Over the weekend, Democratic Party leaders continued to circle the wagons around President Biden after his poor debate performance on Thursday, defending him in the face of arguments that he should step aside as their 2024 nominee. A big part of their defense had a personal quality: "I'm not abandoning Joe Biden right now, for any speculation," Nancy Pelosi said on MSNBC on Sunday. Her comment reminded me of that of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California after the debate: "We gotta have the back of this president." I came out of the weekend with two questions: Are Democrats acting in the best interests of the party and the country or the best interests of Biden? And are they really one in the same for Democrats, as party leaders seem to be saying? My colleague Ezra Klein published an important podcast and column grappling with some of these questions on Sunday. He had a searing response to the defenses of Biden, including this other post-debate comment from Governor Newsom: "You don't turn your back because of one performance. What kind of party does that?" Klein writes: "Perhaps a party that wants to win? Or a party that wants to nominate a candidate that the American people believe is up to the job? Maybe the better question is: What kind of party would do nothing right now?" As Klein notes, the Democratic Party had strong success in the 2018, 2020 and 2022 elections against Donald Trump and some of the most Trumpist candidates on the ballot. "There is no lack of talent or capacity in the Democratic Party. But there is a lack of coherence and confidence. What is the party for?" Klein asks. For all of Democrats' electoral success in recent years, they knew they would have a problem in 2024, running a president for re-election who had low approval ratings and was viewed as too old for another term by many members of their own party. In last week's New York Times/Siena College poll — before Thursday's debate — nearly half of registered voters who are Biden supporters said they wished someone else was the Democratic nominee. That is a staggering figure. Yet Democratic leaders have followed Biden's lead in lock step as if his bid for re-election was the first, last, best and only idea for the party in 2024. As Klein writes, "What do political parties do? One thing they do — perhaps the most important thing they do — is nominate candidates. We have a two-party system. Voters will have two viable options in November. The Democratic Party is responsible for one of those options. It needs to make that choice responsibly. What is its job if not that?" "But rather than act as a check on Biden's decisions and ambitions, the party has become an enabler of them. An enforcer of them. It is giving the American people an option they do not want and then threatening them with the end of democracy if they do not take it." Klein concludes by making that case that parties should be about what's in the best interests of their voters, not just in their own leaders: "So to go back to Newsom's question," Klein writes, "what kind of party would be trying to make a change after Thursday night? A party that was doing its job." Biden's performance in the debate and where the Democrats should go from here is also the main topic of The Conversation this morning between Gail Collins and Bret Stephens, and it was also the focus of columns over the weekend by Maureen Dowd and Ross Douthat and a guest essay by Stuart Stevens. What happens next for the president and his campaign will say a great deal about his party and its priorities, not to mention the future of America beyond November. Here's what we're focusing on today:
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