He's got 81 problems, but his age ain't one
A pufferfish defense of Biden by Democrats is the wrong way to go
In conflation, a person intrinsically links two (or more) things that really should stay separate. In the last week, I’ve seen a lot of conflation from folks in the Democratic Party about the state of electoral affairs: Biden is under attack and he needs to be defended! While I understand how that reaction arose, the fact remains that their conflation obscures a real issue that needs to be addressed.
A recap
In October, in response to attacks launched on October 7th that killed about 1000 of its citizens, the state of Israel began a withering attack against Palestinians. Ostensibly, these strikes were against one entity, the military wing of Hamas, but the devastation was visited upon Palestinians collectively and indiscriminately, as evidenced by the pattern of bombing. Very early on, this became apparent; and about two weeks into this wrath President Biden, providing diplomatic cover for Israel’s actions, said that he did not place any confidence in the death tolls that were coming out of Gaza that detailed the number of Palestinian dead.
That’s pretty much the beginning of the story for what ultimately began what’s come to be known as the Abandon Biden movement. That moment provided a bone-jarring sense of whiplash and betrayal amongst Palestinian Americans, Arab Americans, many Muslim Americans, and other U.S. citizens besides (myself among this latter group). To deny the death tolls seemed the ultimate in disrespect for the lives of the innocent civilians who perished in those strikes.
Indeed, to cast such extraordinary doubt was to make those deaths so elastic as to make them completely immaterial—as if they hadn’t happened. Several commentators noted that this was a form of abject dehumanization: even in death, Palestinians weren’t considered human enough to be counted.
You have to understand: Biden didn’t have to do this. He didn’t have to stand at that podium at that press conference and make this declaration. It is true that he was fielding a question about the overall amount of civilian dead at that point in the conflict, which, again, was only about two or so weeks into the hostilities. Biden went out of his way to cast doubt and, thus, to spread doubt amongst the listeners. Understandably, many Arab Americans and Muslim Americans took this extraordinarily personally. Biden, in essence, was saying, “These people don’t matter.”
As far as I can recount the timeline, that seems to be when the genesis of Abandon Biden occurred. It was all on Biden as to why that all happened. He didn’t have to provide cover for the Israeli government. He chose to do that all on his own. So much of the response of the United States to Israeli policy in the Gaza conflict has been what Biden personally had decided that he really is blameworthy.
Compounding this problem was the fact that Israel’s response kept getting worse and ever more indefensible. Even before the end of October, genocide experts were warning that what we were seeing was “a textbook case of genocide.” The targets became ever more egregiously chosen, the reasons for the strikes ever flimsier. Throughout all of this, Biden and his administration went out of their way to avoid criticizing Israel’s conduct or trajectory, offering sometimes a soft-spoken suggestion to curb the worst excesses that Israel ignored every time.
Clearly, not only was the United States not going to hold Israel accountable for its clear infractions against international law, it was going to continue to supply the regime with weapons, military planning and expertise, and raw funding. Instead of calling for sanctions, the U.S. stationed warships in the Mediterranean. The U.S. was Israel’s heavy.
Over the months, Biden did nothing to ameliorate his position. He has repeatedly avoided expressing public sympathy for the civilians that have been killed in Gaza, while he has done so many times for those who were killed in the October 7th bombings in Israel. The lopsidedness of the death tolls makes this disparity ever more apparent. One cannot blame Palestinian Americans and others from noticing in this regard Biden’s clear choices.
Response
For months, the Abandon Biden movement was picking up steam, but the media was doing its best to keep it out of the spotlight. Just as with the vast majority of demonstrations in favor of Palestinian rights that occurred in many cities around the world, Western media outlets (especially those here in the United States) used crude framing to crop such information out of the picture altogether. It just didn’t even show up on their pages or TV screens at all.
In November, some polls began to appear that showed Biden having early trouble in five of six battleground states. This caused alarm in many in Democratic circles. While some blamed the polling itself in order to dismiss the findings, the polls—multiple—served as an early warning that the path ahead may be one with turbulence.
In late December, South Africa submitted an application to the International Court of Justice, asking for immediate provisional measures to be taken against Israel under the Genocide Convention of the U.N. (While some experts note that South Africa could bring the case to the ICJ only under that convention due to jurisdiction concerns, it remains true that genocide has one of the highest burdens of proof in terms of needing to establish intent. South Africa took a chance in bringing the case at all.) The United States, following the contempt displayed by Israeli officials, downplayed the case, calling it “meritless, counterproductive, and completely without basis in fact whatsoever.” The U.S. had a chance to distance itself from Israel at this point, but instead it threw in.
This became an extraordinary liability when Israel was found by the ICJ to be plausibly engaged in genocide. Not only did the ICJ rule that Israel needed to take steps to ensure that it prevented genocide in Gaza, the fact that Israel was held to be prima facie involved in genocide meant that other signatories to the Genocide Convention also had obligations to prevent the same. The U.S. was especially vulnerable, as under other provisions of the Genocide Convention it could be held to be complicit in Israel’s actions.
Again, the U.S. had an opportunity to step away from what Israel was doing. Instead, the day of the ruling, the U.S., along with several other Western states, accepted unsubstantiated charges leveled at UNRWA, the main U.N. aid agency supplying food to Gaza, and suspended funding, in the middle of a man-made famine that had been instigated by Israel months before.
I recount all of this to bring us up to date, how it is that we got here. The Abandon Biden movement is based on concrete actions that Biden himself took and that his administration took at his behest. There are reports that only about 20-30 people have Biden’s ear on this issue and that the State Department has been largely iced out of deliberations. Biden put himself in a bubble, and that has been to his detriment, as he has been unable to foresee this blowback or where it has come from.
Just around the end of January, some news items began to surface on more progressive news outlets, such as Democracy Now! These stories explained to Western viewers what the Abandon Biden movement was, how it originated, and how, now that the nucleus has formed, the movement threatens to rock Biden’s electoral chances later this year. One political analyst called the feeling toward Biden among folks in this movement to be “incandescent.” This was no flash in the pan.
In horrendous timing, the Hur report was released in early February. This report, ostensibly clearing President Biden of any wrongdoing with regards to inadvertently storing classified documents, took aim at Biden’s age and mental capabilities. Democrats cried foul and banded together against this hatchet job. While this rally-around-the-leader response is understandable, it has led many to fold the Hur findings in with the thrust of the Abandon Biden movement, seeing them both as one big attack on Biden that needs to be fended off. This is a mistake.
Ageism absolutely is something we should fight against, both in general and in Biden’s case. His age does not matter; it’s whether he can do the job. End stop.
At the same time, it’s important to separate out the Hur advocates, with their ageist arguments, from those in the Abandon Biden movement, whose arguments stem directly from Biden’s own actions over the last 4-5 months.
I’ve seen some folks on Democratic sites declare that those seeking to see Biden step aside in the upcoming election are whiners and crybabies. How, exactly, are the Abandon Biden activists whining? They are pointing out that Biden is culpable for his actions (as well as his lack of certain actions) with regards to his policy on Israel and the Middle East.
Do these activists hold grievances? Sure. However, they are legitimate grievances, not irritation at something trivial. Shaming these people as crybabies will not dissipate their actual lived sensations of betrayal. They agitate for folks to abandon Biden because they feel abandoned by him.
Similarly, for voters like myself for whom genocide is a red line (frankly, I’m floored that that is apparently not true for everybody, but that’s a discussion for another day), genocide is not a topic that can be pooh-poohed away. The reticence has nothing to do with caprice or spite. It has to do with principle. It’s a matter of ethics.
Personally, my conscience is keeping me from feeling that I can freely cast a vote in favor of this administration. This is not manufactured but is a reflection of my actual beliefs. This is a bind, because I have always voted for the Democratic candidate and always for the Democratic Party. I want to cast my vote freely. I am being constrained by the fact that Biden has implicated every American in his unethical support of a genocide, supplying the Israeli regime with treasure, paid by Palestinian blood.
I cannot positively affirm what Biden is choosing to do. A vote is an affirmation.
I speak out because I know I am not the only one who feels this way. There are plenty of people in the Abandon Biden movement who are not Palestinian American, Arab American or Muslim American. They don’t have relatives over in the hot zone. Their only “skin in the game” is to feel compassion or a kinship with those who are being sniped, crushed, strafed, and starved due to no fault of their own.
Some of us can put ourselves in their place and realize that, were it not for mere circumstance, that could have been us. The old saying of, “What would you have done when there was slavery?” Or during the fight for women’s suffrage? Or the civil rights era? Or during Stonewall? What you’re doing now is what you would have done then. I’m choosing to speak out, and in that same vein I am not automatically rewarding an administration that is enabling this atrocity.
As I see it, Biden has several choices.
He can continue to support Israel without any reservations or caveats. This, for all intents and purposes, has been his policy up through the present day.
He can pivot, either at a wide angle or even 180 degrees, to oppose what Israel is planning to do (i.e., conquer and rule via bloodbath).
Domestically,
he can continue to stand for re-election without altering his policy and his behavior, thus incurring electoral danger;
he can stand with the aforementioned pivot, alleviating some of the danger but not eradicating it; or
he can stand aside electorally to allow an open field to populate with candidates, and not a moment too soon.
These in the main are his choices—there are no others.
I am not asking the party to repeat the past. I’m asking it to not be trapped by what happened in the past. This is not 1968. LBJ did not run for re-election partly due to the morass of Vietnam but also—this is key—because he knew that the male line of one side of his family did not have much longevity. Indeed, he passed away within the span of the next presidential term. The party cannot blame its loss on LBJ’s decision to step aside—all things considered, he would have done it anyway.
Similarly, it is not 1980. Note that I didn’t say that anyone in the party should try to primary Biden. No one is asking the party to shoot itself in the foot by expending its energy on internal politics, as would happen in a contested primary. That’s doing self-inflicted damage, from the party’s perspective. I’m not advocating that at all.
I am saying that if Biden stood aside, the field would open up and allow those who otherwise would wait until 2028 to instead come forward now.
We are not stuck in amber. The material conditions of the moment are different from what they were in 1968 as well as 1980. We are not the same electorate; we do not face the same problems (namely, we are not in a cold war). We are in a different time altogether. We should be able to respond to changing conditions as they occur.
Right now, Biden is facing extraordinary headwinds, and they’re not coming only from the opposing party. It does Democrats no good to pretend that their only problem is people into ageism or the fringe of their party. Indeed, young voters—remember, “the ones that are going to save us”—are infuriated with what Biden is doing. Black and Hispanic voters in large numbers disapprove of Biden’s actions in the Middle East. That’s a big chunk of the coalition.
Without the coalition, Biden doesn’t stand a chance. That’s not an attack on Biden—that’s just the truth.
It would behoove those worried about the outcome of November to realize that it is not to our benefit to conflate the concerns of the Abandon Biden movement with the clear right-wing attacks that are happening right now. People in the Democratic fold are sounding the alarm now because Biden and his handlers are in a self-contained silo, shielded by groupthink from realities on the ground. They’re sounding it now so that he can make adjustments.
In reality, Biden’s choices are very limited. He needs to make a decision now. To win, he needs to make a change. I tell you, as someone who has always cast a vote for the Democrats, I am hoping to see what change he makes. He cannot go on the way he has.