The past few days have been perhaps the most dramatic political spectacle since November 8, 2016. Ever since President Biden’s disastrous debate performance last Thursday, there has been a panic around the country. Can he still be on the Democratic ticket in 2024? And who has actually been running the United States for the past four years? 

Every minute, another shoe drops. Another grim poll, another devastating leak. All of which suggests that Biden has to throw in the towel. But the White House insists he’s in it for the long haul. “I am running. . . . No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving. I’m in this race to the end and we’re going to win,” Biden told DNC staff on a call Wednesday. 

On today’s special *emergency* episode of Honestly, Bari sits down with Axios national political correspondent Alex Thompson to help make sense of what is going on and what comes next. Thompson has covered President Biden for years and is one of the few reporters, long before last Thursday night, who dared to report on the subject of Biden’s age and mental acuity. There’s no one better situated to break down how the Biden camp is dealing with the fallout since the debate. 

They discuss Biden World’s calculus for staying in the race, who might replace Biden if he ultimately drops out, what is going on with Democratic donors, why the media missed this story for months, and what this could all mean for the future of the nation.

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Wednesday was Kamala Harris’s day. As speculation about the president’s future grew—fueled by a meeting with Democratic governors and fresh reporting, furiously denied by the White House, that Biden had discussed dropping out with a close ally—all eyes were on Harris. The world wondered: Is the plot of Veep about to come true? Polling showed her within “striking distance” of Trump. The Trump campaign referred to her as “Cackling Copilot Kamala.” “IT’S HER PARTY NOW,” read the banner headline on Drudge. 

Meanwhile, the Biden camp is desperately trying to tamp down the speculation about the president’s future. “I am running,” Biden reportedly said on a staff call Wednesday. “No one’s pushing me out. I’m not leaving.” Pooh-poohing the “draft Kamala” idea, Democratic adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn reportedly told donors that “Kamala Harris is more threatening to those swing voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden.”   

Biden and Harris will be together at the White House for Fourth of July celebrations later today. And while outwardly Harris is staying loyal, the Washington rumor mill is in overdrive. Fueling all that gossip are these questions: Is Joe Biden really the Democrats’ problem? And would his departure from the race really help their chances of beating Donald Trump? 

That’s the subject of today’s Fight Club between Joe Nocera and Eli Lake. Joe says yes, Biden is the problem and needs to go. Eli says the damage is already done. 

Here’s Joe: 

When I followed Nikki Haley around in Iowa and New Hampshire earlier this year, it was obvious to me that if the 52-year-old former South Carolina governor were the Republican nominee for president, she would crush Joe Biden. Even many Democrats would likely be attracted to her moderate Republican views and her warm personality.

But what about the reverse: How would a fifty-something Democrat do against Trump? He or she would have to be the right fifty-something Democrat, of course—a sensible liberal that independents could warm to—but the result, I’m convinced, would be the same. The Gen Xer would wipe the floor with the 77-year-old Trump, given all his baggage.

That’s why I view this as a moment Democrats should be excited about rather than panicked over. It offers them a way out of the terrible dilemma they put themselves in: saddled with a candidate whose age terrifies Democrats and whose policies—especially the border—turn off too many swing voters. When Biden steps aside, as he must if the Democrats are to have any chance, he will have given them a great gift: a fresh start.

Is it inevitable that the baton will be passed to Kamala Harris to replace Biden on the ticket? No. For one thing, she’s pretty unpopular herself. For another, neither Biden nor anyone else has the power to name her the candidate. The president would have to release all the delegates who are committed to him, which would lead to the kind of convention-floor drama the country hasn’t seen since 1976, when Ronald Reagan duked it out with Gerald Ford.

An open convention, with the drama shown live on TV each night (how I wish Mike Wallace was still with us!), would generate excitement among Democrats—something noticeably lacking during Biden’s desultory run through the primary season. More importantly, out of an open convention will emerge a candidate the party can feel good about, having collectively chosen someone they can rally around with no qualms.

Choosing a candidate via this route might solve the Kamala Harris problem. Despite her low polling numbers, there was never any thought given to dropping her from the ticket; Democratic strategists feared that if Biden ditched her, he would alienate black voters, a core Biden constituency. Assuming Harris decides to run—of course she will!—she will be on the same footing as California governor Gavin Newsom, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, and whoever else vies for the nomination. If she wins, good for her. But if she loses, voters will see that it was the result of a fair fight. It’ll be unlikely that either women or black voters will hold it against the party for failing to nominate her.

The Democrats have a deeper bench than most people realize. In addition to Newsom and Whitmer, there’s Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, would be a good candidate. So would Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania. An open convention could show how much talent the party has.

A final point: Biden has based his campaign far too much on the danger a second Trump term would pose. But Democrats already know that—they don’t need to be constantly reminded of it. What they need is a candidate who can articulate a bright future for the country rather than stress the likelihood of a dark future under Trump. A candidate who can do that can surely beat Donald Trump.

Or rather, I should say, a fifty-something candidate who can do that. Can’t you just hear the sighs of relief?

Okay, over to Eli: 

There is a good chance that this weekend, President Joe Biden will either resign the presidency or announce that he will not seek reelection. If he does, many Democrats believe they have a good chance of defeating Donald Trump in November.

After all, Trump has been a turnout machine for the Democratic Party since 2016. And the 2020 presidential election proved there are more Americans who loathe the orange menace than love him.

But this greatly underestimates the damage already done to the Democratic brand. To understand why, just consider how so many of the party’s own arguments against Trump now apply to itself. 

Trump is a liar, Biden and his surrogates say. And there is some truth to this. Trump has proven that he has a salesman’s casual relationship to the truth.

At the same time, has there been a more consequential lie in recent American political history than the falsehoods repeated by the White House about the president’s cognitive and physical health? Remember White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre’s interview from August 29 on CNN when she said, “It is hard for us to keep up with this president, who is constantly, constantly working every day to get things done.” 

Trump is a threat to democracy, the Democrats also say. And here they also have a point. Trump’s failure to even acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 election and his encouragement of a riotous crowd that attempted to disrupt the certification of the election on January 6 was a national disgrace.

But the Democratic Party has also cheered the selective and dubious prosecution of Trump by New York district attorney Alvin Bragg. Many Democrats supported the ill-fated attempt of Colorado’s supreme court to strike Trump from the ballot. The response from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to this week’s Supreme Court ruling, which found that Trump cannot be prosecuted for official acts when he was president, was to promise to “engage in aggressive oversight and legislative activity with respect to the Supreme Court.” This sounds like a rehash of earlier calls from Democrats to expand the court in order to pack it with more liberal justices.

Finally, the most likely person to replace Biden on the ticket is his vice president, Kamala Harris. In her official position, she met with the president for a weekly lunch. If she is the nominee going into November, an obvious question is why she never told the public the truth about the commander in chief.

In this respect, Biden’s replacement is not a clean break from an unfit president, whose mental and physical decline was shielded from the public. Rather it’s a co-conspirator in a big lie. Trump is capable of erratic and self-destructive outbursts. But he is also canny enough to understand that whoever he faces in November will have to explain what they knew about the president’s senescence, and when they knew it.

Joe Nocera (@opinion_joe) and Eli Lake (@EliLake) are writers for The Free Press. To support our mission of independent journalism, become a Free Press subscriber today:

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A.J. Jacobs has become famous for coming up with great ideas and taking them way too far. While researching his best-selling 2007 book, The Year of Living Biblically, he literally followed every single rule in the Bible, growing a huge beard and avoiding clothes made from two kinds of fibers. For Drop Dead Healthy in 2012, he tested every diet and exercise regimen he could find, on a two-year quest to become “the healthiest man alive.” He wrote parts of the book while walking on a treadmill, experimented with “extreme chewing,” completed his first sprint triathlon, and lost more than 20 pounds.

This past May, A.J. published The Year of Living Constitutionally. His latest extreme mission was inspired by Supreme Court rulings in 2022 on women’s rights and gun rights, which ignited a national conversation about how to interpret the Constitution—and A.J. decided to find out what would happen if he interpreted it as literally as possible. He exercised his right, as an American citizen, to bear an eighteenth-century musket in the streets of New York. He quartered soldiers in his apartment, much to his wife’s consternation. And—as he describes in the following piece—he petitioned Congress to become a state-sanctioned pirate, otherwise known as a “privateer,” with permission to detain enemy ships.

Privateers are the unsung heroes of the American Revolution. We probably wouldn’t celebrate the Fourth of July without them. So, while A.J. acknowledges parts of his experiment are absurd, his goal is a serious one: to fully understand, and therefore preserve, the democracy that was founded on this day 248 years ago. It’s a goal we admire at The Free Press. So this holiday, we bring you A.J.—tricorn hat, musket, and all—on the art of living constitutionally. 

It’s important, on today of all days, to be grateful for our constitutional rights—not only the right to free speech and the right to free exercise of religion but also the underappreciated rights. Like your constitutional right to become a government-sanctioned pirate. 

It may not get much publicity, but there it is, smack-dab in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: Congress has the power to grant citizens “letters of marque and reprisal.” Meaning that, with Congress’s permission, private citizens can load weapons onto their fishing boats, head out to the high seas, capture enemy vessels, and keep the booty. Back in the day, these patriotic pirates were known as “privateers.” 

At the start of the Revolutionary War, America had a meager navy, so we had to rely on these privateers, who captured nearly two thousand British vessels and confiscated vast amounts of food, uniforms, weapons, and barrels of sherry. They included Jonathan Haraden, who captained several vessels, including the delightfully named Tyrannicide. He once fought three British ships at once off the coast of New Jersey—and captured all of them.

The Founding Fathers were big fans of privateers. Late in life, John Adams wrote glowingly about the 1775 Massachusetts law that first legalized them, calling it “one of the most important documents in history. The Declaration of Independence is a brimborion in comparison with it.” You read that right: in Adams’ opinion, a law authorizing patriotic piracy is much more important than that trifling tidbit about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The trouble is, Congress has not granted permission to become a privateer to any citizen since 1815. So, a few months ago, I set out on a quest to become the first constitutionally approved privateer in 209 years. 

The quest was, in part, research for my new book, The Year of Living Constitutionally, which was inspired by the heated contemporary debate over how America should interpret its Constitution. The majority of justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court are originalists: they believe the most important consideration in interpreting the Constitution is what it originally meant when it was ratified in 1789. I wanted to find out what would happen if I attempted to become the ultimate originalist—engaging with the document as a brand-new eighteenth-century citizen of the United States might have.

But when I first considered applying to Congress for “letters of marque and reprisal,” I was a little stumped. Should I write them a quill-penned missive? Should I trek from my home in New York City down to Washington, D.C., on horseback? A few weeks later, providence offered an opportunity.

In the past, I have donated to the Democratic National Committee, so I occasionally get fundraising emails from the offices of congresspeople all over the nation. And shortly after my project began in 2023, I received an email from an aide to Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, saying the congressman was coming to New York and would love to meet me, I suppose because of my past generosity. I’ve always ignored such requests, but now there was something I needed.

“It would be my honor,” I replied.

So a few weeks later, I arrived in the lobby of a Midtown hotel for my meeting. The congressman’s aide, Cooper, led me to the table, and there was Khanna—a tall, good-looking, rising star of the Democratic Party; a Yale Law School graduate focused on climate change and artificial intelligence governance.

We shook hands, and I explained I wanted to ask him “one quick thing.” 

“Please,” said the congressman.

I forced myself to speak the words, reminding myself of my commitment to live by the Constitution’s original meaning in 2024. 

“I brought you this. It’s an application to get a letter of marque from Congress. I’m interested in becoming a privateer.”

I handed the congressman a piece of paper on which, in an old-timey font, I had evoked what is my right, according to Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. He examined it for a couple of seconds, then asked: “How do we do this?” 

I loved Representative Khanna’s optimism, his let’s-make-this-work attitude. He was on board even before he really understood what I was asking.

I explained that every American had the right to seek approval to “detain and seize any seafaring vessels considered to be operated by enemies of the United States.”

“Are you going to the Taiwan Strait?” Khanna asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, if you want me to.”

“Wow,” he said.

I couldn’t tell if it was a Wow, this is cool, or a Wow, this is what I have to put up with to raise money. “It has to be voted on by the whole Congress?”

“I think so.” 

“We will look into it,” Khanna said, then held up my letter: “Can I keep this?”

For several minutes, we spoke about originalism and the Constitution. Though it’s obscure, the privateering clause highlights that this document—for all its brilliance and prescience—was written in a vastly different time. Some passages—such as those about the “blessings of liberty” and “equal protection”—are timeless. But others are clearly the product of the eighteenth century. For more proof that the Constitution is a historical document, please see the Third Amendment, which is about quartering soldiers.

That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be grateful to the Constitution. We should. It made possible not just privateers but also our most basic liberties. But we should also be grateful we don’t interpret it as it was written in the eighteenth century. Back then, for instance, free speech was far more constrained (there were numerous state laws banning blasphemy), and putting a man in the pillory was considered neither cruel nor unusual punishment.

I’m also not saying we should ignore the dated parts of the Constitution. Article I, Section 8 reminds us about a crucial part of our history: privateers are rarely given their due, perhaps because their own patriotism was mixed with the motive of profit. But they deserve credit, especially at a time when Americans seem increasingly unwilling to serve their country.

I am not one of those Americans. Over the last year I have exchanged several emails with Cooper, Rep. Khanna’s aide, who now addresses me as “Captain.” He says Khanna is discussing getting me a letter of marque with his colleagues. In the meantime, I have found my own vessel: my friend’s 23-foot waterskiing boat. All I need to become a state-sanctioned pirate is for the majority of congresspeople to sign off on my request. Right now, they seem a little distracted with other matters.

But I still have my tricorn hat, ready and waiting. I’ve told Cooper I’m standing by, ready for updates, prepared to serve. But I feel I have already done something patriotic, in raising awareness for privateers, these unsung heroes of American independence—even if I myself never get to hit the high seas.

A.J. Jacobs is an author, journalist, lecturer, and human guinea pig. His new book is “The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning.” Follow him on X @ajjacobs, and find him on Substack at “Experimental Living with A.J. Jacobs.”

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