Debating About Dems Not Debating

It doesn’t look like there’s going to be a 2024 Democratic Primary Debate series. There are good reasons to be in favor of this, but can they hold up to scrutiny? Or, does sending a message matter?

Hello, friends,

Last week, we talked about gun control and hypothetically re-writing the Second Amendment.  But we’ve been taking potshots at Republican madness for a while.  This week, we’re talking about something closer to home for a change.

It appears that the Democratic Party is not interested in hosting debates for the 2024 Presidential Nomination. (I know this source kinda sucks and is indirect, but it’s the best I can find that isn’t Fox News or paywalled).  This has led to a significant amount of debate online as to whether or not Joe Biden, who recently announced his reelection campaign, should have to face his challengers.  Currently, he’s facing off against Marianne Williamson, a self-help/spiritualist author; and Rober F. Kennedy Jr., an Anti-Vaxxer with no clear platform other than being anti-science, who might just be a Republican plant of some kind (Steve Bannon likes him!).

I want to be clear about two things up-front:

1:  This is not a fantastic set of choices, here.  It’s either you vote for Biden, a relative-nobody in politics with a few edgy-at-best beliefs, or a totally anti-science loon.  With Bernie Sanders not only declining to run, but full-throatedly endorsing Biden, it’s hard to imagine any other Democrats of note stepping up to run in a significant primary.  I mean, West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin might do it, but I’d honestly vote for Biden before I’d vote for Manchin, and that’s saying something.

2:  I am, based on some evidence and historical patterns I’ll get into, conflicted as to whether this is the right move or the wrong move; but after finishing this article, I tend to think it’s not the best idea.

Two And A Half Theories On 2024 Democratic Primary Debates?

Forget whatever you might think for a moment, much as I’m going to forget what I think while I write this.  I’m going to pull opinions from two people who are way more educated and experienced in the field of political strategy than me.

First up is Elie Mystal, lawyer and author of Allow Me To Retort:  A Black Guy’s Guide To The Constitution.  Elie’s approach is simple enough:  The Democrats should host debates because it will give Biden a warm up; he cites the example of the first Obama-Romney debate, where Obama had a tough time because he hadn’t been primaried, and was thus unprepared.

Next up is Beau Of The Fifth Column, whose take is far more nuanced, in part because it’s a six-minute-long video versus a tweet.  He points out the historical trend of one-term Presidents who endured difficult primaries and went on to lose in the general:  Bush Sr. and Carter are particularly recent modern examples.  True, Trump didn’t have a vigorous primary, but he had some party loyalty problems in general.

Now, I’m going to start folding my own thoughts back into these two ideas.

Debates As Warm Ups For Other Debates?

First of all, would these debates be a warm up for Biden?  I don’t know, for sure.  I haven’t seen enough of Joe Biden out in the line of journalistic fire lately to tell how sharp he is - and that’s a bad thing.  The New York Times reports that Biden has the fewest number of press conferences since Reagan, instead of - sayyyy - stepping up and doing speeches & press conferences when the Tennessee Three/Two got threatened with and expelled from the Tennessee House, or when numerous states legislatively assaulted Trans people.  That means Biden is already not used to being challenged by questions, and has been doing less outreach with the bully pulpit than he should be.  Could he use a warm-up?  Yeah!

But, that wasn’t the question, now, was it?  Would these be warm ups?  The answer is:  Probably yes.  I don’t think anyone’s gonna be up here saying Biden is the same guy who spoke so highly of the 1993 crime bill.  That, however, splits both ways:  He’s almost certainly not as sharp as he used to be (30 years’ll do that to ya), but he’s also not quite as conservative as he used to be.  Would Biden be able to stand toe-to-toe against much younger, less practiced opponents and use his experience to beat them back?  Probably!

Furthermore, it’s relatively easy to attack in politics, so it would be fairly easy for Williamson and Kennedy to attack Biden’s record, baselessly or based.  On the other hand, unless Trump (who is leading by a wide margin in the Republican primary polls) refuses to debate (which, I mean, isn’t impossible?) he’s going to be under attack no matter what he does.  But even if Trump doesn’t win the GOP nomination, that doesn’t mean Republicans won’t attack Biden.  Far from it, they’ll attack him on anything they decide would be best to attack him for.

There are major disadvantages.  First of all, you’ve got RFK Jr. in the mix.  Giving that dude a platform sucks.  I really don’t want to.  He could do serious harm.  Denying him the right to debate would be hard at best.  Any rationale, no matter how justifiable (“Candidates must agree not to spread anti-science viewpoints,” maybe?) is going to seem slanted against him.  But on the other hand, we have to remember that it’s not as if Republicans won’t make those arguments, anyway!

Second of all, while it’s fair to say Williamson has a decent public following (for just one metric, she has over 2.7 million followers on Twitter), she does not have a “Challenge a political establishment that’s coming together like a monolith” profile.  Do you really want someone with little to lose and little-to-no chance of winning getting a chance to embarrass your incumbent President - especially with the track-record of how that turns out, historically?  But what if, in debating Williamson, Biden sets out places where he agrees with her and helps to rally independent, disaffected voters towards considering him?

It sounds risky, but doesn’t it sound like there’s a clear upside if things go well, and like there’s a certain inevitabiilty about the bad things happening anyway?

Debates Are Part Of Democracy.

But even Beau’s analysis and position-apparent only goes so far.  Beau points out that we live in a new age of media consumption.  He points out that debates might provide content.  From there, I’d extrapolate that Content leads to discussion.  Discussion leads to the promotion of ideas among larger circles of people..

You might notice a feedback loop emerges in politics-done-right:  Frequent public appearances and chances to talk about your ideas and goals (saaayyyyy, in a press conference) create the discussion of ideas on the local level.  Then, primary debates discuss them on a broader stage, both attracting more discussion while also clarifying what ideas are best to fight for.  Then, general election debates happen and all of these ideas which have been fueled up to the tippy-top go ahead and charge into battle against other ideas.

That hasn’t happened for Biden, and that’s really bad for America.

Furthermore, the Democratic party isn’t just named for Democracy.  It stands as the bulwark against Fascism.  Remember, they aren’t debating the 1950’s Republicans who supported Dwight Eisenhower.  They’re debating a Fascist party.

So how does it look to independents when the “Democratic” party that screams “Vote blue no matter who!” (except when it doesn’t, like in Buffalo with India Walton winning the Mayoral primary and being third-party challenged by the Democrat she defeated) because, well, “you wouldn’t want the Fascists to win” decides not to have debates for their nomination?

It looks like what it is:  Anti-Democratic.

You Have To Believe Your Ideas Will Win.

Like I said at the outset of this article, I’m kind of on the fence.  Or, at least, I was.  But there’s one maxim that draws me back over that fence and on to the side of, “There should be debates.”  It’s not the fact that Williamson and RFK Jr. are both rather uncompelling candidates to run the country.  It’s not the fact that RFK Jr.’s ideas are inherently dangerous and could cause people to not get vaccinated for all sorts of diseases and start all sorts of plagues.

It’s about the fact that you need to believe your ideas are worth fighting for, and - importantly! - that they can win.

Let me bring it back to pseudo-Democrat Joe Manchin.  The common theory behind support for and special treatment of Manchin is simple:  He’s the “only one” who can win a Senate seat in a Republican-dominated state, and he does that by being ultra conservative.  I’ve seen arguments that it’s a good thing he’s threatening to undercut Biden’s (and his own) signature Inflation Reduction Act.  The hypothesis is that it’ll ingratiate him to the conservative voters of West Virginia and keep him in the Senate.  Never mind that West Virginia’s current governor just announced a bid for the seat, and the fact that Republicans as a party are not known for voting for Diet Classic Republican when Fascist Republican is an option!  

That is nothing more than surrendering without a fight.

I want you to hear what I hear when I hear that - and, forgive me, it’s kind of long:

“Nope!  We can’t possibly convince these people that our ideas are better for them than what Fascists spew.  They’ll never reconsider their position in life, they’re never going to change their minds, and frankly our ideas aren’t good enough to change them because our ideas aren’t good enough.  We shouldn’t fight for what we believe in, we should try to be clever and put someone in power who is going to stop us from doing most of what we need to in order to fix this country.  Like someone who is bought and paid for by the coal industry!  That way, we can do 25% of what we claim we want to, say ‘gosh-darn-it, we don’t have the votes’ about the remaining 75%, and feel like we’re winners even though all we’re doing is slowing the pace of our world’s decomposition such as the climate getting hotter and cities continually flooding due to rising sea levels!  After all, change is incremental and slow - and, sometimes, that change is for the worse.  But, hey, it’s still change!  Let’s hope for some good change!”

That’s what I fucking hear.

And I’m sick of it.

If Biden can’t moonwalk onto that stage and stomp Kennedy and Williamson into the political dirt, then go to Disney World, what does that say about the ideas he’s going to put forward when he debates Trump?  Is it, “My ideas are more conservative than Williamson’s and therefore I don’t wanna look bad in comparison?”  Is it, “My ideas won’t convince people that science works so we’d better just hope Trump doesn’t raise vaccines at all, even positively?”  Is it, “I’m scared I’ll be attacked while at the pinnacle of a career where attacks are guaranteed and are, in fact, part of the process?”

…Okay, no, I’m not expecting Biden to literally moonwalk onto the stage, but I think you get my point.  It’d be pretty funny, no?

So, in summation, yes.  The Democrats should have a debate.  Yes, there are risks.  Yes, those include platforming some batshittery - although that will find its own platform very quickly.

But when the benefits include spreading a vision for what Democrats nationwide will do if they are elected, and include smacking that batshittery into oblivion once and for all, why wouldn’t you take that opportunity?

In Other News…

“In Other News” is where we try to track either relevant news stories or make short updates on previous ones.

• The Montana House of Representatives has punished Representative Zooey Zephyr, a Trans woman.  Instead of kicking her out like they tried with the Tennessee Three/Two, they just banned her from ever setting foot on the House floor in this legislative session, so she can’t ever speak her opinion on a topic.

• An Austin, Texas woman named Amanda Zurawski testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about how ideas pushed by her own Senators nearly killed her when she was denied health care for a failed pregnancy.  We’ve talked before, within another article, about how these “unintended consequences” to horrendous legislation are often very much intentional.

• Florida Governor Ron Desantis snapped at the media when he was asked about his role regarding torture at GITMO, something we’ve talked about in this Substack previously.

• Following up on our article from last week, a Fox News poll (so you know it’s “fair and balanced!”) found that 61% of Americans want to ban assault weapons.

Thank you for reading The Progressive Cafe.  If this article has helped you, please consider signing up for our mailing list.  This article is by Jesse Pohlman, a sci-fi/fantasy author from Long Island, New York, whose website you can check out here.