The Chimpanzee Politics of Joe Biden's Betrayal of America

Like many people I have been trying to understand why and how the Democratic Party threw the presidential election of 2024 to Donald Trump.  I now think the answer to that question will come from reading two books--Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, It's Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again and Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics.  

When Joe Biden announced in 2023 that he would run for a second term, most American voters thought he was too old to serve out a second term.  He was already the oldest man to be President of the United States, and by the end of a second term, he would have been 86 years old.  Moreover, throughout 2023 and 2024, the voters saw his drastic physical and cognitive decline.  At the same time, after inflation peaked at 9.1% in the summer of 2022, the highest in 40 years, many voters thought Biden's economic policies had failed, and they continued to believe that even when inflation rates came down slightly by 2024.  Consequently, by early 2024, the polls indicated that Biden was going to lose to Trump.  But it was also clear, that most voters were unhappy with the choice between Trump and Biden, and that if the Democrats had nominated a moderate Democrat not identified with Biden and his economic policies, the Democrats would have won because Trump was not the first choice for the majority of voters.

So why did the Democrats allow Biden to run for a second term?  Why did they not organize an open presidential primary to identify a good alternative to both Biden and Trump?  Why did they wait until the end of July in 2024 to force Biden to withdraw from the race?  And why did they then allow Kamala Harris to become the nominee, even though she was even more unpopular than Biden, and she ran as a proponent of "Bidenomics" despite the unpopularity of Biden's inflation?

The answer is that it was all chimpanzee politics.  Once Joe Biden and Jill Biden had won political dominance as the alpha male and alpha female ("First Lady"), they didn't want to give it up, even though they had lost their minimum winning coalition by 2024.  Other Democrat politicians who could have defeated Trump refused to enter the race because they thought they could not risk being disloyal to the Bidens.  Even after Harris replaced Biden as the nominee, she refused to show disloyalty by renouncing Biden's unpopular policies (particularly on inflation).  This allowed Trump to win even though he was not the first choice of the voters.  Now he's the dominant chimp, who proudly announces his dictatorial rule: "I run the country and the world."

I have written many posts about the chimpanzee politics of dominance hierarchies.  People often assume that among animals the dominance hierarchy must be determined by fighting in which the biggest and strongest animal wins and becomes the alpha.  But primatologists like de Waal and Jane Goodall have shown that this is false.  Among chimpanzees and other animals, physical strength is only one of many traits required for becoming the dominant alpha leader.  To become the alpha, one needs supporters.  One must form coalitions with partners, and to win the support of the females and the children, one needs to act as a mediator in intervening in disputes to enforce peace and unity either through impartial intervention or by supporting the weaker party against the stronger.  One must know how to reconcile after disputes.  And one must know how to achieve mutual cooperation through reciprocity by returning favors and by punishing those who are not cooperative.

Males tend to reach their peak in the hierarchy between age twenty and twenty-six years.  Goodall explains: "Factors other than age, which determine the position of a male in the dominance hierarchy include physical fitness, aggressiveness, skill at fighting, ability to form coalitions, intelligence, and a number of personality factors such as boldness and determination. . . . At Gombe some males strive with much energy to better their social status over a period of years; others work hard for a short while, but give up if they encounter a serious setback; a few seem remarkably unconcerned about their social rank."

Chimp male canine teeth are powerful weapons for killing.  But remarkably, chimp fighting almost never leads to killing, except when male chimps are attacking chimps outside their community.  Fighting for dominance within a community is carried out through the bluffing of spectacular, charging displays of intimidation.

Goodall and De Waal have seen among chimpanzees what some political scientists have called government by the "minimal winning coalition."  No one individual can rule without supporters, and so there must always be a ruling coalition supporting the leader, who must satisfy his supporters.  A dictatorship is rule by a small coalition.  Democracy is rule by a large coalition.  The leader must serve the interests of his coalition, and so the larger the coalition, the closer this approximates to serving the common interests of society.

One can also see among chimpanzees confirmation for Machiavelli's political psychology of the one, the few, and the many.  In every society, there are a few people who are ambitious to rule over others, and out of these ambitious few, one individual will emerge as the dominant ruler over all.  Most people do not want to rule, and they will defer to the rule of the few, but the many do not want to be exploited by those ruling few.  To avoid an exploitative despotic rule, there needs to be a balance between the one, the few, and the many.  The hope of the American founders--perhaps most clearly expressed by John Adams--was that American government would separate and balance these three powers: 

Adams believed that human nature is such that every human society must decide the question, Who is the first man?  "It is a question that must be decided, in every species of gregarious animals, as well as men."  Even in the most civilized societies, "the same nature remains," and the contest for first rank must be decided, whether by peaceful or by violent rivalry.  The balance of powers answers this question by providing for a supreme executive office to be filled by one person with sufficient ambition to strive for it, while still checking the power of this executive officer with the powers of other offices--the legislative and judicial offices--filled by the ambitious few, with the ultimate check on power coming from the great multitude of people who defer to their rulers while also resisting exploitative dominance by their rulers.

Consider how this explains the history of American presidential politics over the past two years.  Joe Biden has been driven by a life-long ambition to be President of the United States.  In 1972, he was elected Senator from Delaware at age 30, which is the minimum age for a Senator set by the Constitution.  He failed in his first two runs for the presidency in 1988 and 2008.  But he did become Vice-President in 2008 after being selected by Barack Obama as his running mate.  In 2016, Biden wanted to run again for the presidency, but Obama supported Hillary Clinton, which created a deep resentment in Biden.  He ran again in 2020--without Obama's support in the primaries--and this time he finally won in defeating Trump.

Since his inauguration as President in 2021--the oldest president at 79--fulfilled a lifetime of striving to be Number One, it is not surprising that in the summer of 2023, he announced he would run for reelection, despite the fact that most Americans saw the physical and mental decline that came with his advanced age.  It is hard for a man like Biden to give up the power and fame of being President of the United States.  As Tapper and Thompson report, four-time California Governor Jerry Brown understood why Biden stubbornly refused to drop out of the race for a second term: "Politics is addictive.  It's exciting.  It's kind of psychic cocaine.  People just don't want to just go back to their former boring lives" (50).

But then why didn't Biden follow the example of Lyndon Johnson in 1968?  Johnson was elected to his first full term in a landslide victory in 1964, after becoming president in the wake of JFK's assassination.  In 1968, Johnson chose to run for reelection even though he was very unpopular because of his prosecution of the Vietnam War.  It was widely assumed that a sitting president could not be denied renomination by his party for a second term if he ran.  But after running in some early primaries, and being challenged by the candidacies of Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy--part of a "Dump Johnson" movement--Johnson announced on March 31, 1968, that he would no longer run for the nomination.  This allowed his Vice President--Hubert Humphrey--to run as the Democrat candidate, although he was defeated by Richard Nixon in the election.

LBJ was similar to Biden in many ways.  Like Biden, LBJ had a life-long ambition to achieve political dominance.  In 1937, at age 29, he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives.  In 1948, was elected to the U.S. Senate.  In 1954, he became Senate Majority Leader.  In 1960, he ran for President.  But when Kennedy won the party's nomination, he selected Johnson as his Vice-President.  Becoming President fulfilled his driving ambition for power.  And so he did not want to give up that power in 1968, even though he was unpopular.  But unlike Biden, he ended his campaign early--almost four months earlier than did Biden.  What explains this difference?

One difference is that Biden was surrounded by a small inner circle of advisors that controlled the information he received and that insulated him from public view.  The most important member of this inner circle was Jill Biden who protected Biden from bad news (such as unfavorable polls) and thus protected her own power as First Lady.  The rest of the inner circle was known in the White House as "the Politburo": long-time Biden aides Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Ron Klain, and Bruce Reed.  These five people supported Biden's run for reelection because their powerful prominence in government depended on extending Biden's presidency.  David Axelrod saw "that Donilon was so blinded by his emotional attachment to Joe Biden--his fate and life inextricably bound up with the president's--that he just couldn't let go" (207).  As Democrat congressman Peter Aguilar observed, "folks like Ricchetti and Donilon--they're living the first line of their obituaries right now.  People don't give that up" (253).

Another difference from Johnson is that Biden did not face anything like the "Dump Johnson" movement--popular candidates challenging him in the presidential primaries.  Beginning as early as 2022, Congressman Dean Phillips, a member of the House Democratic leadership team, began warning that Biden's evident cognitive decline would make it impossible for him to communicate clearly to voters, and so the party would need to find someone else to run for president in 2024.  He suggested that the best candidates would be one of the Democrat governors in the Midwest--such as Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.  Phillips had tried to speak directly with Pritzker and Whitmer, but they refused to even take his calls.  Although he admitted that he was not the best candidate, Phillips announced his presidential campaign on October 27, 2023.  He said his aim was to force Biden into a debate, in which Biden would show that he lacked the cognitive ability to win another presidential campaign.  The Democratic Party obstructed Phillips' efforts.  He suspended his campaign after a bad showing on Super Tuesday (March 6, 2024), and he endorsed Joe Biden.

So, for two years, from the summer of 2022 to the summer of 2024, the elite politicians of the Democratic Party refused to challenge Biden's decision to run for a second term because having loyally supported him in 2020, they were afraid to show disloyalty to Biden as their party leader.  Thus, they lacked the political shrewdness of chimpanzees who understand that politics is all about shifting coalitions, so that the loyal supporters of the dominant chimp will withdraw their support as soon as he manifests any signs of weakness, and then a new coalition forms to support a new alpha male.

For example, when de Waal began studying the chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands in 1975, he saw that Yeroen was dominant over the group, with the support of Luit and Nikkie.  The political hierarchy among chimps is indicated by a special form of greeting.  Chimpanzees show a submissive greeting that is a sequence of short panting grunts by the subordinate individual as he looks up at the superior individual, which is usually accompanied by a series of deep bobbing bows by the subordinate.  Sometimes the subordinate will stretch out a hand to the superior or kiss the superior's feet, neck, or chest.  The superior reacts to this by rising up and making his hair stand on end, so that he looks very large in contrast to the groveling subordinate.  The alpha male is the male who is "greeted" by the other males.  Generally, the alpha male is also "greeted" by the females and the children in a group.

The male on the left is dominant.  The male on the right is subordinate.  Although they are actually the same size, the dominant male makes himself look bigger.

In 1976, de Waal saw the first of two power take-overs, which he understood with the help of Machiavelli, and this is what became the central focus of his book Chimpanzee Politics.  In the spring of 1976, Luit stopped "greeting" Yeroen, which initiated months of tense conflict between them as they fought over which would be dominant.  Luit formed a coalition with Nikkie, so that Nikkie would help Luit against Yeroen. On June 21st, Yeroen bared his teeth for the first time, which is a sign of fear in chimps.  On September 1, Yeroen "greeted" Luit for the first time.  Luit began to take on the control role of the alpha male in mediating fights to restore peace in the group.  On October 31, Yeroen "greeted" Nikkie for the first time.  So, now, Luit was the alpha male, Nikkie was second in command, and Yeroen was ranked third.  But then, in the spring of 1977, Nikkie formed a coalition with Yeroen to challenge Luit, and by December of 1977, Luit was "greeting" Nikkie as his superior. Nikkie had become the alpha male, with Yeroen second in command. 

Congressman Phillips saw that there was a similar opportunity for a power take-over among Democratic politicians once Biden showed his vulnerability in 2023 and 2024. But it's hard to understand why ambitious Democratic politicians like Whitmer, Pritzker, Shapiro, and Newsom did not see that this was the time to betray their party leader and put together a new coalition to support a new person in the position of dominance.

It was not until Biden's disastrous debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, that everyone saw what Phillips and a few others had seen much earlier--that Biden's cognitive decline would make it impossible for him to be a competent campaigner for reelection.  Even then, however, it took three weeks for party leaders to persuade Biden to withdraw.  When that finally happened, they then allowed Kamala Harris to lock up her nomination in only two days of phone calls (July 21-22).  They refused to take seriously the suggestion of Obama and others that there should be a short "mini-primary" or an open convention that would allow a few candidates to compete for the nomination.

Strangely, as Harris campaigned she refused the advice of her campaign people to separate herself from Biden and the unpopular policies of the Biden administration (particularly in connection with inflation).  Tapper and Thompson report that in one meeting with her campaign staff, Harris asked: "If I were to really distinguish myself, how would that make me look?"  She then answered her own question: "Disloyal."

On October 8, Harris went on The View.  At one point in the interview, Sunny Hostin asked: "Well, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?"  Harris answered: "There is not a thing that comes to mind."  The Trump campaign people were happy to use this footage in a new Trump TV ad (298).

Because of her fear of being disloyal to Biden, she did not say what she should have said to distance herself from Biden and his unpopular policies: As a Vice-President, I have had to defend my boss.  But now I am running my own campaign for president, and I can say that Biden has made many mistakes--such as economic policies that promoted high inflation--and I pledge to avoid those mistakes.

Although Trump won the popular vote by over 2 million.  The election was actually very close.  If Harris had beat the margins of 1.44 percent in Michigan, 1.73 percent in Pennsylvania, and 0.87 percent in Wisconsin, she would have been elected president.  She could have done that by radically separating herself from Biden's policies.

Alternatively, since Harris began the campaign as even less popular than Biden, the Democratic Party could have won the presidential election by a large margin by selecting a moderate Democratic candidate--perhaps one of those Midwestern governors.

That did not happen because the Democratic leaders did not understand how to play the game of chimpanzee politics.