Joe Biden Is the Democrats’ Problem

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Monday, May 08, 2023

 

Yesterday, Jim Geraghty noted the most recent ABC-Washington Post poll, which he called “brutal” for President Biden. As Jim observed, the story of the last six months was supposed to be that Biden had “defied the odds, executed a surprising turnaround, and had momentum heading into the 2024 presidential cycle.” If that poll is correct, however, none of those things can be true. Jim’s conclusion: “Yeah, never mind.”

 

Do Democrats understand the risk that they are taking here? Honestly, I am not sure that they do. In recent years — since 2016, really — I have heard many of my friends on the Left imply that, because Donald Trump is unfit for office, normal American voters should feel obliged to accept whatever garbage they are served up in lieu. This is wrong. Certainly, there are a lot of voters who, as Jim puts it, are likely to “take their chances with the senile guy rather than live through another four years of Trump.” But there are also a lot of voters who are likely to say the opposite. I am not sure that Democrats have reckoned with this.

 

It is not the fault of America’s voters that Joe Biden is terrible at being president. Like Republicans, Democrats have agency. If they lose because they renominate a man who is already too old for the job, that will be their fault. If they lose because they chose to stoke inflation to its highest rate in four decades, that will be their fault. If they lose because they promised comity but delivered partisanship, that will be their fault. In recent years, I have spent a great deal of time arguing with Republican activists who believe that the public’s distaste for Donald Trump and his friends is the public’s problem, rather than a problem faced by the Republican Party writ large. Obviously, it is not. There is no “ought” in this area, there is only “is,” and the “is” of the matter is that Donald Trump represents a massive liability for the GOP. Rail about that all day if you like; it will not change. The public gets to decide who the next president will be, and that public does not like Donald Trump. Could Trump win? Yes. Would a sensible party choose Trump as its nominee? It would not.

 

Well, the same rules apply to the Democrats. Per Jim’s poll, a supermajority of Americans — including a majority of self-identified Democrats — do not want Biden to run for the presidency again. If, ignoring this, the Democrats nominate Biden anyway, that will be the Democrats’ fault. Elsewhere, the survey shows Biden’s approval rating at 36 percent — which is Biden’s fault; it has his approval rating “underwater among a slew of groups that supported him by wide margins in 2020” — which is Biden’s fault; and it reveals that, by a substantial margin, the public thinks “Trump did a better job handling the economy than Biden has so far” — which is objectively true, and which, again, is Biden’s fault. The Republicans won in 2016 because the Democrats chose Hillary Clinton as their nominee. That was the Democrats’ fault. The Republicans lost in 2020 because they chose Donald Trump as their nominee. That was the Republicans’ fault. If, in 2024, the election is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, both parties will deserve what comes to them.

 

Biden’s liabilities are not going away. In its write-up, the Post notes that “63 percent” of the voters it surveyed believe that Biden “does not have the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president, up from 43 percent in 2020 and 54 percent a year ago.” That is Biden’s problem, not the problem of those who have noticed it. The same goes for the fact that “62 percent say Biden is not in good enough physical health to be effective” — that’s Biden’s problem; for that fact that “41 percent say Biden is honest and trustworthy while 54 percent say he is not” — that’s Biden’s problem; and the fact that, for now at least, more voters are willing to say that they’d vote for Trump than that they’d vote for Biden — that’s Biden’s problem, too. Accepting responsibility is the first step toward wisdom. That goes for the Democratic Party as well.