Want To Save American Democracy? It's Biden or Bust

Biden’s age is a factor that will have to be managed during the campaign, but he has a better chance of beating Trump than any of the alternatives

In one of my first Perilous Times columns, I called to “End the Gerontocracy.” I stand by my point that America would be better off with younger leaders than President Biden, Donald Trump, and the senior citizens running the U.S. Senate (since my column, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and James Clyburn all stepped down from their leadership positions in the House).

But the question before America today, less than 14 months before the 2024 general election, isn’t about the characteristics we would ideally like to see in the next president, but rather the far more compelling question of who can save the country from the destruction that would surely ensue if Donald Trump were given the keys to the White House again. Joe Biden is not the perfect Democratic candidate to do this, but he is the best one we have. 

The writers at Saturday Night Live nailed this issue in a brilliant video over a year ago, showing the “horrors” of running an 80+-year-old for president, but then coming to the realization that all the other options were worse (really, watch the video). But now, when it is realistically too late for a sharp change of course, Democratic strategists, grand poohbahs of the Washington press corps, and “nervous” Democratic voters are casting doubt on whether Biden should be the nominee.

There is good reason to be nervous. The stakes are always high in presidential elections, but that is especially so in 2024 because of the GOP’s cult-like obsession with the authoritarian narcissist Donald Trump. He will almost certainly be put forward as the party’s nominee. Once that happens, the reality is that Trump has decent chance of winning the presidency because extreme polarization in America means that anyone with an (R) next to his name walks into the election with maybe as much as 45% of the electorate (with the same being true on the Democratic side). American elections are a fight over this remaining 10%. Democrats seem to believe the polls should show Biden way ahead because Trump’s assault on democracy, appalling personal behavior, corruption, 91 pending felony charges, and horrible policy ideas should be disqualifying. But that is not the way it works. 2024 will be a close election, just like 5 of the last 6 presidential elections, all of which had popular vote margins of under 5%. 

The latest wave of Democratic teeth gnashing and bed wetting have been caused by David Ignatius’ column calling on Biden to step down despite his assessment that he has been “a successful and effective president”, combined with a string of polls showing that a large chunk of voters have concerns about Biden’s age.

Let’s consider the usually astute Mr. Ignatius’ inane column first.

Ignatius calls for Biden to terminate his campaign, but offers absolutely no analysis on what an alternative to Biden-Harris might be.

The most likely heir-apparent to Biden at the top of the ticket would be Vice President Harris. But Ignatius casts doubt on whether it is even a good idea for Harris to be on the ticket as Biden’s running mate due to her low approval ratings and his personal assessment that “she has failed to gain traction in the country and her own party” (more on this later).

So, Ignatius seems to be recommending a free-for-all Democratic primary process kicking off a mere five months before the South Carolina primary. No candidate will have a shred of campaign infrastructure or a dime of campaign funds. None of them other than Harris is likely to have national profile. And I know the press loves to be able to cover a horse race with a free flow of ideas and proposals. But no one should believe that a chaotic, wide open primary process will show the best face of the Democratic Party or that voters will be attracted by the messages coming from a slew of marginal candidates trying to capture the hearts and minds of sub-groups of left-leaning Democratic primary voters.

Ignatius also assumes that Biden declining to run will lead to a fresh wind blowing through the Democratic party, but that is no guarantee. If there were a vacuum at the top of the ticket, the one person who would be primed to run, with a substantial base of loyalty and the ability to mount a campaign quickly is, of course, 75-year-old Hillary Clinton. I wonder how the poll numbers would look for Trump-Clinton II?  I personally reach the same conclusion as the SNL video – it would be a horror show.

For the chance to experience this uncertainty and disarray, Ignatius thinks that Democrats should sideline an incumbent president with a strong record of accomplishment, who is guiding the nation successfully through a proxy war with Russia and stiff economic competition with China, and is guiding an economy that most expect will be in pretty good shape this time next year when voters will cast their ballot. I know Biden has a lot of liabilities. But here is something you don’t hear the pundits talking about. Biden is 10-0 in federal elections going back to 1972, including 3-0 when his name was on the ballot nationally. And if you think the 7 Senate elections were no-brainers, you can go talk to the 5 Democrats who lost to Republican Senator Bill Roth in Delaware while Biden was in office. While I hear lots of names bandied about who people think could beat Trump, I have yet to see an actual strategy, rather than a fantasy, that increases the odds of keeping Trump out of the White House over what Biden offers.

As for the polls, it is unwise to blithely discount voters’ concerns with Biden’s candidacy at his age.

But what is remarkable is that the press seems to be focusing exclusively on Biden’s age, even though voters are almost equally concerned with Trump’s age, with one poll showing 68% thinking Biden is too old and 63% that Trump is too old for office. It would also be nice if every time the press reports that Biden would be 86 when he finishes his term, it also noted that Trump would be 82 ½. 

But the bottom line is that voters are almost certainly going to be stuck with two candidates they did not want to see on the ballot and think are too old for the job. They will have to choose one. In this head-to-head, I think President Biden, if he runs a solid campaign and avoids any major health issues over the next year, is going to fare quite well. (And by the way, I know Democrats are terrified by a falling incident or other public display of decrepitude during the campaign … but it is equally likely for this to happen to the overweight, burger-eating Trump as Biden – so to my mind, this is a wash). 

One final thing to consider is the running mate for Biden. 

Were it not for Biden’s age, this would not even be worth discussing. Studies all show that voters decide based on the top of the ticket and Harris has done nothing to deserve being removed. There is no worse job in Washington than being the vice-president to a not very popular president. Harris has certainly executed this “warm bucket of spit” job no worse than any of her predecessors. 

But it is fair for voters considering whether to elect an 82-year-old president to more carefully scrutinize the vice-president that might replace him prior to the next election. Ignatius seems to suggest Biden should dump Harris for a person that America would feel more comfortable with as president. Every other candidate looks great until they have undergone presidential level scrutiny. There are a lot of Gretchen Whitmer fans out there. But Ron DeSantis is showing how being a popular governor does not automatically translate to success on the presidential campaign trail. And I wonder if Mr. Ignatius thinks that a person who has focused mainly on rebuilding Detroit and the auto industry for the past six years is really qualified to go head-to-head with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. I think that if you put Ms. Harris next to the other (untested) VP wannabes, the case for replacing her is quite weak. Finally, even the tone-deaf Ignatius concludes that kicking Harris off the ticket would be a horrible slight to Democrats’ most important and loyal constituencies, women and Blacks. This would be an injury Biden could ill afford. So, I think that short of a vacancy for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court becoming available over the next year, Kamala Harris is going to be the VP nominee.

It is time for Democrats, never-Trumpers, independents who care about the future of American democracy, and good people who just want competency and decency in the White House to stop fretting about who would be the ideal leader for the next four years. It is Biden-Harris or calamity. The choice is clear.