There’s no way back from this.
Even in a best-case scenario in which inflation eventually straightens out without a recession, Biden still the 2024 cycle as an eightysomething candidate who already seems a step too slow for what the job demands. In a less than best-case scenario, inflation lingers and/or we get a recession anyway. If politics nowadays is all about “vibes,” it’s inevitable that the vibes voters have about Biden’s first term come November 2024 will be decidedly bad.
Normally an incumbent president is the strongest hand a party can play in the next cycle. In Biden’s case, between the Jimmy Carter echoes of his presidency and his age, one can plausibly argue that the party would be better off with a fresh start.
As long as that fresh start doesn’t mean Kamala Harris, of course.
Just 18% of Americans say President Biden should run for reelection in 2024, according to the latest Yahoo News/YouGov poll — the lowest number to date. Nearly two-thirds (64%) say he should bow out.
And for the first time, more Democrats now say Biden should pass on a second term (41%) than say he should pursue one (35%)...
[I]ndependents don’t want either [2020 nominee] to run again — but far more of them say Biden should skip 2024 (71%) than Trump (58%)…
Finally, most Americans (56%) now feel that Biden is not “up to the challenges facing the U.S.” — including one in five Democrats.
Democrats are markedly less likely now than at the start of Biden’s term to say that he demonstrates “strength” and “competence.” Other modern presidents like Clinton and Obama have hit first-term rough patches and then gone on to reelection, but Charlie Sykes is right that both of them were “vigorous, charismatic politicians.” Swing voters had no doubt that they were physically and cognitively capable of doing the job if returned to office, whereas Biden’s rough patch fits easily into the narrative that he’s no longer equal to the demands of the presidency. I don’t know how he cures that perception.
Pew also has new data for him today, starting with a job approval of just 37 percent — which is by no means his worst number this week. Even if the economy brightens over the next year, peer into the deep dark hole that his reelection campaign momentarily finds itself in:
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Look how much support he’s lost among Democratic leaners and independents — nearly half in the latter case relative to his “honeymoon” phase following inauguration:
Asking American voters to lay all of that aside and reelect him is asking them to gamble that Biden will do a better job in his mid-80s than he has in his late 70s. How much do you care to wager on that?
Sykes makes the case that Biden has one and only one potential saving grace, the looming candidacy of Donald J. Trump. And that’s true in a sense: If Biden’s great liability is that he’s increasingly seen as unfit, the only chance he has to win is if he’s pitted against an opponent who’s also widely seen as unfit. Normally American elections are a choice between the lesser of two evils; a 2024 Biden/Trump rematch would be a choice between two candidates who rightly shouldn’t be anywhere near the presidency, albeit for different reasons. Biden leads Trump 44/43 in the Yahoo News poll quoted above, the second time in three days that a survey that otherwise has abysmal numbers for him nonetheless shows him leading his predecessor.
One could turn Sykes’s logic around, though, and ask why Democrats should saddle themselves with their own unfit alternative to Trump instead of plucking some governor or senator who has his wits about him as their nominee instead. Why make the election a test of fitness which Biden might lose when they could nominate a bland generic Dem who’ll make it a referendum on Trump’s fitness? Dems are well positioned to do that relative to Republicans: Whereas just 35 percent of Biden’s party wants to see him run again, 60 percent of GOPers want to see Trump back in the 2024 race. The MAGA cult is poised to triple down on a twice-impeached coup-plotter, an opportunity for Democrats to counter with a more sensible option.
Unfortunately, they don’t have any sensible options. A smart party that cared only about winning would nominate a figure like Jon Tester, who votes reliably Democratic despite representing a red rural state in Montana. Tester would claw back some rural white voters and might consolidate liberals strictly on “Anyone But Trump” grounds. But Tester is every inch an old white guy — not an outspokenly liberal one either — and so he’s probably a nonstarter for the Dem base. They just did the “electable old white guy whom no one’s excited about” thing with Biden. Are they going to do it forever?
They’ll have to figure it out soon, writes A.B. Stoddard, because it’s increasingly obvious that Biden has no choice but to retire:
Biden’s next year promises to be brutal, so he should dispense with this historic announcement early in 2023 – that he will leave political life at the end of his term. Lawyers are clearly prepping for probes into Hunter’s business ventures, any that involved his father and/or uncle, and his brushes with the law. Hunter’s ugly personal life, the drugs and prostitutes, will be highlighted alongside any unethical or illegal conduct he is guilty of. It will be a hideous passage for the entire Biden family.
Announcing his retirement could blunt some of what Republicans have in store for the president. While they prepare to impeach him, Biden would not be clinging to power and political advantage like Trump did when he was accused of high crimes and misdemeanors, and Biden could automatically flatten several tents of the Republican circus because he would not be standing for office again.
There’s one last point to consider. Although Biden or any other Democrat would stand a fair chance of beating Trump, it’s not a gimme that Trump will be the Republican nominee. A young candidate like DeSantis would be an especially difficult match-up for an elderly Democratic nominee, generating the sort of “America’s future versus America’s past” dynamic that helped Bill Clinton and Barack Obama coast to victory over their much older Republican opponents in 1992 and 2008. However you slice it, then, whether it’s Trump or DeSantis on the ballot for the GOP, Dems would be better off with an electable fresh face as the alternative. All they need to do now is, uh, find one.
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