amount of time left for the electorate to tune in and the polls to shift left a lot of potential upside for Biden, even as Trump approached the apex of his electoral ceiling. 

But, we are where we are, and the new path towards Election Day is materializing. In the long run, think pieces, books, and plenty of academic assessment will be published about how this all came to be and the ultimate result. For the time being, it’s hard to imagine how this could have gone better: a surge of Democratic fundraising, reinvigorated volunteering efforts, and positive press for both the president and the (already) semi-presumptive Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, all emerged after Biden’s decision. After the debate, back when all the chatter about Biden dropping out really began in earnest, I wondered if there was an astute play here: drive Democrats’ attention to the very real threat of a Trump victory, avoid the bruising competitive primary, let Biden take the baggage, and run like hell to Election Day. Now that this has sort of come to be, it’s left me wondering if Democrats stumbled into the best possible play. Let’s break this down.

The Primary

A signature advantage of any incumbent president running for reelection is that they do not (usually) face a competitive primary. This is advantageous for a plethora of reasons: it allows candidates to save on expenses, allows them to focus on the general election, and – most importantly for our purposes – prevents them being dragged to the left or right to appeal to partisan primary voters (and forced to say things that may be used against you in a general election) and taking on the resulting baggage any competitive primary leaves with a candidate.

Biden didn’t exactly face a competitive primary; he handily won every state and almost every delegate. Yes, there were some “uncommitted” votes, votes for longshots Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, and Jason Palmer even won American Samoa, but this was by any definition of the word, a landslide. Nationally, Biden won about 14.5 million votes (about 87% of all votes cast in the primary).

But imagine if Biden opted not to run a year ago. Presumably, Harris would have run, and a bruising primary may have ensued as so-called “more electable” Democrats – seizing on Harris’ unfavorability – entered the race. Harris likely still wins (see the following paragraph) but she comes out of the primary in a worse position than she’d like. But the events that have unfolded over the past month have solidified Harris’ status as the standard bearer without subjecting her to that kind of scrutiny and attack.

This is not to make a judgment call about the (little “D”) democratic downsides of this process: Democrats are now set to nominate someone who did not receive votes in their primary, who didn’t formally earn the support of the electorate, many of whom may have actually preferred to vote for someone else. Feeling that way is valid, so take what I’m about to say as merely my opinion on this. For one, Harris probably would have won the primary anyway – she is the sitting vice president, has the highest name recognition, and broadly appeals to core parts of the Democratic coalition. Second, Democrats who voted overwhelmingly for Biden to win renomination can’t really claim to be unaware of the situation and its logical consequences – he is, famously, an older guy and his vice president (with whom he was running for reelection) is Harris. Maybe it’s a stretch but the voters who chose Biden at least subconsciously accepted that there was a nonzero chance of a Harris presidency or candidacy and were okay with it; they trusted Biden to make the decision and trusted his judgment because he was their first choice anyway. 

The Republicans

It’s hard to overstate how unprepared the Republicans seemingly were for something they’d been hinting would happen for years. Even if Trump largely held back from criticizing the president by name, much of the RNC was devoted to bashing and criticizing Biden. Anti-Biden merch has lost the significance it once had. This may not have a dramatic effect. It shouldn’t be difficult to tie Harris to the president and his unpopularity (she is, after all, his vice president and was his running mate), but it is kind of illuminating how deeply invested the Republicans were in running against Biden without seeming to take the possibility of his withdrawal seriously.

But the national strategy probably needs some clarification. Republicans have spent a lot of time talking about how old Biden is. After focusing a lot of the electorate’s energy on age, they’ve found themselves a bit flat footed now that Trump is the oldest ever nominee for president in U.S. history. And after priming for an election that they really thought was solidified against a presumably enfeebled opponent, the Trump campaign doubled down, picking nascent politician J.D. Vance (someone much more beholden to and in the mold of Trump) instead of a running mate who would’ve balanced the ticket and expanded the GOP’s reach to more diverse groups of swing voters in a way better than, frankly, two white men at the top of the ticket ever could.

This leaves Trump saddled with a weak ticket, a weak running mate, months and months of messaging on the relative age of the candidates, and a campaign that – even if it was his to lose – he is no longer prepared for. It also means that the drama consuming Biden and the positive press bestowed upon Harris’ historic candidacy has completely overshadowed any positive gains to be made from a post-convention (or post-assassination attempt) bounce. Maybe that’s why there’s been some reporting that Trump world is regretting, or at least having second thoughts, about the Vance pick (as are many others in the party). Don’t ignore the down ballot implications either – many Republicans in Senate or House races planned on tying their Democratic opponents to Biden as well, a message that they now need to adapt.

Yet, Republicans have continued to lash out at Biden, with some focusing on his age and suggesting he should resign. No longer a candidate himself, there’s a strategic risk to this. For one, it actively takes attacks and attention away from Harris, effectively deflecting that energy towards Biden. And second, Biden is, now, a more sympathetic figure. He is a politician and president at the end of his career, no more races to run or win, and attacks on him may increasingly come across as frivolous or even outright callous. As long as Biden can absorb vitriol, it may both protect Harris and illustrate how rancorous the GOP has become in pursuit of their enemies.

The General

And that brings us to the general election. I don’t want to raise your expectations here – we’re waiting for the dust to settle in terms of polls and for Harris to select her running mate before we conduct any serious forward-looking analysis. Harris may do better against Trump than Biden would with some constituencies and worse with others. She may be able to thread the needle of letting Biden absorb the blows and frustration about the economy and immigration over the last four years while she charts a positive message for the country. She might even prove a more compelling reminder to “normcore” voters of some Republicans’ racist and sexist rhetoric, an issue that Republican leadership is particularly wary of. It seems like the surge in fundraising and Democratic base energy is a good thing for the party, but we don’t know if it will move the needle (money tends not to). 

There’s also a case to be made that this bodes well for Democrats in that they can finally divide and conquer: Vice President Harris can campaign nationwide, less beholden to the official duties of her largely ceremonial role, though fluctuations in Senate membership and occasional close votes may force her back to Washington to cast a tie-breaking vote in line with much of her first couple years in the job. Meanwhile, President Biden can focus on running the apparatus of government, engaging with foreign heads of state, and preparing policy actions to round off his term and streamline a smooth presidential transition process. Maybe this all amounts to nothing, but it at least gives the presidential candidate more time, and right now, that was something Democrats were running out of.

But again, the truth is, we don’t know what will happen, and we don’t have enough polling information to really say yet. Every assessment as to how this affects the outcome of the general election is currently based on very little data.

So, Was This the Best Play?

Until the 2024 election is put to bed, it’s hard to say; and we really may never really know what was the best play. Even if Harris wins in November, I’m sure there will be pieces written that suggest that Biden may have done even better – it’s an untestable scenario, so we’ll never know. The best I can give you is to look backwards:

If you could go back two years ago knowing what you know now, and could wave a magic wand to make Biden do whatever you wanted, where would you start? 

1. Would you tell the president to announce he won’t seek reelection? That would risk a competitive Democratic primary, or at least one which is more competitive than this one… but Harris probably remains the nominee and receives many many more months of negative press and attacks from Republicans, sapping Democratic momentum. That’s objectively worse for Democrats than the current situation.
2. Would you double down on Biden, but tell him not to debate or give him tips on how to debate better? That might keep Biden on the ticket, but that’s probably neither notably better nor worse than the current situation, and the risk of some other event with the president going awry are very real. Maybe you tell him to just debate later? Oof, well maybe that works, maybe you risk this all happening but instead it’s October, days before Election Day… 
3. Would you tell Biden to stick it out no matter what? Probably the same deal, but – for the time being – Harris is at least polling better than Biden and you now have 100 days until Election Day with a handful of incredibly high profile Democrats on the record saying their party’s leader should not be running. That seems pretty rough.
4. Okay, so what does that leave you with? Somewhere like where we are now… 

None of those are clearly better options, many of them are obviously worse. At best, the conclusion is unavoidable that Biden or Harris are the only two options, and that avoiding a competitive primary is a blessing. 

Or, if you prefer it visually, I’ve tried to map out the endgames in terms of net positive or negative. With an understanding that you may view some negatives as worse than others, this at least lets you follow pretty objectively what is a clear positive and clear negative outcome (read: you may disagree about the size of the arrows, but not the direction!):

By no means should Democrats delude themselves into thinking this was the best possible play given years and years of notice – ideally, they’d be running a popular incumbent president whose favorability is above water. But given the situation we do have, and even if it meant stumbling into it, it seems arguable that Democrats have somehow made the best possible play out of an increasingly dire situation.