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Feel for Joe Biden. If you too had spent half a century coveting a job, you might be reluctant to give it up.
為喬·拜登感到惋惜。如果你也花了半個世紀的時間渴望獲得一份工作，你可能不愿意放棄它。
When the octogenarian turned in the most disastrous debate performance in modern times on June 27th, alarmed fellow Democrats began agitating for him to gracefully withdraw from his re-election campaign.
6月27日，這位八十多歲的老人在辯論中表現得極為糟糕，驚慌失措的民主黨同僚開始敦促他體面地退出連任競選。
The confused guy who appeared on stage seemed in no state to defeat Donald Trump in November, let alone govern the country into 2029. But Mr Biden is nothing if not stubborn.
這位在舞臺上表現混亂的家伙似乎無法在11月擊敗唐納德·特朗普，更不用說在2029年治理國家了。但拜登先生非常固執。
His campaign staff spent the week following the debacle trying to contain the fallout, urging elected Democrats not to go public with their calls for the president to stand aside.
他的競選團隊在這次慘敗后的一周內試圖控制后果，敦促當選的民主黨人不要公開呼吁總統下臺。
The Biden campaign then mounted a counteroffensive against those critics. "I'm not going anywhere," the candidate announced. These efforts have had an impact.
拜登競選團隊隨后對這些批評者發起了反攻。“我哪兒也不去，”候選人宣布。這些努力產生了影響。
By mid-week prediction markets were giving Mr Biden even odds of staying in the race—double his chance of survival the previous week.
到本周中旬，預測市場認為拜登先生繼續參選的幾率均等，比前一周翻了一番。
Nevertheless, the trickle of Democratic lawmakers openly urging the president to abandon his campaign has not stopped:
盡管如此，民主黨議員公開敦促總統放棄競選的呼聲仍未停止：
this week Michael Bennet and Peter Welch became the first Senate Democrats to say that Mr Biden could not defeat Mr Trump.
本周，麥克·班尼和彼得·韋爾奇是第一批表示拜登無法擊敗特朗普的參議院民主黨人。
Nancy Pelosi, a former House speaker and close ally of the president, implied that he should think again about his candidacy, saying in an interview on MSNBC that "time is running short".
前眾議院議長、總統的親密盟友南希·佩洛西暗示，拜登應該重新考慮自己的候選資格，她在接受MSNBC采訪時表示“時間不多了”。
George Clooney, an actor and donor, also disavowed Mr Biden and made disparaging remarks about his ability to do the job.
演員兼捐助者喬治·克魯尼也否認了拜登，并對他勝任總統工作的能力發表了貶損言論。
If Mr Biden faces down the rebels in his party, it would be a strange victory, achieved not by convincing his fellow Democrats that he has a good chance of beating Mr Trump, but by insisting he will not abandon power no matter how hard they push him.
如果拜登挫敗黨內叛亂分子，那將是一場奇怪的勝利，不是通過說服民主黨同僚他有很大機會擊敗特朗普，而是通過堅持無論他們如何逼迫，他都不會放棄權力。
Because Mr Biden controls almost all of the delegates needed to secure the party's formal nomination in August, little can be done to force him out. And Mr Biden insists he will not budge.
由于拜登控制著確保8月獲得黨內正式提名所需的幾乎所有代表，因此幾乎沒有辦法迫使他下臺。拜登堅稱他不會讓步。
"I am firmly committed to staying in the race, to running this race to the end," said a letter sent in his name to congressional Democrats and published on July 8th.
“我堅定地致力于繼續競選，堅持到底，”一封以他的名義寄給國會民主黨人的信中寫道，這封信于7月8日公布。
In it he claimed that because he had won a competitive primary it would be anti-democratic for him not to be the party's nominee.
在信中，他聲稱，由于他贏得了競爭激烈的初選，因此如果他不成為民主黨的候選人，那將是反民主的。
"How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our party?" he wrote.
“如果我們在民主黨內忽視民主，我們怎么能代表國家的民主呢？”他寫道。
In truth, the party treated the primary as a coronation, placing the president alone on the ballot in some states. No serious candidates challenged him.
事實上，民主黨將初選視為加冕儀式，在一些州，總統獨自出現在選票上。沒有認真的候選人挑戰他。
Although few elected Democrats privately express confidence in Mr Biden, many have settled into learned helplessness.
雖然很少有當選的民主黨人私下表示對拜登有信心，但許多人已經陷入了習得性無助。
"The matter is settled," Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman, declared.
“事情已經解決了，”國會議員亞歷山德里婭·奧卡西奧-科爾特斯宣稱。
Though nine Democrats in the House of Representatives have publicly called for the president to stand aside, and many more have made statements expressing concern, Mr Biden has decided that he has an almost divine right to remain president.
盡管眾議院有9名民主黨人公開呼吁總統退位，還有更多人發表聲明表示擔憂，但拜登已經決定，他幾乎天生就有權繼續擔任總統。
"If the Lord Almighty came out and said, 'Joe, get out of the race,' I would get out of the race," the president said in a closely watched interview on July 7th. But "the Lord Almighty is not coming down."
“如果上帝站出來對我說，‘喬，退出競選’，我就會退出競選，”總統在7月7日一次備受關注的采訪中說道。但“上帝不會降臨。”
To understand what is happening, the best guide is not speculation about what Jill Biden or Barack Obama might be thinking, but game theory.
要了解正在發生的事情，最好的指南不是猜測吉爾·拜登或巴拉克·奧巴馬可能在想什么，而是博弈論。
The objective function, or goal, of Democrats is to minimise the chance of Mr Trump returning to the White House.
民主黨的目標是盡量減少特朗普重返白宮的機會。
