NYT Columnist Argues Why Dems Need to Strategically Think About a Biden Replacement That Isn't Harris

Sarah Arnold reporting for Townhall 

A Left-wing New York Times columnist urged President Joe Biden to quit the 2024 race and let someone more vital take his job. 

Columnist Ross Douthat cited the president's age as why he shouldn't be running for re-election after a bombshell report from Special Counsel Robert Hur described Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" who cannot remember significant names, dates, or events that others would be able to. 

"Joe Biden should not be running for re-election. That much was obvious well before the special prosecutor's comments on the president's memory lapses inspired a burst of age-related angst," Douthat wrote. "What is less obvious is how Biden should get out of it."

He argued against those who have defended the 81-year-old's cognitive decline, saying that just because he has made it to now doesn't mean he will be able to in the next four years. 

"And saying that Biden is capable of occupying the presidency for the next 11 months is quite different from saying that he's capable of spending those months effectively campaigning for the right to occupy it again," Douthat continued. 

Even the NYT described Biden as a "political disaster" after he held a last-minute press conference that put the nail in the coffin about his degenerative health. 

"The impression the president gives in public is not senility so much as extreme frailty, like a lightbulb that still burns so long as you keep it on a dimmer," he said. 

However, Douthat said Biden should continue accumulating pledged delegates until August instead of dropping out of the race while the parties proceed with the primaries. 

He then advised the president to "announce his withdrawal" from the 2024 race at the Democratic National Convention this summer and have the delegates "choose his replacement." 

Douthat also criticized Biden's "terrible vice-presidential choice," arguing that Kamala Harris would surely lose to former President Trump— who will most likely be the 2024 GOP nominee. 

"[H] e'd be opening himself to a narrative of identitarian betrayal — aging White president knifes first woman-of-color veep — and setting his party up for months of bloodletting and betrayal, a constant churn of personal and ideological drama," the columnist wrote, arguing that if Biden did not endorse Harris, it would add fuel to the flames. 

According to a recent ABC News/Ipsos, 86 percent of Americans think Biden is too old to serve another four years in office, compared to 74 percent of respondents who believed this in September.