Ezra Admits A Mistake
Just not the biggest one: to learn how Democrats win, ask the winners
Ezra Klein first released a podcast calling for Biden to drop out following a report from Republican Special Counsel Robert Hur claiming that Biden was growing senile. Klein argued that while Biden was capable of being president, he was too old to successfully run for the office, and should step aside and allow a brokered convention to choose the nominee. Klein cited polling suggesting that Biden is trailing and argued that another Democrat would be a stronger candidate.
After readers expressed concern that a brokered convention would be an unmitigated disaster, Klein followed that podcast up with another podcast explaining what would happen if Biden dropped out. He then hosted a question and answer podcast, spending an hour responding to reader concerns that the plan might not be fully baked. And then after all that … he took it back after the State of the Union, writing that,
If the Joe Biden who showed up to deliver the State of the Union address last week is the Joe Biden who shows up for the rest of the campaign, you’re not going to have any more of those weak-kneed pundits suggesting he’s not up to running for re-election.
More concerning for his case, yesterday it became clear that the original impetus for Klein’s concern was in fact a partisan smear job from Hur. The original transcripts were released revealing that Hur was exaggerating the extent of Biden’s memory limitations. But Klein’s mistake was not merely being a vehicle for a right-wing smear job, but also misdiagnosing Biden’s polling woes.
Biden’s problem is not primarily his age, but the view among voters that he is seen as too left wing. That’s why Biden is losing, and it tells us how he can turn it around. Biden should embrace his own record: bipartisan action on the deficit, America’s aging infrastructure, and historic domestic energy production. His campaign should let Biden be Biden, and not immediately backtrack when he expresses his earnest views on abortion and immigration, since these views are much closer to the median voter’s than activists’.
By falling for Hur’s deceptive spin, Klein has perpetuated a common trope in American politics: the left and right teaming up to attack the Center Left. Whatever Klein thought he was doing, the reality is that Biden dropping out would only strengthen the Far Left, because they would hold the convention hostage to extract political concessions (they’ve admitted as much). To win, Biden needs to embrace his actual record on domestic energy production, immigration and crime and be the President independents elected.
For more context, my original post on Ezra’s mistake from last month is below:
Why Ezra Klein is Polarizing
The “should Biden run” chatter ratcheted up a level after Ezra Klein’s New York Times column last week. He doubled down yesterday with an update on the mechanics of a chaotic convention, via podcast with the estimable Elaine Kamarck.
Debates have raged about Ezra’s prescription. But it is his rationale for the last four years that is the bigger problem.
Klein wrote a book called Why We’re Polarized. Yet he often takes the side of the polarizers over the Depolarizers. And, troublingly, he does not seem too interested in the Democratic candidates who have proven an ability win over swing voters.
Here’s how Klein introduces his “Biden should step down” piece:
Think back to the 2020 campaign, when [Biden] beat Bernie Sanders, when he beat Elizabeth Warren, when his victory was seen as, was in reality, the moderate wing triumphing over the progressive wing, the establishment over the insurgents.
But instead of making them bend the knee, instead of acting as a victor, Biden acted as a leader. He partnered with Bernie Sanders. He built the unity task forces. He integrated Warren’s and Sanders’s ideas and staff into not just his campaign but also his administration.
Klein’s starting point is that Biden did not follow through on what won him the primary election in 2020 - and he thinks that is a good thing.
Depends on who you talk to
Klein states that “Part of my job is talking to the kinds of Democrats who run and win campaigns constantly.” So you would expect him to turn to an elected Democrat who has won in a Trump district, or at least a swing district. But he turns left instead, to the Representative of a district that gave Trump a whopping 11% of the vote:
I had a conversation recently with Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the House progressive caucus, and I asked her why the Democratic Party hadn’t ruptured the way Republicans did. She pointed me back to that moment. Biden, she said, made this “huge attempt to pull the Democratic Party back together before the 2020 election in a way I’ve really never seen before.” And it worked.
“It worked”?
It didn’t work! And not just because polls consistently show that Trump is beating Biden, or that Biden’s favorability is in the tank. Or that Democrats lost House seats in 2020 and then House control in 2022.
Republicans are beating Democrats on the generic ballot. Voters prefer Republicans to Democrats right now despite the clown show. Voters have told Democrats time and again what they want. Polls also show clearly why this is: voters think Democrats have moved too far to the left.
Polling shows that voters perceive Joe Biden as more liberal than Donald Trump is conservative. While 41% of voters “strongly agree” that the Democrats have moved too far to the left for them, a smaller 32% “strongly agree” that Republicans have moved too far right.
Ask The Winners
Consider Tom Suozzi’s recent special election victory in New York’s 3rd district. Suozzi is a proud moderate Democrat who ran on his past history of working across the aisle on border security as he flipped a district from red to blue.
But Politico asked the following Democrats what they thought of his strategy, all representing districts that gave Trump less than a third of the vote:
AOC (Biden 78% to Trump 21%)
Jayapal (Biden 87% to Trump 11%)
Raúl Grijalva (Biden 66% to Trump 32.9%)
Veronica Escobar (Biden 67% to Trump 32%)
Greg Casar (Biden 72% to Trump 27%)
Just like Biden’s victory in the 2020 primary, the answer to winning is that there must be a problem with Suozzi’s victory:
“We need to be very careful,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). “You’re never going to out-Republican a Republican.”
“I actually don’t think that it’s necessarily the playbook that would apply to the rest of the country,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
The playbook that worked in the 2020 Democratic primary was discarded. The playbook that would work in November is being preemptively ignored, at our peril and that of the Republic.
This is not AOC’s fault - it is strange that national reporters like Ezra Klein would ask Jayapal or AOC for strategy on winning swing voters. AOC represents one of the most unique districts in the country: a district that is 20 percent white (the national average is 61 percent), in a dense urban environment with among the highest immigrant population in the country. Given her constituency and political incentives, anyone representing it would have little credibility to speak about winning non-college whites, rural women, or suburban independents.
There’s a reason that the GOP loves to promote AOC as the face of the Democratic Party, and it’s the same reason she shouldn’t be its strategist. There’s a lot we can learn from AOC, as we’ve written. But winning swing voters ain’t it.
The claim that Suozzi or any Democrat is trying to “out-Republican a Republican” is absurd. Biden and Suozzi are developing distinctly Democratic approaches to border security, approaches that would balance the need for legal immigration with the necessity of securing the border. We know that they are Democratic plans, because after repeatedly demanding border security provisions, Republicans shot down the bipartisan plan Biden and Suozzi endorsed.
“I don’t think we will ever win long term by being Republican lite on immigration,” said Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas)
To say “you can’t win” with Suozzi’s strategy is like saying “You can’t win a championship by shooting lots of three pointers” after the Warriors’ fourth title with the Splash Brothers. Democrats just won!
And to win again, Democrats have to listen to the winners.
That could start with Ezra Klein calling some Depolarizers.