IS THE BATTLE OVER THE DEMOCRATIC NOMINATION A CLASS WAR?

Whatever you think of the Dump Biden movement, it clearly isn't capable of pressuring the president to leave the race. Biden isn't budging:

President Biden issued defiant responses on Monday to high-ranking lawmakers calling for him to step aside, challenging Democrats to run against him and telling congressional Democrats in a letter that he was “firmly committed to staying in the race.”

Calling into “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Mr. Biden said he didn’t care about any of the “big names” urging him to drop out of the race, his voice rising considerably as he spoke.

“If any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me,” he said. “Go ahead, announce for president. Challenge me at the convention.”

Less than an hour earlier, Mr. Biden’s campaign released a letter to congressional Democrats in which he wrote that he was “firmly committed to staying in the race.”

Meanwhile, some of the would-be dumpers have blinked:

Senate Democrats won't meet Monday to discuss their support for President Biden continuing his re-election bid, despite an effort by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) to organize such a meeting, Axios has learned.

I saw merit in the idea of replacing Biden with Vice President Harris -- for an electorate full of double haters, it would have been a sign that one major party was acknowledging voter dissatisfaction. But it's clear now that no one in the party can change Biden's mind, so it's time to stop discussing this and rally around him.

It's striking that his poll numbers have dropped only slightly since the debate -- he trailed Trump in FiveThirtyEight's poll average by 0.2 on debate day, and trails by 2.2 now. FiveThirtyEight's forecast has Biden winning in 49 simulations out of 100. And Morning Consult's polling shows Biden gaining ground in swing states.

Is this a battle between elites and non-elites? Politico's Jonathan Martin thinks so:

... [Biden is] counting on the support of African American Democrats and his union allies as his last line of defense. It’s a playbook Biden has turned to in the past, portraying his detractors as mostly elite white liberals who are out of step with the more diverse and working-class grassroots of the party. That’s what propelled his nomination after a string of setbacks in 2020.

... Biden and his lieutenants are clearly counting on the result being the same in 2024 as it has been in every one of their modern races: The donor class may have their preference, but it’s older Black women in church pews who will decide the nominee, thank you very much.

“The people Joe Biden fights for — middle-class labor union members, Blacks, Latinos — they know he fights for them and they’re going to stay in the fight for him,” Anita Dunn, Biden’s longtime adviser, told me Sunday.

Cedric Richmond, the former New Orleans congressperson who’s a co-chair of Biden’s campaign, was even more to the point.

“I think it’s interesting that not one African American member [of Congress] has called on the president to step down,” Richmond said, before warning white lawmakers that they “risk alienating some of their base” by abandoning Biden.

“I wouldn’t be rushing to do that if I was from Virginia,” Richmond said, hurling a brushback at Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), who is reportedly plotting with Democratic senators to urge Biden to drop out of the race.

On the other side are these folks:

... a pair of well-connected Democrats is offering an optimistic plan that would involve the president stepping down as the nominee and the party announcing a “blitz primary” process ahead of the August convention.

The proposal is the work of Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations and as a volunteer policy adviser to the Biden campaign in 2020, and Ted Dintersmith, a venture capitalist and education philanthropist who has donated to various Democratic campaigns.

Dintersmith does give to many Democrats, including some fairly progressive ones (Sheldon Whitehouse, Beto O'Rourke, even Jamaal Bowman in 2022). But as Open Secrets reported in 2019, he's this kind of Democrat:

Ted Dintersmith ... maxed out to two Democratic presidential hopefuls at the same time: entrepreneur Andrew Yang and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg. In April, Dintersmith promoted a Boston-area breakfast fundraiser with Buttigieg on his LinkedIn page.

Obviously, this is just a subset of the Dump Biden movement -- many, perhaps most, would-be dumpers would prefer to rally around Harris. The "blitz primary" idea seems particularly elitist, and could very well lead to a nominee who pleases upscale voters and disappoints the rest of the party, especially if big money from folks like Ted Dintersmith is involved.

When people ask about Donald Trump's baffling popularity, one frequent answer is that voters look at him and think, "He fights." I wonder whether Biden's refusal to step aside is being seen by some Democratic voters as a "He fights" moment. That might explain the polls that show only slight slippage, or even an improvement, in Biden's standing.

I think this battle is effectively over. I just hope that Biden's renewed fighting spirit doesn't dissipate once his would-be dumpers have retreated. I hope he stays invigorated, and pivots to fighting Trump with the spirit he's showing in fighting his intraparty doubters.