Why Biden Won’t Drop Out, According to Democratic Money Mover Dmitri Mehlhorn

The case for Biden staying in, from one of his most ardent and influential defenders

Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images

Dmitri Mehlhorn is among the most powerful Democratic funders and operatives working inside what can roughly be called the party’s establishment. He’s also been one of the most ardent defenders of Joe Biden as the best Democratic nominee to beat Donald Trump in November. It was even reported recently that, on a private donor call, Mehlhorn said that a dead Biden was a better candidate than a live Kamala Harris. I interviewed him this weekend for an hour to get his broader take on why he’s so committed to Biden at a moment when so many are abandoning his candidacy, and also asked him if the reporting about that Kamala quote was true. He said it was (but added that it was taken out of context). The full quote was: “Kamala Harris is more threatening to those swing voters than a dead Joe Biden or a comatose Joe Biden.” 

Mehlhorn’s interview with Drop Site News, our independent news organization that launched today, comes as Biden fends off increasingly ferocious efforts by the media and leading figures in the party to push him off the ticket. 

(For more on Drop Site—what it is, why we launched it, and so on—scroll down below for a joint announcement from us and The Intercept. Read Jeremy Scahill’s post on why we started it, and how you can help, here.)

Mehlhorn, a Silicon Valley investor, is a major donor in his own right, but is also known as the right hand of LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman, and has brought together a network of donors that can move tens of millions with the flick of a wrist. Our full, wide-ranging conversation will be out later this week on my podcast Deconstructed—which Drop Site will continue producing thanks in part to a grant from The Intercept—but we wanted to share some highlights here first. 

The key thing to understand about Biden’s resistance to dropping out, Mehlhorn said, is that Biden believes he should have run in 2016, but let himself be talked out of it—and won’t make that mistake again. “I want to just go a little bit deeper into the decision-making process of Joe Biden,” Mehlhorn told me. “Joe Biden is haunted by the fact that in 2016, he listened to these arguments. And he's right. We were all wrong. If he'd run in 2016, we would not be here. A lot of people—not us as much this time—but a lot of people made those same arguments to him in 2020 and he stubbornly, stubbornly resisted all of them. And he saved us.”

Mehlhorn said the reverse was true in 2020. “So all of these arguments came at him in '16. He listened, the world suffered grievously. All of these arguments came at him in 2020. He refused to listen, the world benefited tremendously,” Mehlhorn said. “America now has the strongest economy of the world, we are powering the world economy, we are leading the free world against Russian aggression because he refused to listen to these arguments. So right now, who is he going to listen to? I believe that fundamentally, he is going to listen to voters.” 

Specifically, Mehlhorn said, Biden will be looking closely at polls while ignoring everything else. “He's going to listen to the Democratic voters in particular. And the Democratic Party's voters, since mid-2020, there has never been any single person who has been anywhere close to as popular as Biden, with Democrats,” he said. “And so the question is, is there an argument for Joe Biden to step down? And the answer is, well, if he were to plummet in the polls, which would be the result—if all these arguments are correct about how he's being perceived—that might change his mind. And at that point, we will be there to help with the transition.”

Until then, Mehlhorn and his money men are staying in, he said. “He hasn't plummeted. He's dropped in the averages by less than 3 points, which is the amount by which they moved in the other direction—slightly less than that actually—when Donald Trump was convicted of felonies. So we're going to get more and more evidence of Trump's criminality at the same time we're getting more and more evidence of Biden's physical aging. And you all assume that that is going to net out in a way that is going to be so obvious that you will persuade Joe Biden that this time you're all right and he's wrong, when the last couple of times, it was catastrophically the reverse.”

“He hasn't plummeted,” Mehlhorn told me. “He's dropped in the averages by less than 3 points, which is the amount by which they moved in the other direction—slightly less than that actually—when Donald Trump was convicted of felonies.”

I pointed out that if Biden is relying on polling to make his decision, that makes his ability to analyze polling that much more important. But Biden told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that all the polls have been tied and that he doesn’t believe his approval rating is truly at 38 percent. Mehlhorn offered a robust defense of Biden’s assertion. “I actually think he's right, and you're all wrong,” he said, explaining:

There was a lot that Biden said that I did not like, but his answer about polling — actually, everybody's wrong and Joe is right. The polls are tied, they're still within the margin of error. That's what matters at this stage… And [in 538’s weighted poll] the average was Trump up about 2. Then there was the felony conviction—34, actually. And as the public digested that, it went to Biden up about, you know, a little less than half a point. And now it's Trump by two and a half. And all of that remains within the margin of error of these polls.

These two men have been tied in the 270 electoral vote battlegrounds. They have been within the margin of error since inception. And so when people are saying Joe's losing, and they've been saying that forever, I've been saying it's tied. And the reason it's tied is because Joe Biden has this brand advantage. That is why, if you compare him to incumbents all over the world, he's actually less unpopular. 

I asked what the difference was between a drop in the polls and a plummet, and this exchange followed.

Dmitri: More than the range. It would be outside the margin of error. It would be like 5 points, and it would last a week or two, 5 or more [points]. I mean, by the way, Ryan, the other side of it, just to set the presumption properly: If you guys are right, how much should the polls drop? I mean, shouldn't they drop a lot? Shouldn't they drop more than two and a half points? Shouldn't Trump's odds of winning be higher than two-to-one if you're so right?

Grim: You would need a more plugged-in population to have swings bigger than we've seen, maybe. 

Dmitri: I don't know, man. It wasn't that long ago, when George H.W. Bush had 90 percent approval ratings. And even George W. Bush was pretty high after September 11. So it is not ancient history when Americans swung a lot. The reason they don't now, in my view, is negative partisanship. And that goes both ways, right? Remember this: Even as the donor class—not me and Reid [Hoffman], obviously, but a lot of donors are freaking out—more small-dollar fundraising to Joe Biden came in since that debate than ever before. Those two hours were their best two hours; those 24 hours were their best 24 hours.

My whole point is, on all of this: It seems to me especially given the the psychological history of Biden being right and us being wrong—twice previously, catastrophically—and the way the polls are moving, the odds of him stepping down are very low. If things move a lot, I think he'll reconsider. That will be his decision. So if it's 90 percent likely that it's Biden and 10 percent likely that it's someone else, or even 80-20, even if it's just more likely than not, all of us need to be focused on attacking Trump. Because Biden is going to make that decision, in that way, based on those factors that we don't control. And he may be right. So what are we doing?

Grim: At what point does the reality start to intervene and we say, you know what, horse race aside, numbers aside, all of the game theory aside, a president who said he needs to work less, and he shouldn't do stuff after 8 p.m., and that we're not confident is up to it, it's just not something that as a country, we want? People would say, okay, we want him to beat Trump, but do we want him to be president? Like, do we actually have confidence in his ability to be president?

Dmitri: So this is great. I'm glad you're raising this, because we talked at the outset that this was going to come up. And once you work through all the gaming and so forth that you and I've just discussed, you get to the fundamental of like, 'Wait, can he be a good president?' And so Ryan, my question to you: What do you think the job of the president is? Because clearly, you seem to think it includes working super long hours, and I don't think the president is necessarily an investment banking associate, so…

Grim: I divide it into two things. One is making hard decisions, because the reason a decision gets to a president is because it's a difficult one and his massive apparatus that's underneath him could not answer that question. That maybe you can do between 10 and 4. And you can be helped… 

Dmitri: Biden is not saying he won't take calls… 

Grim: But then this is the second part of being president: communicating to the American people and persuading them of your vision.

Dmitri: I agree with both of those. So let's go into those.

Grim: I should put the international public in there too. 

Dmitri: Yeah. 100%. Absolutely. Okay. The President has to be able to make tough decisions, and communicate them in a way that is consistent so that everybody understands. Right? My contention is that Joe Biden is as good or better on those two things than anybody else. And it's not getting worse as he's getting older. The way in which he makes decisions is with his close team. He is the leader of a council. He is the leader of the council of elders at the center of a network of decision-making. And he has been working too hard. He's been working too hard if he was 50. And when you're older, you need to ease up a little bit. And he's got the leverage to do it. 

He's just working too hard. That doesn't mean he's not available at all, if you need him, you can call him. But his process of making decisions is one that seems pretty good. And the second thing about communicating: If you are clear in your values, and you've recruited a network of people who embody those values, when you do make those decisions, they pulse out effectively. 

Now, I've just made two contentions that you don't agree with and I understand that. My two contentions are that Joe Biden's decision-making process is really good and that his ability to implement and communicate and effectuate those decisions is really good. And you disagree. 

So, the next question, Ryan, is how do we look at the world and determine from the evidence outside of our bubbles what's really true? And I think the best possible evidence is how good of a job is Biden doing at presidenting today? So let's look at the international leaders. International leaders call Biden personally when they need help. That is why he travels to war zones. They want him personally. Look at domestic negotiations in the Senate. When they have a walk logjam, they call him, personally. And if you think that the left has been hiding Biden's ability to do that well, Kevin McCarthy was caught saying, against interest, that actually that's not the case that when Joe Biden is embedded within his team and intervenes in those places he is the closer and everybody knows it. …

And America is doing really well, we have the strongest economy in the world by far. And America is once again, the leader of the free world, something that was not… We almost lost in just four years under Trump. We are back. And all of that is true right now. So that seems to me a pretty good evidence base that maybe my point of view might be right and yours might be wrong.

Grim: It seems that the candidates who are running for office around the country, a lot of them, at least, seem to think you're wrong and seem to think that, at least from their perspective, as kind of cynical electoral operators, that Biden is now a drag on their electability. Angie Craig in a swing district, a representative from Minnesota, became one of the most recent to come out and say, he should step aside. Can you really go forward with so many elected Democrats telling the public that their candidate should drop out?

Dmitri: I am not saying that electeds are always cynical, or that people running for office are always cynical. There's a continuum between just being brutally cynical and just maybe having some motivated reasoning. And then there's also specific brass tacks. If frontline, swing district candidates are talking about issues, I think it is very important that we take them seriously with how they want to frame things, for sure. Because they're the ones who know what the swing voters are thinking. 

However, a presidential nominee runs nationally. And it is almost always the case that there is some upside to locals distancing themselves from the nominee. That would certainly be true for any alternative to Biden, as well. It always happens. So I don't mind that, it doesn't bother me. But it's also not evidence that is relevant to any of the questions we've discussed, which are: Can he be a great president? Is he already a great president? Can he be a winning nominee? Is he our best bet? None of that is evidence. None of that is influenced, even, by what electeds say about distancing themselves from Biden, that is just a different thing. …

Grim: So the headline here, right now, you still think Biden is the best possible candidate to take on Trump, and that that will remain the case in your view until or unless the polls plummet and he moves outside the margin of error. Is that about right? 

Dmitri: Well, so it's a good headline. But just to be a little bit more precise: number one, yes, I believe Biden is still the best bet. Number two, I believe that Biden will choose to step down only if the polls move significantly for a couple of weeks—significantly, meaning like 5 more points, stays there, etc.—and even then, the only way that he will make that decision is with his close advisers and that we will not have influence because of the history we've discussed. The third thing that we believe is, and again, this is just a positive statement, not a normative statement, we believe that if it is not Biden, it is—the confidence level that we have it's going to be Biden, whatever it is call it 90 percent, whatever. That is the level of confidence we have that if it's not Biden, it's Harris. And I do believe that Harris can prosecute the case. Remember, in 2020, even as I was pushing Biden over Bernie, I was making a bunch of arguments about how if it is Bernie, here's the play, and he could win. If it's Kamala, she could win. She's a prosecutor, and he's a criminal. And if she picks the right running mate, that's cool, too. We'll go for that. But those are the choices and the alternatives.

Below is a joint announcement from Drop Site News and The Intercept

Today, The Intercept and Drop Site News announced that acclaimed journalists Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim are embarking on a new chapter with the launch of Drop Site News, their independent journalism venture, with startup funding by The Intercept.

At Drop Site News, Scahill and Grim will continue to produce and broadcast the award-winning podcasts Intercepted and Deconstructed, which will be available on the websites of Drop Site News and The Intercept.

Scahill and Grim have been pivotal in establishing The Intercept as a formidable reporting force. Scahill’s exposés on U.S. drone warfare, Blackwater’s Iraq operations, and CIA torture practices have consistently held power to account. Since joining in 2017, Grim’s reporting on political corruption and democratic erosion has illuminated critical societal issues.