What Is the Democratic Party For?

Top Democrats have closed ranks around Joe Biden since the debate. Should they? Mentioned: “This Isn’t All Joe Biden’s Fault” by Ezra Klein “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by The Ezra Klein Show “Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” with Elaine Kamarck on The Ezra Klein Show The Hollow Parties by Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This audio essay was produced by Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Fact-Checking by Jack McCordick and Michelle Harris. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Elias Isquith and Aman Sahota. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Ezra Klein?

  From New York Times Opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show.

• 0:24Ezra Klein?

  I've been thinking about this moment on Thursday night after the first presidential debate, when MSNBC's Alex Wagner interviewed Governor Gavin Newsom of California.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  You were out there getting a chorus of questions about whether Biden should step down. There is panic that has set in. Well, there is panic that has set in among people who have watched this debate, who are Democrats, people who are strategists, and some even inside Democratic campaigns. Do you think it's unfounded?

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's unhelpful, and I think it's unnecessary. We've got to go in, we've got to keep our heads high. And as I say, we've got to have the back of this president. You don't turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?

• 1:04Ezra Klein?

  What kind of party would do that? Well, maybe a party that wanted to win, a party that wanted to nominate a candidate that the American people believe is up to doing the most important, most difficult job in the world. Maybe the better question is, what kind of party right now would do nothing? In February, I argued that Joe Biden should step aside, that he shouldn't run for reelection, that Democrats should do what political parties did in presidential elections until the 1970s, choose a ticket at their convention. In public, the backlash I got from top Democrats was ferocious. I was a bedwetter, living inside an Aaron Sorkin-drenched fantasy land. In private, their feedback was more tentative and thoughtful and frightened. No one tried

• 1:49Ezra Klein?

  to persuade me that Biden was a strong candidate. They argued instead that he couldn't be convinced to step aside, that even if he could be, that Vice President Kamala Harris would lose the election, that even if a convention passed over Harris, that passing her over would alienate black women. They argued not that Joe Biden was strong, but that the Democratic Party was weak, that it had no other options, that it didn't have the legitimacy or the muscle to do something else.

• 2:18Ezra Klein?

  I don't believe that. I think Democrats should give themselves a little bit more credit. Biden's presidency is proof of the Democratic Party's ability to act strategically. Biden didn't win the Democratic nomination in 2020 because he set the hearts of party activists aflame. Support for Biden always lacked the passion of support for Bernie Sanders, or Elizabeth Warren, or even Andrew Yang. Biden won because the party made a cold decision to unite around the candidate it thought best suited to beating Donald Trump. Biden won because Democrats did what they had to do, not what they wanted to do. And it wasn't just Biden. While the Republican Party was collapsing fully into its MAGA era, repeatedly

• 2:58Ezra Klein?

  choosing these wannabe Trumps who lose winnable elections, Democrats have kept choosing candidates who win tough races in challenging states, candidates suited to the races they need to run. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, Tony Evers in Wisconsin, Josh Shapiro and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania, Mark Kelly and Katie Hobbs in Arizona, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in Georgia. Since 2018, Democrats have been on a winning streak, and they've been on that streak because they have acted strategically, or Republicans have acted impulsively. And yet, these same Democrats, they have no confidence they could rise to the moment if Biden steps aside. I'd sometimes ask them what they thought would happen if, God forbid,

• 3:40Ezra Klein?

  in a terrible turn of events, Biden received health news that forced him to end his campaign. Would the Democratic Party collapse into the fetal position and accept Trump's ascension? "No, of course not," they said. "Democrats then would have no choice. They'd have to build a ticket at the convention." I always found that answer revealing. There's no lack of talent or capacity in the Democratic Party. There's a lack of coherence and confidence. What is this party for? Newsom's comments on Thursday implied an answer. "The party's function is to support Joe Biden. We've got to have his back," he said. He said the criticism of Joe Biden, it was not unfounded, just unhelpful. The more astonishing statement came from Tim Walz, the Democratic governor of Minnesota, who talked to Fox News.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  I think we could learn something from Republicans. Republicans will not abandon Donald Trump through indictments, through whatever it may be.

• 4:32Ezra Klein?

  Is that a model Democrats should really want to follow? How have Republicans done since embracing Donald Trump? Republicans lost in 2018, they lost in 2020, they underperformed badly in 2022, and rather than changing course, they've doubled down. In March, Laura Trump was elected co-chair of the Republican National Committee. She is, from any traditional party perspective, completely unqualified for the job. But if you view the RNC as a vehicle for simply the ambitions and whims of Donald Trump, her father-in-law, then she is completely qualified. She is loyal to nothing and no one in the party save Trump. She is crystal clear on the role the RNC should play.

• 5:13Speaker 04

  Every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC, that is, electing Donald J. Trump as President of the United States and saving this country. We have no time to waste.

• 5:25Ezra Klein?

  So, look, I think this has been a disaster for Republicans. I think the only reason they might lose in 2024 is they nominated Trump again. If they nominated Nikki Haley, I don't think there'd be anything Democrats could do right now. But this goes beyond any one election. This is a corruption of the very concept of a political party. In the great book, The Hollow Parties, Sam Rosenfeld and Dana Schlossman tell the history of how the strong parties of yesterday became the hollowed-out vehicles for individual presidential ambition we see today. The ethos of the early American political parties was that they were a bulwark against politics becoming about one person at a time when Americans feared a return to that.

• 6:06Ezra Klein?

  The idea Rosenfeld told me was, quote, "That parties subsume individual ambition. Do you commit to the party and to the cause, never to the man?" Did parties live up to this perfectly always? No, of course not. But they did live up to it imperfectly. They did live up to it at key moments. Famously, it was a delegation of Republican members of Congress who persuaded President Richard Nixon to resign. There is more to the Republican Party than Richard Nixon's ambitions. There is not more to the Republican Party today than Donald Trump's ambitions. But I would have told you the Democratic Party is different, that it is not just a vehicle for Joe Biden's ambitions. Right now, I'm not so sure.

• 6:47Ezra Klein?

  The best case against replacing Biden is it doing so at this late hour is riskier than keeping him. But that is a choice the Democratic Party made and has kept making. It was a choice to support Biden in running for reelection, despite poll after poll showing super majorities of the American people thought he was too old for a second term. It was a choice, if from a career perspective, an understandable one, for zero major Democrats to run against him in a primary. Even as polls showed majorities of Democratic voters did not want Biden to run again. It was a choice, if top Democrats in the White House believe Vice President Harris was too weak to run or govern in Joe Biden's place, to do nothing about it, to leave the ticket unchanged.

• 7:30Ezra Klein?

  Democrats have spent years now choosing to do nothing to solve the most obvious problems they faced in 2024. And now, the argument they make is that there is nothing they can do. It's too late. Now, to even admit these problems is unhelpful. Even if top Democrats did believe Biden should be replaced, they face a collective action problem. It doesn't serve the interests of any of them individually to try to nudge Biden out of the race. Imagine you're Gavin Newsom, or you're Gretchen Whitmer. You want to run in 2028. If Biden drops out, you want to be considered in 2024. Is it best strategy for you to try to push Biden out of the race publicly? Or is it to be the most loyal of loyal soldiers, so that if Biden does leave, or does lose,

• 8:14Ezra Klein?

  you have a strong bond with his donors, with his team, with his supporters? And who wants to be the member of Biden's inner circle goes to him and says, "You've got to stop this. You're not up to this anymore. It's not a good idea." What happens to your role in the White House the day after that conversation? The other argument Democrats have made is that Biden, yes, he's lost a step on the campaign trail, but his capacity to govern is unaffected. The problem here is superficial, amplified by people in the media like me. You could hear this in Biden's speech the day after the debate.

• 8:46Joe Biden?

  Let me close with this. I know I'm not a young man. State the obvious. Well, I know.

• 9:07Joe Biden?

  Well.

• 9:12Joe Biden?

  I don't.

• 9:16Joe Biden?

  Folks.

• 9:18Joe Biden?

  I don't walk as easy as I used to. I don't speak as smoothly as I used to. I don't debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth.

• 9:36Joe Biden?

  I know. I know. I know right from wrong.

• 9:43Joe Biden?

  But I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.

• 9:49Ezra Klein?

  That speech calmed some Democratic nerves. He was louder, clearer, feistier, closer to the Biden of the State of the Union than the Biden of the debate. I kept seeing Democrats on social media say, where was this guy last night? Where did he go? Come on. We all know it is easier to read off a teleprompter next to a cheering crowd than to manage the chaotic, unexpected demands of a debate. You cannot say the Biden of the teleprompter is a true Biden, but the Biden of, say, this debate answer, and I could have picked plenty of others, is not.

• 10:21Joe Biden?

  For example, we have a thousand trillionaires in America, I mean billionaires in America. And what's happening? They're in a situation where they in fact pay 8.2% in taxes. If they just paid 24%, 25%, either one of those numbers, they'd raise $500 million, billion dollars, I should say, in a 10-year period. We'd be able to wipe out his debt. We'd be able to help make sure that all those things we need to do, childcare, elder care, making sure that we continue to strengthen our healthcare system, making sure that we're able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I've been able to do with the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with.

• 11:07Joe Biden?

  Look.

• 11:09Joe Biden?

  If we finally beat Medicare.

• 11:14Ezra Klein?

  You don't have to believe Biden is senile to believe he is diminished by age, as we all will be. I worry about the fact that Biden's worst moments come when he is unscripted, like the debate, or when he stopped to answer questions after his press conference rebutting the special counsel's report and mixed up Mexico and Egypt. This is not the president I want in a complex, high-stakes dialogue with Benjamin Netanyahu or Xi Jinping. Biden's campaign could show us these are flukes, that the president is actually fast and convincing on his feet. There's no end of adversarial podcasts and TV shows and interviews he could have him do. In polls, Biden is losing badly among voters who get their news from social media and YouTube. Why not sit for a long interview with Lex Friedman, or Joe Rogan, or Charlamagne the God? Why didn't Biden do the Super Bowl

• 11:59Ezra Klein?

  interview? Biden sits for fewer interviews than any recent president, and they tend to choose softball interviews. He gives fewer press conferences than any recent president. The idea this is all just coincidence, that none of it reflects capacity, it's not plausible, not anymore. I've heard some Democrats point to John Fetterman, who suffered a debilitating stroke during Senate campaign in Pennsylvania, as a kind of grim model here. Fetterman also turned in a bad debate performance, but he won his seat anyway. But Fetterman was recovering from a stroke. It was reasonable to expect his capacities to return, as indeed they have. Biden is not going to age in reverse. So let me return to this question. What do

• 12:40Ezra Klein?

  political parties do? What are they for? One thing they do, perhaps the most important thing they do, is to nominate candidates. We have a two-party political system. Voters will have two viable choices in November. The Democratic Party is responsible for one of those choices. It needs to make that choice responsibly. What is its job if not that? But rather than the party acting as a check on Biden's decisions and ambitions, it has become an enabler of them, an enforcer of them. It is giving the American people a choice they do not want, and then threatening them with the end of democracy if they do not take it. Democrats like to say that democracy is on the ballot, but it isn't. Joe Biden is on the ballot.

• 13:23Ezra Klein?

  There are plenty of voters who might want to vote for democracy but do not want to vote for Joe Biden. That's why we see Democratic Senate candidates running well ahead of him in key states. Biden likes to say, "Compare me to the alternative, not to the almighty." And yes, Biden is far preferable to Trump, one of the most dangerous men to ever occupy the White House. But that is not the alternative to Joe Biden, not right now. The alternative to Joe Biden on that ballot line that is supposed to represent democracy is Kamala Harris, or Gretchen Whitmer, or Gavin Newsom, or Jared Polis, Raphael Warnock, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg, Gina Raimondo, Josh Shapiro, Chris Murphy, and on and on. How does Biden compare to them, really? Biden and his allies say not to look at the man, look at his record.

• 14:08Ezra Klein?

  Look at all that he has accomplished. Look at the unemployment rate, the Inflation Reduction Act, bipartisan infrastructure bill. And Biden deserves credit, real credit, just as all presidents get credit for what happens on their watch. He has been, in my view, a good president. But let's not be naive. He didn't write the Inflation Reduction Act by hand with a fountain pen. The IRA and every other bill passed under Biden's tenure was written and passed by members of Congress. Those votes were organized by Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi, and Hakeem Jeffries, and their teams. Biden's White House staff, his policy advisers, and his foreign policy team, they are Democrats and staffers who would serve in another administration, too. The cabinet members implementing those bills, they are Democrats.

• 14:51Ezra Klein?

  Some of these people are possible presidential candidates. The president is important. Joe Biden is important. But he is not alone. He is not irreplaceable. He is part of a party. I'm not going to end this by pretending that there is some easy path forward for Democrats, some surefire way to win in 2024. No path now is without profound risk. An open convention, it's risky. Kamala Harris is risky. To run an 81-year-old with a 38% approval rating, who just got trounced in the first debate, it is risky. Biden was losing before the debate, and he is yet likelier to lose after it. To the extent his team has articulated a theory of what was supposed to turn the election around, that was it.

• 15:36Ezra Klein?

  The unusually early June debate, which they asked for, where the American people would see Biden and Trump on the stage and be reminded of why they feared Trump and backed Biden in 2020. That theory failed. Joe Biden couldn't pull it off. Look, I understand the risks of a convention. My argument for it politically is not that it can't go badly. It's that it has the chance of going very well, that there is some possibility Democrats would find and pick a ticket that people are authentically really excited about. Not a ticket where the theories are going to come home because they're so afraid of Donald Trump, but that in addition to being afraid of Donald Trump, they actually want these people in the White House. That is at least a possibility at a convention in a way I no longer think it is a possibility

• 16:20Ezra Klein?

  with Joe Biden atop the ticket. But I get that it could go the other way. I don't think this is an easy choice. What I think really tips it is not the politics. It's the reality. Biden is not the best choice for the presidency, not anymore. And look, I realize there is no magic mechanism, no unitary actor called the party that can convince him to step aside. Ultimately, he will decide to do that, or he won't. But there are many people in the party with influence over him. There's a question of what kind of support he senses he has from the rest of the party. There's a question of what key people in the party think their role is right now. And what I'm saying is the Democratic Party, it may not end up with another choice. It may indeed be too late. But they should be trying to make another choice possible.

• 17:05Ezra Klein?

  Because there's not a plausible way for Democrats to convince voters that the man they saw on that stage on Thursday should be president three years, four years from now. I don't even think Democrats believe that. So to go back to Newsom's question, what kind of party would be trying to make a change after Thursday night? A party that was doing its job.