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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. One thing we haven't mentioned yet here this week is Jon Stewart's return to The Daily Show nine years after he left his position there as host in 2015. He has signed back on to host on Monday nights, if you haven't heard this yet, through the November election. Monday nights through the November election, and this week was the first one.

Now, I think it's fair to say that The Daily Show exists largely to get laughs at the expense of the right and make satirical or political points for the audience by doing so. They certainly did that this week showing clips of Donald Trump having apparently more serious memory lapses than Joe Biden has, for example, even though Biden seems to get covered a lot more by the press for his. Then Stewart's ultimate point in his 20-minute monologue, at least to me, seemed to be that we should talk more about both candidates ages and mental acuity, not less, and yes, that includes Biden and the Democrats.

Here's an example. Stewart played a montage of leading Democrats saying there's nothing to see here when it comes to Biden's age and abilities, ending with a clip of Vice President Harris, which we will hear now, followed by Jon Stewart's commentary about it.

Vice President Harris: I was in almost every meeting with the President. The President was in front of and on top of it all coordinating and directing leaders who are in charge of America's national security. Not to mention our allies around the globe.

Jon Stewart: Did anyone film that?

[laughter]

Because [applause] if you are telling us behind the scenes, he's sharp and full of energy and on top of it and really in control and leading, you should film that. That would be good to show to people.

Brian Lehrer: If that part was good for a laugh at the party circling the wagons, Stewart ended that section, not with a joke, but with a serious editorial line about taking this issue seriously.

Jon Stewart: We're not suggesting neither man is vibrant, productive, or even capable, but they're both stretching the limits of being able to handle the toughest job in the world. What's crazy is thinking that we are the ones as voters who must silence concerns and criticisms. It is the candidate's job to assuage concerns, not the voter's job, not to mention them.

Brian Lehrer: Jon Stewart from his return to The Daily Show on Monday night. Now you might agree with that conclusion or consider it ageist, or as one person has already texted, today's show really helps suppress democratic votes, helps Trump appalling that you would blindly play into this. Many people are going to have that reaction. We're going to open up the phones on the issue in a minute, but Stewart's monologue came of course just after special counsel Robert Hur described Biden as memory challenge in his report on Biden in classified documents and Biden's fiery press conference in response.

Just as The Atlantic was publishing an article called Democrats Should Pick a New Presidential Candidate Now, it begins by saying the Democrats need to wake up and stop sleepwalking towards disaster, as the article puts it. Disaster being defined as re-electing Trump. With us now is the writer of that article, political scientist, Damon Linker, lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. He also writes a Substack newsletter called Notes from the Middleground. He's a senior fellow in the Open Society Project at the Niskanen Center in Washington and is a weekly participant on the Beg to Differ podcast at The Bulwark.

So, Jon Stewart, let's have this conversation. Professor Linker, thank you for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Damon Linker: Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: To make one thing very clear right off the bat, you described Trump in your article as a sociopathic menace. That's your prime directive here, how best to prevent another Trump election, would that be correct?

Damon Linker: Yes. Absolutely correct.

Brian Lehrer: Your judgment is that Biden is not the best Democratic presidential candidate to defeat Trump even though no other serious contender has primary Biden to make that case. Why do you think the Dems are sleepwalking to disaster as the subhead of your article puts it?

Damon Linker: I really worry that the Democratic Party, and by that, I mean, the institutional party leading Democratic office holders, and then a lot of rank-and-file Democratic voters who are very informed, spend a lot of time reading Atlantic articles about subjects like this, all combine two contradictory positions. They are on the one hand, very risk averse. They look out at the stakes in this election, which is, as you indicated, I think are enormous.

They look at that and they say, "We have an incumbent president, that brings advantages. He won in 2020, already defeated Trump once. We just have to put our heads down and just push this ahead and make sure he wins. If we shake the situation, rock the boat, then we're doomed." This is a risk aversion that we need to stop talking about this. As you indicated, some listeners are already indicating to you.

On the other hand, they're very confident that there's no way Trump could possibly win. He lost the popular vote in 2016 by nearly 3 million. He was actually defeated in 2020. The Republicans underperformed in the 2018 midterms and the 2022 midterms. All these special elections that are happening, Democrats are overperforming, so basically of course Biden's going to win, of course, Trump's a loser. Why are you raising this problem with Biden? The problem as I indicate in the piece, is this isn't me? This isn't my little piece in The Atlantic here in mid-February.

For months, polls have shown that something on the order of around three-quarters of Americans think Biden is too old and too frail for his job as president and are very skittish about the idea of giving him five more years in that job. The person who would take over if he became incapacitated or died, Kamala Harris, is about equally unpopular in approval to Biden. That strikes me as a pretty risky, so we're talking about risk aversion. That's the real risk is that this is the best we can do. This is the person we're going to run against the sociopath. This would be authoritarian who wants to return to the Oval Office with a much more ambitious agenda than last time.

That seems foolish. Here it is, we are nearing the point where this is going to be far too late, so it struck me as the last possible reasonable moment to raise this issue. Are you sure Democrats that this is the best we can do and the result of big debate?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I want to get a little further into your thesis before I give out the phone number, but this is one of those where people who know the phone number are already calling in and jamming most of the lines, so let me make sure everybody has it. Three questions, I think, three threads here. One, is this talk about Biden's age and memory an actual concern for you listeners in terms of his ability to do the job as president? Two, should the Democrats seriously consider replacing Biden as the nominee as Damon Linker suggests? Three, if so, with whom?

212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. I guess we could add, did you watch Jon Stewart's return to The Daily Show? What did you think including about this aspect of his monologue? Or anything else you want to say on this topic or ask our guest, Damon Linker, senior lecturer in political science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Atlantic magazine article called Democrats Should Pick a New Presidential Candidate Now. 212-433-- oh, all our lines are full. I don't have to give out the rest of the phone number, but I will anyway because of course you can also text us your comments and questions and we'll use texts which don't fill up as well as the phone lines which do, 212-433-WNYC.

Damon, here's, I think, essential question. Do you really believe Biden isn't up to the job? Or are you doing what media pundits sometimes do and basing your judgment on what you think that other people think. Because it's one thing to say he walks and talks older than he used to, but many defenders and we already have some of those on the board who didn't wait for me to give that phone number, will say, "Look at the substance of his presidency, agree or disagree on the issues, agree or disagree on the climate bill, and the prescription drug prices bill and job growth, and student debt, and taking a strong position on Israel, whether people agree with it or not."

Your argument does not seem to be on policy, or the actual vigor of his actions as President. Again, do you really believe Biden isn't up to the job? Or are you doing what media pundits sometimes do and basing your judgment on what you think other people think?

Damon Linker: Well, the honest answer is it's a mix. The main thrust of the piece is focused on polling data, but I think that the polling data is based on something real, and I do share some of those concerns. Now, it's not that I think Biden is sitting in the Oval Office drooling and unable to form coherent thoughts. That's absurd, first of all, because the Biden's policy on Israel and the Palestinians, which is actually quite unpopular with many on the left wing of the Democratic Party, is very much a Biden thing.

This isn't something that his staff would have necessarily come up with on their own if he weren't in the room and leading the discussion and pointing the direction that he wanted the team to go. He's clearly engaged in policymaking, and frankly, he has a very good competent team. I even joke in the piece for The Atlantic that I want Trump to lose so much, I would vote for a potted plant, if that's true, the Democrats ran. It's not a question for me personally, whether I'm tempted to vote for somebody else, I'm not.

The reason why I've said the joke about the potted plant is that a lot of the presidency is the people around the President as much as the President because those people are the ones who then go out and actually make things happen. On that front, the Biden administration, I think, has done quite well. The problem is that the presidency is also an office that has other dimensions that have to do with public speaking, the bully pulpit, giving speeches, remarking to the press about policy items, and making a compelling case for going this way rather than that.

In those aspects, I think Biden has been weak, he has been kept out of the public eye, his team tends to keep him away from the press, I think for fear that he's going to misspeak, or sound confused or make a mistake. Maybe they are making a mistake in that themselves and they should let him come out and he would do great. I think the truth is probably somewhere in the middle that they're justified in being concerned. This matters simply because he's the guy for the next nine months running against Donald Trump who has to actually stand up there and sound like he is a clearly preferable option to Trump.

Now, the last thing I'd add to that is simply that it's not a case of comparing him to Trump. Trump is so far out, in my view, on the extremism of incompetence, both cognitively and morally, and dispositionally, his fitness for the job of president completely unfit. Again, between those two people, I don't care what condition Biden is and I'm going to vote for Biden. The problem is also not Democrats like me, who actually like what Biden has done.

The problem is those middle voters, the independents who swung many of them from voting for Trump in 2016 to voting for Biden and helped giving him that huge lift that that allowed him to prevail over Trump in 2020. What are those people going to do? Those are the people he's largely lost. Biden's approval among Democrats is around 80%, which is good, not as high as it might be, but it's solid and strong. Among independents, he has cratered, and those are the people he has to win back to win in November. I worry they listen to him and just say, "You know, that guy's not up to it. I don't buy it. I think they're hiding something," and they think he's incompetent, whatever.

I think a lot of that is overdrawn and not necessarily true, but the fact that he's in that situation is a bad sign that he is failing at an aspect of the presidency in reality, because again, it is also a public-facing position that involves public communication.

Brian Lehrer: Now, I will say that we are getting so many texts, maybe more texts than we've ever gotten, since we started using text messages instead of Twitter as a comment section a few months ago, on any other segment. I'm going to sample from some of those as they just fly by me on the screen and then flash off again. A quick look at the text and at the calls, tells me that people are very much on both sides of this issue. We're getting a lot of calls in support of your thesis, Damon, and we're getting a lot of calls and texts, opposed. Let's hear from some people. Nathan in Great Neck called first. He was on line one right from the beginning of the segment. Nathan, you get the first caller word. Hi.

Nathan: Yes. Hi. I agree with everything Mr. Linker said. I wish he had more company. I'm concerned that there should be a hundred people out there, opinion writers saying exactly what Mr. Linker said. I'm tired of the gaslighting by Democrats saying there's nothing to see here. Biden is fine. He's not fine. He's losing it. I applaud Jon Stewart. I applaud Robert Hur. They're truth-tellers. Biden has less charisma than a glass of warm milk.

To pick up on Mr. Linker's comment about communication skills, Joe Biden is a horrible communicator. I hope you follow up this segment with a gerontologist and an actuary to give us statistical probabilities of Biden and Trump living the next four years or being diagnosed with dementia.

Brian Lehrer: Nathan, let me ask you one follow-up question. Do you have a replacement candidate in mind?

Nathan: Gretchen Whitmer would be a plausible candidate, J. B. Pritzker, Chris Murphy from Connecticut. I think there are a lot and I'm tired of the gaslighting. As I said, congratulations to Mr. Linker, and I hope he has lots of company in the weeks ahead from other pundits because if we got to get Biden out of this race.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I appreciate your call. Damon Linker, by the way, does name some names, including a couple that Nathan just mentioned, as possible Democratic presidential nominees. We'll get to that from his point of view as we go. Another point of view first from Ian, in Rockville, Maryland, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ian. Thanks for calling.

Ian: Hey, Brian, thanks a lot for putting me on. I got two quick things to say. First, I'm so happy that Jon Stewart is back. I watched the show. It was fantastic. It was hilarious. I think Jon Stewart has a lot to answer for. I firmly placed the 2016 Trump election on his shoulders for abandoning us during the campaign. That's tongue in cheek of course.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Ian: My real question for your guest is who and I understand that he's got some lists, but I also want to ask about historically, has there ever been a party that primary their own and incumbent president and then went on to win? That's my point. Also, we did all this already. There's an open casting call, everybody that wanted to run said no, because they know they're not going to do better than the incumbent. That's my point. Thank you. I'll take off the air.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Call us again from Maryland. What do you say to either of those questions, Damon?

Damon Linker: Well, I'll just talk about, the first one was just about alternative candidates to Biden. Are we going to circle back to that later or do you want me to address that now? Like, put some names out there?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, you could do that.

Damon Linker: The people I've heard mentioned are good. My list in the piece is a series of Democratic governors, Gretchen Whitmer at the top of that list, Josh Shapiro in my own Pennsylvania, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, Jared Polis of Colorado, J. B. Pritzker in Illinois, and then also Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. I think a Whitmer-Warnock ticket would be a strong one. I have talked to some people who worry about going up against Trump with a woman, and I am not endorsing that as a statement of sexism or misogyny, simply like brutal realism perhaps about the way American politics gets played out.

In that case, maybe a Newsom would be good. I think personally, he's very charismatic and articulate and would be great in a one-on-one against Trump. I also do worry though that conservatives consider California to be a kind of abject case and everything terrible that will happen to the country if Democrats have power and I worry about the campaign devolving into that.

Brian Lehrer: They consider it Pelosi stan as Jon Stewart put it in one of his lines this week at least referring to San Francisco, but probably gets generalized to all of California. Well, to the caller's other history question, has there ever been a party in which the incumbent president was successfully primaried and then won the election?

Damon Linker: Well, no, not exactly. What I'm advocating isn't even that. It's actually wilder than that because it's too late for there to be a proper primary. The primaries are already queued up. Biden's already won a few, the rest of them, no one's registered as candidates. What I'm describing is crazy scenario, I will admit it, in which Biden decides sometime in the next couple of months that he will bow out and then basically queues up an open convention in August. In the intervening months, Biden announces that all of the committed delegates to him from the primaries that have been held are free to throw their support behind any possible candidate.

We basically have several months where a number of candidates jump into a race that consists not in getting votes in primary contests, but in trying to persuade delegates to support them, and then we would end up--this would be messy. It would be quite dramatic and probably have the highest ratings of any convention you've ever seen where there would be vote after vote while different people politic in the convention center and try to get a consensus that eventually a consensus would be reached and would emerge in August with a totally new, somewhat surprising candidate.

Then that person would have the following two to three months to make the pitch. I do not think this would be suicidal. It would be risky, I admit that. I also think, as I've argued, that sticking with Biden is also risky and a bold move like that actually could shake things up in unpredictable ways that could play very positively to the party as well.

Brian Lehrer: Some listeners in text messages are proposing other potential nominees. Andy Beshear, governor of Kentucky. Someone writes, Pete Buttigieg. Listener writes--

Damon Linker: They're both good.

Brian Lehrer: "As a Democrat who admires Biden's legislative successes, I cannot watch him speak for fear. He will mess up and he is so boring. A big dilemma." Writes another listener. Here's I think, the most explicit version of the argument on the other side from Adam in Queens. Adam, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Adam: How you doing, Brian? Great to speak with you again. I am a millennial, so I just want to throw that out there for demographic purposes. The thing that frustrates me about this argument so much and how we as Democrats shoot ourselves in the foot over and over and over again is that your guest just went off to say what a good job President Biden has done. He's got good people around him, all positive things, and we should replace him. I agree Kamala Harris is probably more of a liability than anything else after almost four years, I still don't really know anything about her as VP.

There are other people that I would love to see on the ticket that I think would be absolutely great at the job, but she's doing a good job. I don't think anyone like these elections are all about groupthink and especially with independent voters. They swing because of what they hear around them. All we're doing in the media is talking about how old President Biden is, how he won't be able to handle being president again. If we just stopped saying that, no one would be thinking it. If our messaging and narrative, if Democrats took the narrative back and said, "No, he's doing a great job. Let's talk about all his accomplishments. He can handle this." We're getting Congress back the election two days ago.

If we change the narrative, no one would be thinking that he was too old. Instead, all we're talking about is how old the president is and how he's not up to the job. That's what people are hearing and that's what they're going to think. It's just completely the opposite of what we should be doing right now when we're less than a year out. What I love a different scenario, yes, but here we are and we need to make the most of it.

Brian Lehrer: Adam, thank you very much. I'm going to back that one up before I get you to respond, Damon with a text message that says, "I am a county committee chair in Pennsylvania. The ship has sailed on candidates. We just closed out petition signing period. At this point, candidates would need to be written in on the April 23rd primary ballot." To the larger point-- and we'll talk more about process as we go. To the larger point, this county committee chair in Pennsylvania says, "To say that Democrats blithely think Trump can't win, is not supported by any evidence with which I am familiar. People are terrified that Trump will win."

This person adds, "Biden has done an amazing job and got through legislation like no dem in recent history." Go ahead and talk back to both those listeners.

Damon Linker: Yes. To the first one, the caller, my view is very different. I think that Democrats have a tendency to vastly overstate the extent to which public opinion is shaped by what the media is talking about. Now, of course, it's not purely unidirectional from the other way. Obviously, if the media talks about one thing incessantly, it will shift public opinion somewhat. On this case and in actually a lot of others having to do with Trump and his viability, I think the media gets blamed a lot too much.

As I said at the top of the program, Biden is in polls stated that 76% of Americans, and in some recent polls, it's sometimes higher, above 80% of Americans think he's too old for the job. Is that just because the media's been talking about him being too old or is it that people listen to him and think, "Wow, he's too old." Then the media notices that and talks about it. I just don't buy that. People are a bunch of ill-informed automatons who think otherwise would be like, "Wow, listen to how great Biden is. Oh, but the media is telling me he's too old, therefore he is." I just don't think that jives with the way it works.

For instance, we were having this conversation because myself and a bunch of other people, not a ton, but there have been other pundits this week who have made similar arguments about the need to maybe look for someone other than Biden. Is it possible that say that the NBC poll that turned up the 76% number a week or so ago, if they rerun it in a week, will it be maybe 80 because of this conversation we're having now? Yes, maybe but that would be a four-point jump. How did we get to 76% in the first place? That's not, again, because the media decided we're going to get a lot of clicks by calling Biden old.

It's because I think people have been listening to him and he does sound too old. That doesn't solve the problem to just say, let's change the conversation. As I say, one brief thing in the piece, I make the point that this to me runs the risk of having the opposite effect of Americans who are convinced he's too old. If Democrats keep insisting it isn't true instead of being changed, they might just decide that Democrats are selling me a line of BS. I can see that he's this way, I can hear that he's this way. Don't tell me that I should believe you the Democratic party over my lying eyes and ears.

Brian Lehrer: Jon Stewart, in his monologue that we sampled from at the top, even though he was on your side of the importance of talking about this issue, also made the point through his satire and through the clips that he played that Trump's mental acuity is demonstrably worse. If Democrats were pointing that out and not just letting it be about Joe Biden's mental acuity, you know as a political scientist that it's very common for incumbent presidents to have low approval ratings at this point in their first term because the country always has problems.

Then they often get reelected when the actual election comes around because then it's a choice between this candidate or that candidate, not just an abstract approval rating.

Damon Linker: Well, let me try to push back on that point because I think it's an important one. It's an important one for listeners and Democrats to understand. Biden's approval rating ever since the withdrawal from Afghanistan is when he first went underwater, meaning there were more disapproving people than approving people. Ever since then, in the late summer of 2021, Biden has been sinking an approval. He is now very solidly under 40%. He's been bouncing around between 38% and 39% approval.

That is five points behind where Trump was four years ago and of course, he lost. That is 10 points behind where Barack Obama was as he was heading into reelection. That's 13 points behind where George W. Bush was in February 2004. It is 10 points behind where Bill Clinton was in February of 1996, and it's six points behind where George H. W. Bush, who of course went on to lose where he was in February of 1992. It is true that being president is bruising. It's also true we live in a time of negative partisanship where you come in with a little honeymoon and then a lot of people turn against you.

Obama dealt with this in a mild way. Trump had very low approval ratings throughout his presidency. Again, Biden is lower than Trump was at this point. That is a weak candidate. It just is. It's not just because the media is saying mean things or paying insufficient attention to Trump. We lived through Trump. We saw him, we heard him. Everything he says is a constant reminder of how terrible it was. Yet, right now, if you do a head-to-head poll, Trump is slightly ahead of Joe Biden. If the election were held tomorrow, Trump would probably win. That is the reality.

You might want to kill the messenger. I understand. Sometimes I feel that way when I hear someone say something I don't like but I am merely reporting the facts and not trying to blackball Biden. I am simply saying, this is what people tell pollsters their opinions are, and they're the people who are going to make this decision in November, and we have to be aware of it.

Brian Lehrer: We're almost out of time. I do want to get a little more into process. You talked a little bit about it. Here's an example of a pushback text on that. The listener writes, "This open convention is such a [unintelligible 00:32:15] ridiculous idea. I really cannot believe you're even discussing it." Play it out for us. How would that actually work since it is too late to get on the primary ballots just about anywhere at this point for another candidate, even if Biden were to voluntarily drop out?

Damon Linker: Well, the way that a person becomes a party's nominee, not the presumptive nominee, which has that adjective indicates, is you're assuming that person-- If the primaries go on, there's going to come a time sometime this spring where Biden will have won enough delegates in primary contests, that he has sufficient delegates to be nominated, to be the nominee of the Democratic party at the convention. It is only at the convention when those delegates vote that he officially becomes the nominee. If he declares, as Lyndon Johnson did in 1968, and I will say parenthetically, a lot of people are going to go, "Oh my gosh, how can you treat that as a parallel? The Democrats lost that year," and that is true--

Brian Lehrer: To Nixon.

Damon Linker: Yes, but barely. You had Nixon and George Wallace running, and Nixon barely won in that despite urban riots and the Democratic coalition breaking apart with Wallace running as a segregationist with the southern part of the party separated from the Democrats and then also Vietnam going on at its peak. It's had offensive and so forth that year and body bags coming back all the time. Even in that very messy primary and convention where there was violence in the streets broadcast throughout the country, Nixon barely won. Again, no one wants to replay 1968, but even in that kind of cautionary tale, it was pretty close.

Anyway, I think when it comes to what might happen or would happen in August if this played out the way I advocate instead of this being a formality, which is what leads people to tune out of the conventions because everybody knows, yes, Biden's going to be the nominee, Trump's going to be the nominee. They won all these delegates. Instead, you actually have a vote where you have people who put their names on a list and they have essentially an election in the arena by the delegates. The first vote you're going to have are kind of chaos. You're going to have 12 names on there and nobody's going to be the clear plurality winner.

Then you take a pause and there's politicking in the arena, and even deals are made, coalitions are formed, and then you do another vote. Then hopefully you have some coalescence around a leader, it might take several rounds until that coalescence begins, and eventually, maybe all night long, this is happening all the way through to the next morning where the whole country is watching and wrapped attention. Eventually, the party decides by consensus that this person is going to be our nominee.

Brian Lehrer: That's very late in the game. That convention is in late August. It would be in your scenario August 22nd or something like that before the Democrats have a candidate to run against presumably Trump at that point. Last question and I'll say one more time, our listeners, our Democratic Party supporting listeners are so divided on this, so many people writing in that this is a terrible thing to even be discussing and that it helps Trump, even though your point is exactly, this is the way we have to fight Trump.

So many people are also writing in, in support of you and saying some version of, "Thank goodness we're talking about this openly. We need to do this like John Stewart said at the beginning of that monologue." Last question and this is another thread of the pushbacks to you in text messages. There are many versions of this question. I will give you the local New York very timely version, which says, "Damon should talk to Tom Suozzi about the polls," meaning you're citing polls as one of your main reasons to worry that Biden can't beat Trump but look how wrong the polls were in saying that that Suozzi-Mazi Pilip race was going to be very close and then he won easily.

Damon Linker: That's a totally valid response. I do have my own response to it, which is that these special elections that Democrats have done very well, and there have been a whole series of them in the Biden administration where the Democrat ends up not only winning in a contested race, but actually overperforms based on the polls. I think this is largely--

Brian Lehrer: The polls have been wrong so often that a lot of people aren't just pointing to Suozzi. They're saying, "Really, you're just going to put your faith in the polls and make this drastic change based on that." Just address inaccurate polling generally, and then we have 20 seconds statement and then we're out of time.

Damon Linker: Well, it's not that polls, in general, are inaccurate, it's that it's hard to guess who will actually show up to vote. The fact is that the Democratic Party has become increasingly educated voters, people who are highly engaged by politics in a way that in off-year elections and in special elections, Republicans are not. When you have a special election like this, Democrats are showing up in huge numbers. The problem is that in a presidential election, that is likely not going to be the case. Now you probably will have huge democratic turnout, but you will also have huge Republican turnout in a way that you are not getting in these small off-year elections where Republicans don't care very much.

Trump, though he hasn't done great in a lot of elections compared to the Democrat despite winning in 2016, he does motivate Republicans to show up and vote. He's never been better in the polls than he is right now, as hard to believe as that might be. It's all a question of turnout and who actually shows up. That's what explains things like the special election this week.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Listeners, agree or disagree, Damon Linker is a political science lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. An author now of the article in The Atlantic called Democrats Should Pick a New Presidential Candidate Now. Thanks so much for joining us and arguing it out.

Damon Linker: Thanks so much for having me. Anytime.

 

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