Stop moaning and navel gazing. Biden is the nominee.

Let's move on and fight for him and downballot dems. Every. Single. Day.

I’m getting sick of hearing all of the people who say Biden should be replaced on the ticket. This is ridiculous for many reasons—some substantive, some practical. It’s also ridiculous since Biden has been a phenomenal president with a tremendous TEAM at his side. A single poor performance in June has nothing to do with how he’ll govern and plays into the Trump lie that Biden has dementia. Plus Trump used a firehose of falsehoods—an autocratic propaganda technique that Ruth Ben Ghiat describes in her newsletter Lucid. It’s a technique that puts the opponent on the defensive, and any democrat facing that barrage would have had a hard time. Biden’s poor performance was likely due to that, and perhaps some odd drug interaction with cold medicine or some other substance. He got progressively better throughout the “debate,” and by the end of the night and the next day looked stronger and more focused.

Most importantly, ditching the candidate now would be a recipe for disaster. Who is this unicorn candidate that could beat Trump? Biden has polled the best of any Dem against Trump, and Harris not far behind. From what I could tell in my Twitter echo chamber, Black Twitter thinks the very idea of replacing Biden is ridiculous, since he’s really the only candidate who has earned and proven to be able to get the Black vote. And Female Twitter also has been unequivocal in opposition to this fantasy switcheroo and unflagging in its defense of Biden and the ticket. It seems to be white men who are calling for a change. But it’s magical thinking, which I think is misguided, impractical, non-strategic, and ridiculous. Here are the very real pragmatic reasons why we can’t change now.

1. Power of Incumbency: I first learned about the powers of incumbency in AP Gov back at the dawn of time. What does that mean? It means that Biden campaigns WHILE he is president, looking presidential, making presidential decisions, using the trappings of the Presidency (White House/Air Force One/Camp David) and doing the job. It also means that he’s got a financial advantage that nobody could make up this late into the campaign cycle. And that can’t be transferred.

2. Primaries: Biden won the Democratic primary, and replacing him would invalidate the votes of millions and millions of people who chose him to be the Democratic nominee for President. (Folks, that’s what we call undemocratic).

3. Procedure: There is NO procedure by which the nominee can be changed. None. Rules were changed after the 1968 campaign.

4. Money: The Biden Harris campaign has raised a tremendous amount of money since the campaign officially kicked off, and raised PAC money before that. The official campaign money cannot be transferred to another candidate, so this mythical replacement would by at an extreme financial disadvantage.

5. Ground campaign: Biden-Harris has set up a massive ground campaign that includes diehard volunteer advocates like us, as well as fundraisers, staff, surrogates, comms people and every other function we could think of.

6. Candidate: Who is this unicorn who could swoop in and beat Trump starting in July? People are calling for Newsom, or Whitmer, or Shapiro…all governors of Blue states. There is NO evidence that any of these folks (all white, I should add) has a better chance at winning more votes than Biden or Trump. They don’t have real national constituencies, they couldn’t raise enough money, and they’re much better off as surrogates to bring their own states along than to be top of the ticket.

7. MVP Kamala Harris. All of these magical thinkers who talk about replacing Biden shove Kamala aside. Which negates all the experience she now has at governing at a presidential level and shows just how much racism/sexism is baked in to the magical thinking, even among liberals who would swear up and down that racism/sexism has nothing to do with their alls, but actions speak much louder than words. Besides, polling says that after Biden, Kamala has the best chance at beating Trump.

One debate performance changes nothing, and this whining about replacing Biden only extends the news cycle, or diverts it from Trump’s lies, his plans for Project 2025, the fact that he’s a convicted felon, and seems to have told us that he talked to Putin before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and gave his “blessing.”

It also diverts us from the very ugly reality that MAGA SCOTUS has just executed a coup from the bench that demolishes the administrative state, with recent rulings on the FDA, SEC, and Chevron doctrine. These decisions take away the government’s ability to protect YOU and ME, and make the courts the ultimate arbiters of laws and statutes, rather than the experts at agencies who have more expertise. Let’s focus on the fact that teaching the Bible has been mandated in at least one state, the 10 Commandments are mandated in the classroom in another, IVF is on the chopping block by Christo-fascists, and contraception is next. Women are dying from miscarriages. And Dems are moaning about replacing the guy who has had the most successful presidency since FDR. Stop it. Now.

To those who would replace Biden and are taking up the energy we should be using to fight fascism, I say: GET A GRIP. CALM THE FUCK DOWN. AND GET TO WORK FOR BIDEN RIGHT THIS SECOND.