Dave Weigel: What If Biden Quits?

Reason Podcasts

What if President Joe Biden drops out? Just asking questions. Biden is facing increasing pressure from his own side to drop out of the 2024 race, which nearly every poll taken since his disaster debate performance last week shows him losing. The latest RealClearPolitics average has him down by about 3.5 percentage points nationally. Several Democratic congress members have called for him to step aside. So have Democratic megadonors. Much of the national press, once dismissive of those pointing out Biden's mental deterioration, has turned on him. So where do we go from here? To help us begin to answer that, Just Asking Questions invited David Weigel, a political reporter for Semafor, and previously for The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Slate, and Reason. Weigel talked with Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe about the media's slow acknowledgment of Biden's deteriorating condition, Biden's turn against the Democratic "elite," getting "coconut-pilled" on a Vice President Kamala Harris candidacy, and what a contested Democratic primary might look like. Timestamps: 0:00 - intro 1:28 - How bad is Biden losing? 4:58 - How long has Biden been cognitively impaired? 6:58 - How much medical info should the White House release? 11:46 - Why didn't the DC media say something sooner? 32:06 - Media gaslighting Biden's decline as "cheap fakes" 39:10 - The media has turned on Biden 48:13 - How does Zach feel about voting for Biden? 50:35 - Biden's pushback to the press and the Democratic "elite" 56:41 - Why Democrats are turning on Joe Biden 1:05:26 - Getting "coconut pilled" on a Kamala Harris candidacy 1:15:00 - How would removing Biden actually work?