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As Joe Biden struggles to convince his fellow Democrats that he remains the right man to take on Donald Trump in November following his disastrous debate performance in Atlanta last month, two party insiders have proposed a novel “blitz primary” process for choosing his successor.
Rosa Brooks and Ted Dintersmith, a Georgetown University law professor and venture capitalist respectively, began circulating a memo to wealthy party donors and members of the Biden administration and campaign on July 2 in which they outline their plan for replacing the 81-year-old president as the Democratic nominee.
The duo’s scheme, first reported by Semafor, would require Biden to voluntarily announce his decision to step aside by delivering “a speech for the ages” later this month, which, the memo’s authors believe, would see him “hailed as a modern-day George Washington, not an octogenarian clinging to power with a 37 percent approval rating.”
Under the plan, the president doing so — with the full support of his vice president Kamala Harris — would trigger a new primary process in which a fresh slate of contenders would be given a few days to put themselves forward as candidates before delegates to the Democratic National Convention whittle the list down to just six names.
The sextet would then begin running “positive-only” campaigns in the month ahead of the party convention in Chicago, Illinois, from August 19-22, which would be punctuated by weekly forums at which they would be interviewed by prominent, politically-sympathetic celebrities, with Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama and Stephen Colbert among the names touted in the memo, a gambit intended to generate as much social media excitement as possible.
Finally, delegates would cast their votes at the Chicago convention, with the winner announced at its finale to great fanfare and unveiled on stage by Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
“We can limp to shameful, avoidable democracy-ending defeat. Or Democrats can make this Our Finest Hour,” the memo implores its readers.
“While we hope for help from Lord Almighty, the Lord helps those who help themselves. We need to act. Now.”
Brooks and Dintersmith are under no illusions about the possibility of their vision becoming a reality, however, adding: “Will it happen? Probably not, absent a timely decision by party leaders, including President Biden, who truly put country first.
“Yes, President Biden has served his country with distinction for five decades.
“Yes, this honorable man deserves our respect, gratitude, and admiration. But not our blind loyalty.
“America desperately wants an uplifting choice.”
Brooks and Dintersmith have since laughed at media characterisations of themselves as “power players” but say their proposal has received a positive response from most people to whom they have shown it.
The former told CNBC that the reaction has “gone, in a few days from, ‘Oh, this would be so great if only it could happen, but it probably can’t,’ to ‘Why can’t it?’”
There’s only one problem with their blitz primary dream: Joe Biden.
The president has continued to insist that he is going nowhere, saying as much at an Independence Day speech at the White House, in his Friday night reset interview on ABC with George Stephanopoulos, on the campaign trail in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania over the weekend, in a letter to congressional Democrats on Monday and again in a phone-in with MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
The Biden campaign has responded to Brooks and Dintersmith’s suggestion by pointing to the commander-in-chief’s remarks in Wisconsin, when he emphatically declared: “I’m not letting one 90-minute debate wipe out three-and-a-half years of work.
“I’m staying in the race, and I will beat Donald Trump.”
But, despite his best efforts, speculation about Biden’s well-being refuses to die down after his freeze-out on the CNN debate stage on June 27 sent shockwaves through the Democratic establishment.
The president looked stiff, frail and lacking in energy that night and spoke in a hoarse, rasping voice, even losing his train of thought at several points, as a gloating Trump appeared vindicated, having argued for months that his opponent was too elderly to handle another five years in the Oval Office.
While the White House insisted Biden was simply suffering from a cold and the night was a blip, Democrats fretted privately about his chances of beating the Republican and began naming Harris and state governors Gavin Newsom and Gretchen Whitmer, among others, as possible contenders to take his place as their 2024 nominee.
Five members of the House of Representatives have since publicly called for Biden to drop out while many more have voiced their concerns in private with the president, who remains as obstinate as ever in the face of a challenge and appears to be being encouraged by his family to keep on swinging.
