A coup is still a coup, and by the same token a rose is a rose is a rose. On the other hand, a shoe isn’t a rose, not even if you call it one, not even if Nancy Pelosi’s sad and Ron Klain’s disgruntled, not even if Maureen Dowd has to file a column and needs some spice (“The Dems Are Delighted. But a Coup Is Still a Coup”). The events of July 2024 were no more a coup than those of August 1974, when a president who’d been elected with 47,168,710 votes was forced to give up office and go away—not just quit as a candidate in an election campaign, but actually resign the office he’d been elected to.
Richard Nixon had abused the powers of his office. But he hadn’t been charged by the House or convicted by the Senate. Instead he left because the investigators were closing in and his poll ratings had cratered. In short, circumstances had rendered him nonviable as a national leader. It remained for party elders to pay him a visit and spell out the consequences, chiefly that Republicans in Congress no longer supported his fight to stay in office. For his part, Joe Biden had to quit the race for president because some good evidence (the June 27 debate with Donald Trump) had convinced the public his brain was no longer biologically fit for service. The 25th amendment might’ve been invoked but wasn’t. Donors and elected officials sounded the alarm, and party leaders prevailed upon Biden to face some unwelcome facts. Seeing that he couldn’t lead the party and also remain as a candidate, Biden dropped out.
I think Biden should also have resigned the presidency. At 81 he might have enough coherence to keep running the country as long as he skips the immense second job of running for reelection. But the risk seems a bit much. Still, Biden disagrees and so do the country’s poll respondents, so we’ll just have to scrape through the next five months and hope. In the meantime, Biden has managed to trip up the elders who jawboned him into ending his candidacy. Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama wanted some kind of open selection process to choose a new nominee. Biden simply endorsed Kamala Harris and watched her roll to an unbeatable lead. Some coup: they can’t get rid of him and he chose the party’s nominee.
Take the coup blatherers seriously and you have to conclude that politicians can’t resign. Alaskans didn’t vote for Sarah Palin to serve half a term and then go looking for cash. It was their understanding that she would serve four years. When she bugged out, a decision of the voters was being undone; whether she was happy about her choice is beside the point. But nobody claims she thwarted democracy. They say she was feckless and self-centered, but that’s all. When Nixon finally realized he had to go, nobody said the electorate was being couped. But with Biden we get silly talk of anti-democracy even as polls and grassroots donations show that his withdrawal is just fine with the party rank and file.
Three and a half years ago the nation saw a real attempt at a coup, an attempt by violence to disrupt a constitutionally mandated process so that the loser of an election could hold on to office. It was a shambolic attempt but genuine, not some innocent substitute hyped to pass for the real thing. I think the same reason lies behind January 6 and today’s hype about July 2024. The country has become a huge blather factory. The love of talk, not talking to communicate but talking to get attention, is swamping our ability to tell one thing from another. A TV personality can become president and talk a mob into thinking he was cheated when all he did was lose reelection. And pundits talking about one of the most important topics there is—was that a coup or not a coup?—can look at a hot take and think it’s a point.