No, Joe Biden is not getting replaced on the ticket

I have an otherwise very bright lawyer friend who likes to make stupid bets. For example, after it came out that Donald Trump was being criminally investigated last year he bet me that Trump would flee the country by a certain date. I bet a very fine book against an expensive bottle of single malt (book for me, scotch for him) that he wouldn’t. He keeps adding to my library and I am happy to let him.

This time my lawyer friend is leading a personal charge: Joe Biden must and will do a Lyndon Johnson and drop out of the presidential race before the Democratic convention. I’m already looking forward to collecting.

First of all, of course, LBJ didn’t technically “drop out.” He announced he would not seek renomination. That was in March of 1968, back in the day before people started running two or more whole years before the election. Trump announced his candidacy very early because he knew he would be indicted and he wanted to blame it on Joe Biden. He wanted to be able to say his indictment was political, or even prevent the indictment because it would look political.

That’s not how things used to happen. For example, Bobby Kennedy announced his candidacy on March 16th, 1968. LBJ announced his non-candidacy on March 31st. Seems crazy, doesn’t it, that there was a time when presidential races didn’t take up endless years? Those were the days.

Anyway, I’m already making space for the millennium edition of the Feynman Lectures on my bookshelf because the President won’t be making space in the Oval Office for Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom. Those are the two people my lawyer friend thinks would make “better” candidates.

They wouldn’t make better candidates. They would in fact spell disaster for the Democratic Party. We would lose the massive advantage of incumbency, an advantage that Biden (definitely) and Trump (sort of) both have and those others do not. Also, what does my friend think Kamala Harris is going to do? He’s ordinarily a smart guy, but in this I think he’s nuts.

Anyway, this is all idle and academic speculation. It ain’t gonna happen. Joe Biden will be the candidate, and Joe Biden is going to win. We the People are going to see to it.

I’m proud to be a Democrat, but there’s one thing Democrats do that I don’t like. They tend to panic needlessly. For example, in 2022, the conventional “wisdom” among Democrats was that we were going to get slaughtered in the midterms. Just ahead of the election I wrote a contradicting article. I wrote that I believed it was going to be our finest hour. We in fact won the Senate and very nearly won the House. In fact, we won so much of the House that it made the tiny Republican majority look like the impotent, time-wasting idiots that they are.

All this stupid talk about Biden dropping out will come to a screeching halt after the Convention in Chicago in late August. Joe Biden will make the best damned Democratic presidential candidate we’ve had since Franklin Roosevelt. Remember Roosevelt, the man with the handicap? Joe Biden’s age is a handicap too, and it will make just as little difference. I’ll get my Feynman collection, and we will get Joe Biden as our candidate — and another four years of sane and brilliant leadership. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.

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