The New Yorker writer Susan Glasser, a journalist whom I greatly admire (and read regularly), in her most recent column uses the word “coup” to describe the current effort within the Democratic Party to persuade Joe Biden to step aside and let the party choose another nominee: “The coup against Joe Biden, should it succeed, would represent something as unprecedented in its own way as the fact that the Republican Party has now formally ratified the decision to stake its future on a deeply unpopular, rapidly aging demagogue who was repudiated by voters only four years ago.” The column also uses the word “coup” in its subtitle: “As the Republican Convention anoints the ex-President, the Democratic panic over Joe Biden begins to look like a coup.“
Even accounting for some metaphorical leeway as part of a writer’s creativity (so-called “poetic license”), to characterize what’s going on right now within the Democratic Party as a “coup” is deeply misleading and disserves the public. It suggests that this internal debate within the party is somehow improper, illegitimate and undemocratic (small-d). Indeed, that’s why Chris LaCivita, Trump’s senior campaign adviser, has used the same word “coup” to describe what’s happening among the Democrats.
Whether or not one thinks Democrats should substitute another candidate for Biden as their nominee, that is a matter for the Democratic Party to decide pursuant to its rules, and there is nothing improper, illegitimate or undemocratic (small-d) for members of the party to deliberate among themselves as to the best course for their party to take in light of developing conditions.
To be sure, Biden is the presumptive nominee based on the results of the party’s presidential primaries, and unless he withdraws from the race the delegates to the party’s nominating convention who are “pledged” to his candidacy–according to the party’s rules–“shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of [the voters] who elected them.” But if Biden ultimately decides to withdraw based on all the input he’s been receiving from members of his own party, both leaders and grassroots, then there is no “coup” at all. Instead, the party would be deciding for itself what’s best in the circumstances.
In fact, even if Biden refuses to withdraw and an effort is mounted to challenge his continued candidacy based on the proposition that his “pledged” delegates should no longer vote for him “in all good conscience” because of what’s changed since the primaries (including his disastrous debate performance), that effort would not be a “coup” attempt. Although, as a practical matter, I think such an effort would be most likely to fail, it would not be in any way improper, illegitimate, or undemocratic (small-d) under the party’s rules. Rather, it would be following those very rules to hash out a significant disagreement among the party’s members about what the party should do.
A coup, by contrast, is the seizure of power contrary to established rules–the opposite of what Democrats in good faith disagreement would be doing as part of the party’s internal self-governance. The term “coup” therefore is much more appropriate to apply to what Trump attempted in his effort to seize a second term despite losing the 2020 election. In my own writing about the 2020 election, I have often been hesitant to use the term “coup” to describe what Trump did (although I have done so occasionally) based on a belief that using the term tends to cause an emotional response that can cloud analytic reasoning over what actually happened. Nonetheless, insofar as Trump fought to repudiate the outcome of the 2020 election in order to cling to power using improper, illegitimate, and undemocratic (small-d) means–like attempting to pressure Pence into rejecting the valid electoral votes from the states–it is not wrong to use the term “coup” to describe what Trump attempted.
It is wrong, however, to use the same term to describe the current contestation within the Democratic Party. It is a false equivalence to write, as Susan Glasser did, that the attempted “coup against Joe Biden” would be anything like what Trump did in response to being “repudiated by voters” in 2020. Even if it’s a false equivalence that the Trump campaign already has seized upon, journalists should not make the same mistake.