Will Joe Biden jump? Will he be pushed? Or will he just fall asleep?
Arriving in New York on the way to the Australian American Leadership Dialogue in Washington – an institution that profoundly transcends party politics – it’s evident to me the entire American political conversation is obsessed with only one question: when and if Biden abdicates as Democratic presidential candidate.
Several features of the situation are surreal. One is that Donald Trump is quietly avoiding attention. Perhaps for the only time in Trump’s adult life, he’s politely standing back and letting someone else hog the limelight. The structure of the campaign is now the exact opposite of what Biden and the Democrats wanted.
Biden has been a poor President, producing inflation, disastrous failure on the southern border and a mixed foreign policy record at best. This is the view of American voters. By a large margin they have an unfavourable opinion of Biden, and even more of them think their country is on “the wrong track”.
This was the situation well before Biden’s disastrous TV debate performance. Quite rationally, therefore, Democrats planned to make the election all about Trump. A relatively small percentage of Americans would vote FOR Biden, but Democrats hoped huge numbers would vote AGAINST Trump.
Most presidential elections involving an incumbent are a referendum on the president’s performance. Democrats don’t want a judgment about Biden, but rather another judgment about Trump.
They were failing in this project anyway, but now Biden’s debate performance has blown their strategy to bits. Nobody is talking about anything except the oddity of having a President who is plainly not up to the job at the level of basic mental competence. One by one, Democrat lawmakers are urging the President to stand aside. So is a good portion of the pro-Democrat media, especially The New York Times. Many big cheeses from the Clinton and Obama years are making the same call.
Biden is immensely stubborn. It’s his strength and his weakness. In his faltering voice, reading from a teleprompter, even so mangling sentences, he’s telling everyone he’s fine, ready to go, keen as mustard, better than ever. No one believes him. Democrats are fearfully polarised around three questions: Can we persuade him to go? If he doesn’t go, do we back him anyway on the basis that he’s not Trump? And if he does go do we make do with Vice-President Kamala Harris, or try for a dream replacement, even, wildest dream of all, Michelle Obama?
I find three features of the political impasse especially perplexing. The first is that anyone at all was shocked by Biden’s debate performance. I watched it live and, although it was terrible, it was more or less just what Biden has given us over the past couple of years. You could only express shock if: (a) you hadn’t been paying attention since 2020; or (b) your faith in Democratic spinmeisters and left-liberal media was such that you had been willing to reject the evidence of your own eyes; or (c) you always knew this was the Biden reality, but wouldn’t admit it, but the public realisation of Biden’s infirmity had become so overwhelming you wanted to use the alleged revelation of the debate to publicly change your mind. So the shock at Biden’s performance is itself shocking. It supposes either mass psychosis before the debate, or mass fib-telling before and after the debate.
I’ve had a long-term prejudice in journalism for privileging what I see over what I’m told. That’s what first led me to write about climate change policies. The Australian government was telling us 15 years ago that the whole world was decarbonising, yet, spending a lot of time in Asia, it was obvious to me that Asia was doing nothing of the kind. A decade and a half later, the world is still not decarbonising, and still you never hear these inconvenient facts in the Australian debate. When you see an undeniable reality that contradicts the accepted narrative, doubt the narrative before you doubt the evidence of your own eyes. Certainly never be scared to say what you see.
The second perplexity is that both Biden and Trump now have a huge interest in promoting the view that Vice-President Kamala Harris would be a disastrous candidate. That there is so little faith in Harris being able to beat Trump is one of the strongest arguments for those who back Biden staying in the race. But it’s also a very strong argument for Trump. Because Biden, 81 now and 82 by inauguration day, and obviously declining mentally, has virtually zero chance of making it through another four-year presidential term.
That means if Biden does get re-elected, voters will eventually get a Harris presidency. The 2020 Biden coalition is fragmenting. It’s losing a significant proportion of African-Americans and Hispanics to Trump, while young people have no relationship with Biden and no enthusiasm for him. Backers of Harris say she can appeal to these groups.
But there is no actual evidence for the proposition that Harris is a vote winner. Her approval ratings are lower than Biden’s. Harris ran in the Democratic primaries for president in 2020, but her support among all Democrat voters was so weak she had to suspend her campaign before a single vote was cast.
Which leads me to the moment’s third perplexing quality – the amount of sympathy Biden is receiving, as though he were a noble, aged champion beset by misfortunes he couldn’t avoid. In fact, that Biden has clung so desperately to the prospect of a second term is a sign of an appalling selfishness on his part.
If after the Democrats’ relative success in the midterm congressional elections in 2022, he had announced he wouldn’t seek a second term, the Democrats could have had a competitive, orderly, decent and above all democratic (in the generic rather than party-political sense) primary, and chosen their best candidate.
Not only that, Biden chose Harris as Vice-President partly because of her political mediocrity and lack of star power. It’s true she ticked all kinds of identity politics boxes, but Biden ruthlessly calculated that no one would ever want to ditch him for her. Which is why the Democrats are in such a mess now.
In the past 50 years the only presidential candidates secure enough in their own political mastery to choose running mates who could possibly become their rivals were Bill Clinton, when he chose Al Gore, and Ronald Reagan, when he chose George HW Bush.
Joe Biden is no Ronald Reagan. He’s not even a Bill Clinton.
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