Let’s be honest. Joseph Biden is a bad candidate. Moderate Democrats put all their eggs in one basket, and that basket sexually assaulted a staffer in 1993. With a former neighbor, old co-workers, family members and the now infamous Larry King call made by Tara Reade’s mother all corroborating Reade’s story, pretending that Joe Biden is innocent here is choosing to be willfully ignorant. You can argue that Trump is still worse or that Trump has hurt more women, which I won’t argue with. He is worse. He has more credible accusations. But Biden supporters need to ask themselves if they really believe that the “lesser of two rapists” argument is going to win the day. Many voters are confident that this isn’t a winning strategy, and conversations about switching Biden out at the convention are already brewing. Names like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton are getting thrown around, but the most common name in conversations like this is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. This is a bad idea.
In my view, switching Biden out is a moral obligation and an electoral must. He isn’t going to beat Trump. But switching him out for someone who didn’t even run in the primary is electoral suicide for the Democratic party. If Cuomo gets the nod from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and takes over as the candidate, it will be an offensive disregard of democracy. All it will take for Trump to run away with the general election is a single debate where he points out that Cuomo was handpicked by the DNC to beat him and that he wasn’t selected by the American people. It will energize Trump’s supporters who already view the DNC as corrupt and hell-bent on undermining their candidate. It will take the wind out of Cuomo’s campaign because Trump will be right when he says it. Giving the nomination to someone with no delegates at this point is just confirming what Trump supporters and progressives already know: The DNC doesn’t care about what the people want.
At this point, the only way to get rid of Biden is for old candidates to take back their endorsements and to unsuspend their campaigns while demanding that the remaining states allow mail-in ballots to keep voters safe during the ongoing pandemic. Candidates like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg have enough delegates to start competing again. Meanwhile, voters and the DNC will have to pressure Biden to bow out. That’s the responsible thing to do when your leading candidate has been credibly accused of sexual assault. Just switching him out isn’t the answer. You need to let the voters decide.
There’s no moral high ground over Trump if Biden wins the nomination, but giving the nomination to someone who didn’t even run could be worse for the long-term health of the party. Cuomo could have been the ideal candidate to beat Trump if he won the nomination in an actual election, but that doesn’t matter now. He didn’t run. The flagrant disregard for democratic processes that a Cuomo nomination would represent would be a disaster for the party. It would make it hard for future voters to believe their voices even matter. If the DNC wants to win, it’s time to boot Biden and let the campaigning start again. That, or the party can pretend backing Biden wasn’t a mistake and reap what they’ve sown when Trump wins again in 2020.
Robert Kinnaird is a junior majoring in global studies and journalism.
