Your Questions on Open Conventions, a Gaza Schism and Biden’s Chances

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We received thousands of questions in response to last week’s audio essay arguing that Democrats should consider choosing a candidate at August’s D.N.C. convention. Among them: Is there any chance Joe Biden would actually step down? Would an open convention be undemocratic? Is there another candidate who can bridge the progressive and moderate divide in the party? Doesn’t polling show other candidates losing to Donald Trump by even larger margins? Would a convention process leave Democrats enough time to mount a real general election campaign? In this conversation, I’m joined by our senior editor Claire Gordon to answer these questions and many more. Mentioned: “Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden” by Ezra Klein “Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work” with Elaine Kamarck on The Ezra Klein Show Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. So last week I did an audio essay arguing that Joe Biden right now does not seem up for the
0:28.8	campaign he is going to have to run. He is behind in the polls. He is skipping things like Super Bowl interviews, having trouble in press conferences, and that if things don't change, this is not going to go well.
0:39.0	And that there is another option for Democrats, that Biden could step aside and
0:43.8	Democrats could do what parties have done many times before and go to a convention.
0:47.6	Then we had a Lynn Kmark on the show to talk about how convention would work and
0:51.1	this is something I said we would also do in this
0:53.4	little series, which is take questions on it. And we got a lot of them. We got
0:58.5	thousands of responses to the initial audio essay. Our great senior editor, Claire Gordon, has joined me here to sort of be the
1:04.2	audience representative and make sure I'm actually answering questions. So let's jump into it.
1:08.9	Where do we begin? Yeah, Ezra, you threw a bit of a grenade into the world, and now it's a time to take a little bit of fire.
1:16.0	And our first question is from MS NBC anchor Chris Hayes.
1:19.7	I think a lot of people share this acute sense of Biden's campaigning ability, like his
1:26.4	candidate quality to be significantly diminished even if they think he's not
1:30.3	diminished in the actual office. But my big question about all of these scenarios,
1:34.7	and there's been many about Biden not being the nominee,
1:38.0	is it seems like there's one person who gets to decide
1:40.6	if Joe Biden is gonna run for for president again and that's Joe
1:43.1	Biden and I can't imagine a scenario in which he decides that absent some you
1:48.4	know medical situation that happens so I just I can't get past that first step so I'm just curious what you how you think about it.
1:55.3	Ooh thank you Chris. So one way to say what I'm saying in that audio essay is I'm making a
2:00.4	prediction about the campaign. I am saying that if you look at where Joe Biden is now he's losing
2:05.0	he's losing in the polls and typically Donald Trump overperforms his polling so
	...

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