Preet Bharara:

From Cafe and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned In Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. On Thursday, Americans across the country tuned in to watch President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the first presidential debate of this election season. And there is a lot to talk about. Joining me to discuss is Mark Leibovich. He’s a staff writer at The Atlantic and a political analyst for NBC and MSNBC. Mark, my friend, welcome back to the show.

Mark Leibovich:

Preet, my friend, it’s great to be back on the show.

Preet Bharara:

So I’m just going to get right into it. And I’m of mixed emotions after this debate. You and I are having this conversation at 11:00 AM Friday morning, the day after the presidential debate. And I heard Senator Claire McCaskill on television last night, who obviously is a Democrat and a Biden supporter, and she sort of expressed the dilemma that I think some people have had, which is a desire not to want to pile on given Joe Biden’s performance, but also not to be pretending either.

Senator Claire McCaskill:

He had one thing he had to accomplish and that was reassure America that he was up to the job at his age and he failed at that tonight. Does that mean that Joe Biden is not going to be the candidate? I don’t know that. I’m not the only one whose heart is breaking right now.

Preet Bharara:

I woke up this morning to a tweet from my friend, Ian Bremmer. “The United States has never seen day-after debate headlines like this.” Tom Friedman, “President Biden is my friend. He must bow out of the race.” Frank Bruni, “Biden cannot go on like this.” Patrick Healy, “I’m hearing high anxiety from Democrats over Biden’s debate performance.” Nick Christophe, “President Biden, it’s time to drop out.” And then you, Mark Leibovich, yourself, wrote a piece in The Atlantic overnight, simply entitled, “Time to Go, Joe.”

I don’t have a question yet. Hold on. Hold your horses. Before we get to the time to go and whether that can happen and whether that’s plausible or whether that’s good or right or proper, my first question to you is, how did it come about that Joe Biden did this debate?

Mark Leibovich:

Well, first of all, other than the headlines you just read, I thought that the reception for Biden was really, really glowing, right. Okay, that’s a little joke.

Preet Bharara:

It’s not a joking matter, Mark.

Mark Leibovich:

I would say look, I think Claire McCaskill’s concerned about not wanting to pile on is I think the time to pile on is overdue. Look, I would say this. I mean, there’s a lot going on here, but Biden should never have run.

Preet Bharara:

Wait, no, no, but I just want to get this point out, and I’m not trying to levy blame against-

Mark Leibovich:

Oh, how did he get on the stage? At his age-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, he didn’t have to debate. He could have gotten away with not debating. He’s the incumbent. His challenger got away with not debating one time any of his primary challengers.

Mark Leibovich:

Correct.

Preet Bharara:

Who thought it was a good idea for Biden to debate in the circumstances where there was no audience, which some people think actually was better for Trump than for Biden, because Trump arguably, in the eyes of some observers, came across as more modulated and less crazy. Who in the Biden world, and again, some of them are my friends, but we have to be clear-eyed. How was this permitted?

Mark Leibovich:

I would say it was probably driven by Biden himself, whose own, I think, non-self awareness, some would say hubris here, seems to have driven pretty much every decision that his and the Democratic party has made over the last year. I think, if you want to be a little Machiavellian here, I do wonder if some of his top-level aides who have been hoping for some kind of clarifying moment, didn’t somehow get Biden into a June debate. The best thing that he had going for him and the Democrats have going for them was the calendar date of last night, which is June. There is still time. I mean, if this were September, October, there wouldn’t be time. So other than that, I don’t know, if he had a cold, if he was sounding terrible in rehearsal…

Preet Bharara:

But you talk about the cold before you go on, you don’t talk about the cold on background to select reporters 20 minutes into the performance.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, it was clear from even before he said a word. I mean, it was like, wow, he doesn’t look good. And then he sounded terrible. I don’t know, I mean, you do. I just think that the whole campaign has been a disaster from, but also a disaster of dishonesty. And this is how Democrats find themselves in a position like this. I think, if anything, the next few days will either have Democrats act on whatever clarity last night yielded or they won’t. But I think as a logistical matter, there’s no way he should have been on a debate stage with Trump. And I’m not sure it’s going to get much better between now and September if he can somehow stick this out.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think there was a failure of the staff to prepare him or there was nothing to be done?

Mark Leibovich:

I never love the, oh, his staff is… This is malpractice. How dare they? I mean, look, this is Joe Biden’s decision. Joe, Jill Biden [inaudible 00:05:41]

Preet Bharara:

No, but I mean in terms of substance, I’m guessing he was prepared exquisitely because the team that prepared him includes people who I respect and who are very smart at these things. So the fault lies with the candidate, right?

Mark Leibovich:

Yes, 100% it lies with the candidate. Well, actually no, I would say 80% with the candidate and 20% with those who enable the candidate. And look, I think as a practical matter, he obviously was overloaded with too much information, too much to do.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s a mistake.

Mark Leibovich:

That’s a huge mistake. But it’s also, you’re dealing with, as we saw last night, some extremely limited mental bandwidth, whether it was the hour, whether it was the cold, whether it was what he can compute and what he can get done in a single exchange. But I think an Olympic debating athlete would’ve been hard pressed to do the kind of work that someone debating Donald Trump in that environment would’ve had to do. Correct the lies attack, defend, know when to defend, just have your speeches nailed. Someone like Pete Buttigieg or Gavin Newsom, who is just much more nimble in that environment could have conceivably pulled that off. There is no way in a million years someone with Joe Biden’s capacity, or at least the capacity he has shown last night and even leading up to last night, could have done that.

Preet Bharara:

So why the disconnect, other than the interval of a few months, between the reception with respect to Biden’s performance at the State of the Union and his performance last night? I’m prepared to believe, I think, that he had a very, very off night, not to minimize clearly the deficiencies that he’s experiencing, but is it because the State of the Union was a teleprompter, although he did ad-lib a bunch in the State of the Union, as I recall. Has there been a deterioration, you think, between the State of the Union and now, and did the State of the Union performance and the reception of that performance play a role in causing the team to be confident that this was a good idea?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, obviously in retrospect, the State of the Union was about a million times easier to pull off than last night. Last night was a-

Preet Bharara:

Why was it easier to pull off? 90 minutes is a long time, but look, for the three people in the audience who didn’t watch the debate or turn the debate off, can you articulate why it is that essentially people are talking about Biden getting off the ticket? Explain what it was from a political perspective, because people will point out that, yes, Donald Trump lied his ass all the way through that debate. He said lots of outrageous and crazy things. Biden got off some good lines, he made some good points. But at the end of the day, as I think people who support Biden and love and respect and admire Biden, think it was a disaster. Can you articulate why that is?

Mark Leibovich:

Yes. If you take the performance art, the visual, the audio part of this, he was just lacking on all levels. He lost his train of thought almost immediately. There was this answer that I can’t… If you watch even the first three or maybe six minutes of the debate, it is clear that he was just outmatched just as a specimen.

Joe Biden:

With the COVID, excuse me, with dealing with everything we have to do with… Look-

Preet Bharara:

But the other guy… I’m trying to push back a little bit for the sake of argument, the other guy rambles too. The other guy ends a sentence and did last night, nowhere close to where he should have given how the sentence began. What’s the difference?

Mark Leibovich:

Expectation, entrenched persona. Trump, say whatever you will about him, he has created a permission structure within the environment of the Republican party, which is its own outrage, which is a topic for another day, that gives him a kind of confidence and shamelessness to proceed with no inhibitions whatsoever. And then a lot of it is just sort of the physical, mental vicissitudes of aging and performance and so forth.

Preet Bharara:

His voice was hoarse. So I’m prepared to believe that maybe he-

Mark Leibovich:

Biden has a cold.

Preet Bharara:

But here’s the other strange thing. I stayed up fairly late and I may have had a couple, by the time I watched these clips of him. He did a campaign stop after the debate.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, I hear it was good.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. And he looked robust and he looked vigorous.

Joe Biden:

Look, folks, what’s going to happen over the next couple days, they’re going to be out fact-checking all the things he said. I can’t think of one thing he said that was true. I’m not being facetious. But look, we’re going to beat this guy. We need to beat this guy and I need you in order to beat him. You’re the people I’m running for.

Preet Bharara:

And this was after going through a grueling debate, after likely hearing that the reception was poor, and maybe that’s what jazzed him up. So it’s very peculiar to me to have to have sounded as feeble as he did, and as sort of rambling as he did in the debate. And then after going through that, certainly past his bedtime, later that night, 10, 11, 12:00 at night, he sounded like the old Biden. Do you have any explanation for that?

Mark Leibovich:

It’s part of the same really frustrating two-step that the White House has been attempting for two years now, which is to barely let him come out in public and then quietly say, oh, when you see him in this environment, he’s great and great and great. Oh, he’s just sharp as a tack. I’ve never seen him better. Last night when he came out actually in public in a moment where it counted, it was an utter disaster. It was as bad or worse than any of the worst caricatures we’ve heard about him. And okay, now, I guess we just have to take people’s word for it, who stayed up till midnight to watch whatever that rally was. I certainly wasn’t. Of course, I was busy writing about the debate. By the way, at 11:00, I took a Ritalin pill to write with, and Biden should have liked it, should have been a couple hours earlier. I don’t know. We don’t have to-

Preet Bharara:

Does that explain the language of some of your texts to me last night, Mark?

Mark Leibovich:

Possibly. No, that was before they told me I had to write something, but that’s for another day. But I was, look, I don’t know, I don’t want to get into the… I am really, really weary of the Oh, but in private. Oh, but when you’re not watching, he’s good. Trust us on this. I mean, when you have an 80-year-old president, 81-year-old president, that overwhelming majorities of Americans don’t want any part of at this age, you got to do a lot better than that, and you certainly have to do a lot better than what Biden did last night.

Preet Bharara:

Well, let me ask you this question. Had the shoe been on the other foot and had Trump turned in a feeble, forgetful, soft performance, would there have been an avalanche of headlines from stout MAGA Republicans saying, it’s time for Donald Trump to get off the ballot, or would they have just come into line as they always do?

Mark Leibovich:

They would’ve come into line as they always do. This is-

Preet Bharara:

What do you make of that?

Mark Leibovich:

It’s depressing, man.

Preet Bharara:

In some ways, I’m proud to be on this side.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, me too.

Preet Bharara:

Because there’s a little bit of not bullshit.

Mark Leibovich:

There’s a lot of not bullshit. I will say this though. To be a Republican in the age of Donald Trump is to use the old Vaclav Havel line to live within the lie. I mean, everything you have to lie about, the election not being stolen and the weaponization of the Biden Justice Department and go down the list. Everyone was like, okay, we, Democrats are so honest and everything. Look, I have had a million conversations with the same Democrats who in public are defending Joe Biden for being young and vigorous, and then privately, as soon as we’re off the record, the microphone’s off, will say, oh my God, he is so old. It’s like death warmed over. I’ve heard that from so many people as close to him as you can imagine. They work in the White House, they work in the reelect. These are senators, these are old friends. It’s a fairly universal view, and the lack of candor and the, frankly, lying around this catastrophic issue is almost as damning as the kind of lie that inhabits the Republican Party in every level.

Preet Bharara:

So young people, I’m struck by their reaction. Ben Rhodes tweeted last night, Ben Rhodes, former advisor to President Obama in the White House. “Imagine what this looks like to young people in this country.” My sampling of young people are my kids who were texting me with great alarm last night. Biden already had a problem with young people for various reasons. How’s this going to turn out with that population?

Mark Leibovich:

Well, Preet, I have another population to talk about, which is my own kids. However, across many generations of relatives, whether it’s parents, cousins, kids, I can give you a little sampling of some of the texts I got within the first half hour of the debate. Disaster. The vomit emoji was very popular from people across generations. Look, I think people of the younger generation, to their credit, have a much higher bullshit detection system than people older. But look, I don’t think this is a generationally specific disaster. I mean, yes, kids, yes, foreign audiences. It’s an utter travesty that we’re in this position, and I think Joe Biden is at fault.

Preet Bharara:

This is in the family chat at 9:25 PM last night. At 9:25 PM last night, a Bharara child texted in the family chat. “I give Biden a 0.01% chance of winning the election.” These are intelligent, knowledgeable, over the age of 19 kids, and they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Okay, so let’s move on from the performance. And by the way, people are going to gripe and say, well, why aren’t you talking about Donald Trump’s lies? We will talk about some of that if we have time, but people have to be real because it’s the end of June. The convention’s around the corner. In a piece a few weeks ago, you wrote, “It is too late for Democrats to do anything about their predicament now barring some 11th hour event that triggers an extremely unlikely swap out of nominees at the Democratic National Convention.” Was this such an event?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, That’s where my Machiavellian theory comes in, which is that people who know better close to Biden scheduled this June debate as a potential 11th hour event that could-

Preet Bharara:

That’s a little overly Machiavellian for me.

Mark Leibovich:

Maybe. Maybe. How about this? I’ve heard many theories about that. It is probably too Machiavellian, but you never know. Look, last night could have been, or I don’t know when this is airing, but the Thursday night debate could have been the 11th hour debate, the 11th hour event.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, so can we talk about that? Do you agree with me, and I’m not the political expert, that’s why I have you here, that if Biden insists on staying in the race, which he said he will, and he’s, through staff, already said on Friday, this morning, that he’s going to show up for the second debate too scheduled for September. If Biden, against the judgment of others, like yourself, decides to stay in the race, there’s nothing that can be done. Do you agree with that?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, I do. Procedurally, and a lot of the texts I was getting, and a lot of the communications I was getting, again, before an hour was gone of the debate were, how does this work? What are the mechanics of swapping out-

Preet Bharara:

Now, that’s what I want to spend some time talking about with you.

Mark Leibovich:

From what I can tell, and I’ve done as much research as you can in this short period of time, the 99% option of how something could possibly work always involves Biden-

Preet Bharara:

Voluntary withdrawal.

Mark Leibovich:

Voluntary withdrawal.

Preet Bharara:

So I want to get to that in a second because people have been texting me, why don’t the Dems do something? What’s interesting is the Dems, we had an election, people voted.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah. An election. Correct.

Preet Bharara:

I guess people can talk about the 25th Amendment, which would be crazy, but that doesn’t take someone off the ballot. That’s a different kind of mechanism, and it’s not going to happen. It’s not going to be invoked here. Okay, so let’s now address the question of under what circumstances Joe Biden might consider, which is a crazy thing for me to be saying because I never thought this was going to happen, but now I think you have to consider the possibility. Is it that his wife, his closest aides, Kaufman and others, Ron Klain and others come to him, or Barack Obama or his former colleagues in the Senate, will it take that kind of a demand on their part or plea on their part for Joe Biden to consider withdrawing? And based on what kinds of arguments that they would make.

Mark Leibovich:

I mean, it’s a disaster.

Preet Bharara:

Straight polling. Look, if the polling-

Mark Leibovich:

Straight polling.

Preet Bharara:

If, hypothetically, Biden is open to stepping back for the good of the country and the good of the election, if the poll numbers reflect the kinds of headlines we’ve seen, what do you think those poll numbers would have to be for Biden to reconsider?

Mark Leibovich:

First of all, the poll numbers have been overwhelming for maybe a year and a half. A super, super majority of Americans, including Democrats and independents, over 70% want absolutely no part of Joe Biden running at his current age.

Preet Bharara:

But that’s only half the story. The problem, so we’re going to get to it. It’s just taken me a while. The question in an election-

Mark Leibovich:

How do you get to Biden?

Preet Bharara:

No. Well, the question is, so let’s suppose, I guess we don’t know if he would consider stepping away or not. So if not Biden, who? And you have this thorny elephant in the room where a lot of people in the Democratic party do not think that Kamala Harris would be a strong candidate against Trump. There are some people who might, and some people would say that’s maybe misogyny and or racism involved. People say that. Does Kamala Harris have a substantially better chance, and we’ll talk about others in a moment, because in the ordinary course, you chose this person to step into the breach of the presidency if you were unable to serve. In what circumstances do you do an about face on that commitment and that decision and bypass Kamala Harris?

Mark Leibovich:

Well, it wouldn’t be for Biden to decide.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, so he steps away. But you don’t think he’ll have a role in picking the newcomer?

Mark Leibovich:

Not necessarily. I think if he were to say, I’m not running again, but my endorsement is with Kamala, I don’t think he would do that. I think he would step away, and I think it would be-

Preet Bharara:

Isn’t it very weird, and I know a lot of people say this and think this, isn’t it very weird not to endorse your vice president?

Mark Leibovich:

Not necessarily. Obama, basically, he endorsed his Secretary of State, and that’s why Hillary ran. That’s why Hillary was the nominee in 2016.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a good point.

Mark Leibovich:

Probably part of the reason why Biden didn’t run.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, so how will it work then? So Joe Biden, let’s say, decides I’m going to step back. Can he play a role insofar as he can say, well, I’ll consider stepping back, but let’s talk about who it’s going to be, and if I’m satisfied about who it’s going to be then and only then I’ll step back. So that gives him actually quite a substantial role, right?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah. I would say that 98% of the role is to step back first. I think Biden’s endorsement or not endorsement of someone would be just part of what would be a very intense campaign over two months, which by the way, is a much longer period of time than most countries pick their own presidents. You could do this, you could do some kind of whirlwind campaign, and Kamala Harris as vice president would be an obvious front runner. But I don’t know, Biden’s endorsement, well-

Preet Bharara:

I’m not talking about endorsement. I’m saying that if he could affect the process by saying that my withdrawal is conditional.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, I think Biden’s affected the process entirely too much already by-

Preet Bharara:

Well, I know [inaudible 00:22:50]

Mark Leibovich:

I mean, honestly-

Preet Bharara:

He may not agree with you. He may not agree with you.

Mark Leibovich:

Look, I might have a lot of bad will for Biden right now because he is still in the race, and he seems, at this fairly early hour, determined to continue with this. I’m utterly, as a student of this and who’s been doing this a long time, I’m utterly fascinated by what the next 72 hours are going to look and sound like, because we’re taping this on Friday, the conversation over the weekend, usually, I probably shouldn’t say this, but I wouldn’t in a million years tune into a Sunday show. I’ve been on Sunday shows, but I would never tune into one. But no, I actually might watch Sunday shows this weekend. And you know what, probably shouldn’t have said that, but whatever.

Preet Bharara:

The way the political world turns is that you were thinking that either something dramatic is attempted or happens in the immediate, very short term, and then not at all, or could this sort of sit and simmer for a month and then something happens? I’m guessing you’re going to say the former because time is short.

Mark Leibovich:

The former. Yeah, time is very, very, very short. It is. Yeah, it’d have to be in the next few days or next week at the most. If you look at the historical parallels here, Nixon could have hung on. It was a completely different environment. There was no Fox News, there was no internet. Obviously completely different world. Nixon, for all of his Nixonian things, literally Nixonian things. Preet, was, I guess, on some level capable of shame, capable of the patriotism necessary to step away. But he, ultimately, was swayed by a small delegation of Republican leaders from the House and Senate. Barry Goldwater was one, and then there was the Republican minority leader in the House and in the Senate, I forgot their names. They came up and basically they said, look, you’re draining support. I don’t think this is sustainable. He stepped away.

I don’t think that would happen now, obviously. The Mitch McConnells and the Mike Johnsons of the world are not of that caliber, and Donald Trump has his own kind of pathologies. And Joe Biden has his own kind of pathology. But I do think, look, in the case of a party that is capable of shame, is capable of decency, and actually making decisions along the same kind of moral rubric that we’re talking about, a delegation consisting of Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, and Hakeem Jeffries and Chris Coons, any number of people that he will clearly listen to, I think it would be hard to do this without it immediately getting out. But this is a conversation that I think a real critical mass of high level Democrats, and it’s a very small group, should actually think about attempting. At this point-

Preet Bharara:

But as you’ve point out, there’s great risk in that because, the old phrase goes, you come at the king, you best not miss. If you do this thing, this intervention, and it doesn’t succeed, but it gets out that the intervention was attempted, doesn’t that pretty much completely sink the Biden candidacy?

Mark Leibovich:

Does it bring us even lower than the .000.1%?

Preet Bharara:

I don’t know, but I’ll say once again, the shoe on the other foot, I don’t know what the statistic is, but it’s something like 42 out of 45 people who work directly for Donald Trump say that he’s a disaster and should not be president, not fit to be president, which is kind of similar-

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah. Oh, it is.

Preet Bharara:

… to the scenario I’m talking about. And yet, Donald Trump is still waving the banner of his party.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, look, there are many layers of blame here. I would start with the layer of blame of what the Republican party has become and what they have enabled and what they have continued to forgive and elevate Donald Trump. So yeah, that is why we’re here. If that were Nikki Haley on the debate stage last night, you would just have, first of all, Biden would probably be getting completely clobbered in the polls even before last night, and then a great many Democrats, and I would assume a massive majority of Independents would say, all right, well, Nikki Haley’s, I know who she is. She’s a Republican. Our democracy isn’t going to die. I guess I’ll just vote for her. We’re not in that situation. This is not Mitt Romney or John McCain or Nikki Haley on the other side.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. All right, so who are the other possibilities in this scenario? Kamala Harris, obviously, because she’s the sitting vice president.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, the debate was in Atlanta last night. I was thinking Jimmy Carter. He was local, right? He’s still got another term left.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, okay.

Mark Leibovich:

Sorry, sorry. I’m a little sleep deprived.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to throw out some names. Gavin Newsom, would he be in the mix?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, definitely. He’s been a great surrogate for Biden. He is great on TV. He can process information. He’s got a lot of talents. He has got a lot of drawbacks too. But yeah, he’d definitely be in the mix.

Preet Bharara:

Is Hillary Clinton in the mix?

Mark Leibovich:

Probably not, I think not at this point, no.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think she would even be interested in being in the mix?

Mark Leibovich:

Sure. Yeah. I just don’t think she would get elected either. I think she’d have a hard time getting the nomination. I think she-

Preet Bharara:

That’s a lot of pressure to have to-

Mark Leibovich:

It’s a lot of pressure.

Preet Bharara:

… potentially lose against Donald Trump a second time.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, she doesn’t need that.

Preet Bharara:

And so who else is there? Secretary of Transportation?

Mark Leibovich:

Sure. Yeah, Kamala, Gretchen Whitmer, Raphael Warnock, Josh Shapiro, go down the list.

Preet Bharara:

Isn’t it very dangerous in modern times for a person who may have been in the public eye, but didn’t get vetted over a period of time closely by the entire Press Corps and debate challengers to suddenly arrive on the scene unvetted? Or do you think that’s not a considerable concern?

Mark Leibovich:

I think having a person at Biden’s age and his condition-

Preet Bharara:

You’re saying it’s the lesser of two evils.

Mark Leibovich:

… was a far more perilous proposition. Look, Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, they’ve been vetted as national figures from big states.

Preet Bharara:

It’s not the same. It’s not the same, as you know.

Mark Leibovich:

It’s not the same, of course not.

Preet Bharara:

Many people have run for the presidency from positions of great power and fame and local state vetting, even from major states with substantial press scores and crazy stuff becomes known.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, I know. Look, my feeling is this, okay, Gavin Newsom might have done, he broke the COVID, the French Laundry dinner in Napa, and maybe it was Sonoma. He got in trouble for that. That’s next to being indicted and being convicted on 34 counts, I don’t know. The Trump kind of thing kind of blows up that, can you believe it, equation.

Preet Bharara:

Notwithstanding the lies, were you surprised at how Trump performed? Do you have an assessment of his performance?

Mark Leibovich:

I was not at all surprised. I think he was as bad and as good as Donald Trump is in those settings. And to be honest with you-

Preet Bharara:

That’s a very good way of putting it.

Jake Tapper:

President Trump.

Donald Trump:

I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.

Mark Leibovich:

Well, yeah. To be honest with you, I barely listened to him because I was just too utterly focused and appalled by Biden.

Preet Bharara:

Do you want to place a percentage of likelihood on this scenario? I woke up this morning-

Mark Leibovich:

Biden stepping away scenario?

Preet Bharara:

I still thought last night, even though I shared the reaction of many people, that it’s a long shot and farfetched. It seems less farfetched at this moment.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, I would say-

Preet Bharara:

How less farfetched is it?

Mark Leibovich:

I put the chances of him not sticking around at probably about 40% at this point.

Preet Bharara:

40%. That’s high.

Mark Leibovich:

It’s high. It might be… I think the reflex is for his surrogates, like Warnock and Newsom to go into the spin room and say, oh, the choice is clear. Even Kamala Harris was kind of lukewarm in her appraisal of him. Of course, in fairness, Donald Trump’s vice president isn’t even voting for him. The whole hanging-

Preet Bharara:

She made that point. She went on television last night.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah. It’s true. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

If you’re part of the Democratic party elders and you’re trying to figure out, in the really unfortunate, and to me, still largely unexpected scenario of having to replace Joe Biden at the top of the ticket, who has the best likelihood and chance of defeating Donald Trump?

Mark Leibovich:

Oh boy. There are some really big flaws that pretty much everyone I mentioned has. Kamala has a lot of problems that we talked about. Gretchen Whitmer, very attractive on a lot of levels. Americans have never elected… Women presidents, that hasn’t happened for a reason.

Preet Bharara:

But there’s no time like the present.

Mark Leibovich:

No time like the present. Look, none of these people have polled particularly well. I just think that someone maybe from the Midwest, someone like Sherrod Brown, people like Bob Casey, kind of a very solid middle of the road Democratic Senator, he’s one of my [inaudible 00:32:30]

Preet Bharara:

Middle of the road.

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah, Pennsylvania. Just innocuous, also under the age of 80.

Preet Bharara:

Well, look, innocuous, middle of the road in part is why Biden got elected in 2020. Is it not?

Mark Leibovich:

Yeah. Yeah. Look, he was not all that innocuous because he was an extremely known entity and he was linked to Obama. But this would be an unknown proposition. You can just see Democrats unveiling a ticket at the same time. That’s the thing about a condensed timeframe. You can say, okay, we’re nominating Shapiro/Warnock or Whitmer/Warnock or something like that. Just put an attractive, younger, new couple of fresh faces who have done serious work and are well thought of and have real talent. And I think all of a sudden, there’s a newness factor. There’s a youth factor. The age issue goes away. All the baggage around Biden at this point, beginning with his age, but not ending with it, would just go away. And maybe that’s a fantasy, and these processes are probably far messier than even I could imagine. But look, it’s exciting to contemplate getting to know someone new. And I don’t know, that’s what a process like this ideally could yield. But again, that might just be Pollyannish on my part.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Well, the candidate is often, even with flaws and a bad debate performance can often be better than the person you don’t know.

Mark Leibovich:

I would’ve said that that’s true, there was a much better argument for that about three days ago.

Preet Bharara:

Just in defense of the performance last night and pushing back against this scenario, I barely remember, but I’m still old enough to remember in 1984 when Reagan was deemed to be too old to be president again, and he had the debate with Walter Mondale. Reagan came across as sort of absent-minded, not coherent, not together. Lots of questions were raised. Nobody forced him off the ticket. He didn’t get off the ticket, and he was the oldest president ever to be elected at the time. And he came back in a second debate, and he made that famous quip about not using age against his youthful opponent and all went away, and then he won like-

Mark Leibovich:

49 states.

Preet Bharara:

All 57 states.

Mark Leibovich:

All 57 states.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Remember, there was a gaff once Obama won, referred to 57 states. He won all 57 states.

Mark Leibovich:

Won all of [inaudible 00:35:08].

Preet Bharara:

Why can’t this be like that? And then, I’ll let you go.

Mark Leibovich:

Well, Reagan was, I think, 12 years younger then than Biden is now. Reagan was extremely popular compared to Biden right now. Just the whole, there was no internet. There was no Fox. It was a much quainter, 100% different environment. So yeah, I think Reagan is not a perfect analogy, but it’s one that I imagine that the Biden folks will be clinging to who are determined to sort of play this out.

Preet Bharara:

Well, I could talk to you for a lot longer, Mark.

Mark Leibovich:

Me too.

Preet Bharara:

But I know you have more writing to do and more observing to do and more leads to follow.

Mark Leibovich:

I’m going to go out and write and observe.

Preet Bharara:

Write and observe.

Mark Leibovich:

That’s what I do.

Preet Bharara:

Mark Leibovich, thanks so much for your insight and for taking the time. We’ll talk soon.

Mark Leibovich:

Preet, always a total pleasure. We’ll talk to you again.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former U.S. Attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag #AskPreet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com.

Stay tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The deputy editor is Celine Rohr. The editorial producer is Noa Azulai. The associate producer is Claudia Hernández, and the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, Nat Weiner, and Jake Kaplan. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.