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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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While this is obviously a very different system and situation to the kinds of leadership challenges that happen fairly often in parliamentary systems, I'll make a few observations about what tends to happen in my experience.

  • The under-siege leader gets increasingly defiant and intransigent. Even when their position is obviously mortally wounded, they will desperately hang on and try to fight off the people coming for them. For example when Tony Abbott faced an empty-chair spill (no alternative candidate, just a motion to kick him out) that got 39% support, most observers recognised that there was no coming back from that. Abbott himself though clung on for another 7 months until finally being blasted out by Turnbull. Similarly, when the knives came out for Turnbull he made plans to call an early election before his internal party foes could get the numbers to take him down, and was stopped only by the Attorney General threatening to resign. Gillard endured two unsuccessful attempts over an extended period before Rudd finally took her down. Leaders can and will stay through wall to wall media coverage saying "X is GONE" for months on end.

  • The media narrative runs way ahead of the actual deciders. The news is frothy and excitable. Agitators use the media to build momentum and exaggerate their numbers. The people who actually need to gank the leader are much more slow to take that step. It absolutely can happen but it's a big deal and people have personal loyalties that are not so easily discarded. By the time it actually happens it usually has felt completely obvious and inevitable to everyone on the outside for some time. (Gillard's sudden and swift assassination of Rudd being an obvious exception).

Now we have party bigwigs openly calling on Biden to go, this is getting serious. But I'm still looking for a few more steps in escalation before I think Biden is likely to consider folding, such as a party leader (like Schumer or Pelosi or Obama) publicly calling on delegates pledged to Biden to abandon him, or an alternative candidate announcing they will try to win the nomination at the convention. If it gets to the point where Biden recognises he's going to lose regardless, he might back out then rather than forcing the issue.