David Faris, in Slate, and Josh Marshall, in Talking Points Memo, are telling Democrats who might want another choice other than Biden/Harris to stop making trouble and deal with it. There is no alternate to the two. Why would the Democrats risk losing the White House by changing the line up?The wise men back east have spoken. Now is not the time to buck the conventional thinking. Biden is the only one who can win, so shut up and do what you are told. I neither like the tone nor the content of these instructions.

Biden is a deeply unpopular president. 538, the polling amalgamation site, has his approval rate at 40%. He has been at about 40% for months which suggests that a lot of people have made up their minds about him. Some of these disapprovers will vote for Biden in a Biden Trump match up but why not try to do better than another close election. Now, if Biden was wildly popular or, say, even at 50%, it might be sage advice to let him be. But he isn’t.

I voted for Biden once and will vote for him again if he is the Democrats candidate, however he isn’t my first choice or, for that matter, on my Top 10 ten list. I voted for him because I was scared of Trump not because I liked Biden. This should be concerning. I am liberal Democrat and I voted for Biden grudgingly. I don’t have another option really if Trump is the Republican nominee or, for that matter, any other Republican who might win the nomination.

Other people, however, do. A majority of Americans don’t want either Biden or Trump. Think about that a large portion of the US electorate doesn’t want either candidate. I would suspect that those voters are all highly moveable — an intemperate comment from Trump or a disastrous senior moment from Biden could easily change their vote. I would be concerned to have this many regular people unhappy with their choice. But apparently I just need to get over it and get in line.

Why though? One of the way to test how good a candidate is through the primary system. Isn’t it better to find how strong Biden is during the primaries? This requires challengers to Biden. If he turns out to be a weak candidate, the party had the opportunity to find someone stronger. And, if Biden perform well in the primaries, he will allay people’s fears about him being weak. But to tell Democrats to get in line a good year before the election is irritating. It sounds like they are afraid of what will happen in contested election. They want to keep Biden hidden from public view until the election next November. This isn’t a particularly encouraging strategy.

What do these men really know? The wise men in Washington convinced me Sanders couldn’t win in 2016. They were probably right about that but they also believed that Clinton was the best chance of beating Trump. So I sucked up all my ambivalent feelings about her and voted for Clinton in the primary. Well, we all know how that turned out.