It would be an overstatement to argue that no prominent voices have urged Donald Trump to end his 2024 campaign. The editorial board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, for example, made a compelling case over the weekend that the former president should drop out of the race. After the Republican’s criminal conviction in May, The Washington Monthly published a similarly persuasive piece.
But by any fair measure, those are the exceptions that prove the rule. In the wake of last week’s debate, incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden has faced, and continues to face, intense pressure to end his candidacy and pass the torch. His GOP rival is confronting nothing comparable.
It’s worth asking why. In fact, attorney Luppe Luppen (known online as “southpaw”) summarized the dynamic this way the morning after the debate:
The Democratic Party’s reaction to their candidate having a bad debate substantially outpaces the Republican Party’s reaction to their candidate being convicted of multiple felonies, held liable for rape, and owing judgments in the hundreds of millions for defamation and fraud.
I think there’s real merit to the observation, though the explanation for the asymmetry isn’t immediately obvious.
Part of this is likely the result of pragmatism: Those hoping to persuade Biden to forgo his re-election bid appear to believe, sincerely, that he might listen to their arguments. Love him or hate him, the Democratic incumbent is a reasonable, patriotic leader, open to hearing people out. Those making the case that the president should stand down are working from the assumption that their pleas might very well have a meaningful impact.
Few bother to make a comparable case to Trump, regardless of merit, because they know full well that he’d never listen to their arguments. Love him or hate him, the presumptive Republican nominee is neither a reasonable nor patriotic leader, and when confronted by those who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, he makes up conversations in his imagination to soothe his fragile ego.
Those who might be inclined to argue that Trump should stand down tend not to bother — because they know their arguments wouldn’t have any kind of impact whatsoever.
But there’s another dimension to this.
By and large, Biden’s admirers aren’t urging him to step aside because they’ve turned on him; they’re pressing him because they assume others will turn on him, making it more likely that Trump will prevail and put the future of the American experiment in severe jeopardy. It’s not about animus; it’s about an electoral calculation. If the Democratic incumbent is likely to lose public support, the argument goes, then he has a responsibility — to his country, to the world, to the future — to stand down in the hopes of keeping a dangerous, felonious, and undemocratic madman from reentering the White House. Trump’s admirers, meanwhile, see no need to urge him to step aside because they assume his crimes and many scandals will prove inconsequential: Some voters won’t know the truth about the presumptive GOP nominee; others won’t care; and others still will be conned into believing a counternarrative about everything being “rigged.” There was no palpable panic in Republican circles — even after he was convicted of 34 felonies, even after a jury held him liable for sexual assault, even after his business was found guilty of fraud, even after he was indicted for trying to overturn an election defeat without cause, even after he participated in a debate and was caught lying repeatedly about matters large and small — because they’ve long assumed, and continue to assume, that the facts are irrelevant. Much of the public — which is to say, enough of the public — can be convinced to believe what the party tells them to believe. Biden’s backers fear voters will turn on him; Trump’s backers are confident they won’t.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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