President Biden should drop out of the presidential race, but not because he is too old or too infirm.

He should drop out because he is not criminal enough to win.

The United States has broken bad—just look at our guns, our drugs, our major corporations—and a good and decent man no longer seems up to the job of running the country. We want our leaders to be scary because the world is scary. We’re looking for someone more cunning, more brutal, willing to violate the law or Constitution to serve and protect us.

This, not age, is the real story behind the reaction to the first presidential debate. Donald Trump broadcast his criminal id, lied constantly, defended his lawless January 6 coup, and suggested he would commit new crimes against the republic. For this, he was judged the winner. Meanwhile, Joe Biden played the kindly forgetful grandfather standing up for the rule of law and democracy—and created a political crisis that has many in his own party seeking to drive him from the race.

This post-debate reaction is hardly surprising. Criminality is politically powerful. Trump surged in his fundraising and maintained his lead in the polls after a New York jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal from voters his liaison with a porn star. Now, Democrats are encouraging Biden to behave more like Trump, by raising his voice, demonizing doubters, and talking as tough as Clint Eastwood’s convict in Escape from Alcatraz.

Some Americans remain puzzled that Americans would elect a criminal, or anyone who behaved like one. But the only real puzzle is why anyone is puzzled.

Criminal daring has always been useful to democratic leaders. Writing during the French Revolution—that violent and criminal launch of the modern republic—the Marquis de Sade, who spent much of his life in prison, observed, “It is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a republican system.” From France to Brazil and beyond, human beings vote for politicians whom they suspect of crime and corruption.

There are three reasons for this. One reason is that the criminal or corrupt may be better than the alternatives. (Ask Louisianans about “voting for the crook” Edwin Edwards for governor over the former Klansman David Duke). Another reason is that being a president or prime minister requires dealing with foreign leaders who are criminals (see Putin, Vladimir).

Another, less discussed reason is representative: We humans want to see ourselves in our politicians, and we humans are a crooked species.

“There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms,” Émile Durkheim wrote in his 1897 classic Suicide: A Study in Sociology. “We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization logically imply it.”

Americans may not read much Durkheim, but our profoundly punitive country rivals dictatorships and autocracies in its fervor to lock up its people. So, it’s perfectly natural for huge percentages of Americans to want to see a convicted felon in the Oval Office.

Today, after generations of mass incarceration, one in three American adults has a criminal record. For context, that’s the same percentage of working-age adults who have four-year college degrees. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University once determined that if all the Americans who had been arrested held hands, they would circle the globe three times.

If such comparisons don’t grab you, here’s something more political. In raw numbers, about 80 million Americans have a criminal record of some sort. Back in 2020, Joe Biden received just over 81 million voters in the November presidential election. As of spring 2024, 80.7 million Americans were registered as either Democrats or Republicans. Criminality and party membership are similarly common American experiences.

Which is why the Democrats should make sure they replace “good and decent” Biden with a convicted felon.

I mean, why give Trump the honor of making history as the first-ever convict in the Oval Office?

Alas, by this logic, my fellow Californian, Vice President Kamala Harris, won’t be Biden’s replacement. As a prosecutor with deep law enforcement experience, she’s the wrong fit for a country this crooked.

The good news is that other distinguished Californians boast criminal records. The actor Danny Trejo, an Angeleno, has developed a devoted following after spending his young adulthood in most of the great state prisons, including San Quentin, Folsom, Soledad, Vacaville, and Susanville. But Trejo is 80, and not nearly as well known as the best choice to take on the Biden mantle:

Snoop Dogg.

Born in Long Beach, Snoop (aka Calvin Broadus), 52, would bring clear convictions to the campaign: for cocaine possession in 1990, for gun possession during a 1993 traffic stop, and for charges of drug and gun possession in 2007. Snoop was also tried and acquitted of murder in 1996, an experience that more presidents should have, since the job is about making life-and-death decisions.

What makes Snoop the best choice, among the one-third of Americans with criminal histories, is just how expertly he’s mined his record to produce one of the most diverse and enduring careers in 21st-century entertainment. He’s a rapper, record producer, actor, tastemaker (with a taste for cannabis), comic, poet, author, and game show host. In 2022, demonstrating more mainstream credibility than any living politician, he headlined the Super Bowl halftime show.

And choosing a VP would be a no-brainer. Snoop and his friend and business partner, fellow ex-con Martha Stewart, have worked together on everything from TV shows to a line of handbags. Together, the two would make an unbeatable and utterly indecent presidential ticket.

Democratic elites, who include a lot of lawyers, might feel uncomfortable with someone with Snoop’s past in the White House. But that’s only because they fail to appreciate just how much the federal courts have changed the job.

Just this year, the Supreme Court made two rulings that blew the door wide open for criminal presidents. First, the court ignored the plain text of the 14th Amendment to determine that even a person who had committed the crime of insurrection against the country couldn’t be thrown off the ballot by a state. Then, earlier this month, the Court’s six-member conservative majority found that presidents have near-total immunity for crimes they commit in office.

If both the people and the highest court in the land want a crook in the White House, who dares stand in their way?