President Biden. As an aging man with health problems and a mind that keeps losing words, I sympathize greatly with your plight. I like doing what I do. And you? Who would want to step down from the greatest job in the world? But it is also the hardest job, and your body is telling you that four years and six months more is no longer possible.
For the sake of the Democratic Party, go out. Go out with a bang. Go out with the greatest publicity coup in American politics.
Here’s the plan. You announce now that you will step down in favor of Kamala Harris. The next 30 days are a frenzy of build-up for the convention, with her name and accomplishments drowning out whatever the Republicans try to counter with.
The convention is a coronation just like the Republican one was. Hire a bright, sharp, young PR firm to think of slogans that are brighter and sharper and younger than Bring Back Better. On Day 4, Vice-President Harris delivers a short but punchy acceptance speech. It must end well before 11:00 pm. The delegates are on their feet screaming.
Then you walk out to join her. You say that you are resigning the presidency effective immediately, making Kamala the President. You bring out John Roberts to swear her in. (You drag Roberts there by the ear if necessary telling him this is the only way the Court will regain any trust and respect.) The crowd goes absolutely insane. The internet melts down. The networks start a twenty-hour broadcasting marathon. Your grandchildren invent a Tik-Tok dance. Anything is possible.
The inauguration is played over and over for the next two months. The President makes continued tours of swing states. In her time in Washington she invites foreign leaders to fly to Washington to kiss her ring. She reigns. When others rage she swats them down. It’s Kamala, Kamala, Kamala all the time until victory.
Take it from somebody who studies the way the future looks over time - this is the modern world and the only world that counts. Start with spectacle, follow with policy. The Democrats can win, but not by following the old ways. Let them gracefully retire as well.
I think Biden already beat you to the punch. It’s already announced. But yes, he should go out with a massive spree of achievements in just 4 months by doing lots and lots.
This is wild if that was truly a coincidence.
Nobody should be cursed with as bad timing as I have.
As noted Biden stepped down. Within 30 minutes he endorsed Kamala. It’s all going according to plan. 
Obviously this would leak out ahead of time. Which would boost ratings for the Democratic convention. Win-win.
That’s… not a bad principle.
The only thing I would add is speculation that announcing a VP would further cement Harris’ position in the nomination race. Also, two of the potential major contenders (Witmer and Newsom) have announced that the won’t run for President in 2024.
I agree with you about the publicity coup this would be. Even the ‘less-engaged, never watch the news’ voters that Democrats must get would know about this and, one hopes, would be swept along by the Big Dealness of it all and would make that effort to vote.
I don’t see how you get around the possibility of no-VP-means-President-Mike-Johnson, though. Obviously the argument ‘the Secret Service will never let anyone near Harris’ holds no water anymore.
It seems like Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s refusal to quit has taught the Dems a lesson.
This bout of Trumpian fascism is going to destroy the country; Biden was going to steam roll ahead but instead put your nation above his own self and ego. Kamala, for God’s sakes put the threat of Trump’s political viability down. Then get more SC judges in there, etc.
ETA: And please grill Trump during your debates. Put the criminal on trial. You are a prosecutor, you have the skills to destroy him here.
Game this out. Harris chooses a running mate soon - whomever she wants. She nominates him for VP. Senate approves. House dawdles. Johnson is correctly accused of attempting a power grab. Doesn’t matter - traitors gotta traitor.
The unthinkable happens. Johnson becomes President until ~Jan 20. What exactly is he going to do?1 That problem is very small relative to having a party’s nominee killed after the party convention. Republicans are accurately characterized as engaging in stochastic terrorism. This accusation swings surprisingly few votes, just like everything else does. Fox News enabled tribalism is powerful.
ETA: Fair response. My take is that Speaker Johnson is not Speaker Jim Jordan. Johnson supported Ukraine for example. While almost all Republicans have the temperament to support coups to varying extents, not all Republicans have the temperament for organizing coups. Executive orders can be rescinded and the rule making process pre-Project 2025 is slow.
1 He’s going to be in protracted negotiations with the Senate, is what he’s going to do.
Pull all US troops from Europe, South Korea, and everywhere else. Assign them to stand at each polling place. Get the red governors to emphasize how many people they expect to find and prosecute for trying to vote illegally (because they don’t have a passport with them, or whatever rule they decide to make).
Executive orders! What are you going to do about it?
Hey, with clairvoyance like that, you should be able to clean up at the casino. Just don’t get greedy.
Stranger
They know who their true bosses are, but never has a US president hurried to obey a Doper’s command faster than the OP’s.
Boost J.D. Vance? Not sure if I want to use my powers for that.
You could influence him to “Apprentice” Vance and replace him with someone even more obviously batshit crazy in a way not even appealing to his base. Think Rudy Giuliani or Jeff Sessions. Or…dare I hope?…Sean Spicer? He’s smart! Not like everybody says…like dumb…he’s smart and wants respect! #LetHimMisspeak!
Stranger
Since this thread is not yet closed I will respond to the suggestion that Biden resign in favor of Harris. That would put her in the position of having to learn the job while at the same time campaigning. Two very different and very difficult jobs that no one should have to fill simultaneously. And there is no way the house will approve a replacement.
There is also no evidence for and no reason to believe that it would give her the supposed “incumbent advantage” that people proposing this scheme want to claim that it does, while it would saddle her with any legacy policies and problems that she could otherwise plausibly argue were not the policies that she would institute as President. The incumbency advantage is broadly overstated and even a cursory look at the history of presidential elections shows that while incumbent presidents generally have the advantage of having broad, often overwhelming support within their party, they generally win (when they do) because they face weak or divided opposition, and in spite of party losses on the legislative side.
Also, I don’t want Speaker Mike Johnson any closer to the Oval Office than he is now. That guy gives me the creeps with his soulless eyes and his way of speaking in even tones while sharpening his legislative bonesaw.
Stranger
There is no history that is even broadly equivalent.
One President as resigned while in office. One President announced he was not running for re-election. Four Presidents were assassinated. Four Presidents died during their first term.
The closest equivalents occurred 56 and 50 years ago, eons in social history and political years.
Lyndon Johnson replaced an assassinated President in 1963, and the golden halo plus his bludgeoning of Congress into passing major bills made him win in 1964. He announced he wasn’t running in March of 1968 when he was being widely reviled. He worked hard behind the scenes, along with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, to stack the convention for Hubert Humphrey, mostly because Humphrey would continue his Vietnam policy. Humphrey had little national support and was saddled with the taint of Johnson. That connivance blew up in their faces, although the party continued to have enough support to make Nixon’s win extremely close.
Nixon went on to win in a landslide in 1972, marking the beginning of the rightward shift of the country from the New Deal. He was not the leader of a cult, nor did he have the absolute control of his party, but he rode a wave. Even so, by 1974 a bipartisan group in Congress was ready to impeach him when he decided to resign. Gerald Ford was already a replacement VP, after the resignation of the smarmy Spiro Agnew. He was a national nothing, and was saddled with the taint of Nixon. Of course he lost, the only time the Democrats would win between 1964 and 1992.
I believed in the examples from history, because they made sense and so could have some predictive power. No longer. All standards and norms have been shattered. Polling is next to useless. Anything can happen. Under such circumstances the closest historical matches would have little meaning. Since there are no matches at all, all one can do is look at the present day and speculate on the basis of what is playing out before one’s eyes.
This scenario—with a sitting and relatively popular President declining the all-but-assured nomination in favor of his VP who will be facing a previous President—is indeed unique (Harrison versus Cleveland is actually kind of the converse of this election, notwithstanding the late afternoon candidate swap) but looking at post-WWII presidential elections prior to 2016 where one candidate is an incumbent (1964 Johnson vs Goldwater, 1972 Nixon vs McGovern, 1980 Carter versus Reagan, 1984 Reagan versus Mondale, 1992 H.W. Bush versus B. Clinton, 1996 Clinton versus Dole, 2004 W. Bush versus Kerry, 2012 Obama versus Romney), the incumbency losses in 1980 and 1992 were clearly due to a strong charismatic challenger versus an incumbent president with a bad economy, while most of the incumbent wins (1964, 1972, 1984, 1996) had the incumbent facing a weak challenger. Only 2004 and 2012 were really competitive presidential races (defined as being within a 5% spread on the popular vote) where being the incumbent might matter, and arguably that might have worked against W in 2004.
So, while I agree that this election is well outside of precedent, notwithstanding that one candidate an authoritarian-leaning populist with such a menu of failures it is difficult to pick which to chew on first, and the other a Black/South Asian female whose previous primary campaign faltered, but my essential conclusion is that there is no demonstrated real merit to incumbency, and Biden shouldn’t resign from office (assuming he is still fit to run it) just to give some hypothetical advantage to Harris, who would best spend her time building a solid campaign team, learn how to give coherent speeches, and pull every possible vote away from RFK (who is definitely going to split the crazy conspianoiast vote with Trump). But I am giving no odds on what will actually occur because I’m half-convinced that since 2016 we are all just living in the delusions of a character who escaped from a Philip K. Dick novel by dropping acid and hallucinating our timeline.
Stranger