What with all the hoopla over the firing of Tucker Carlson this week you may not have heard the big news: Joe Biden is old.
Yes, he's also running for president again but the announcement was overshadowed by the fact that every single news channel reporting on it accompanied it with reports of polls and man-on-the-street interviews in which Americans all agree that Joe Biden is just too old. And he is. 80 is ancient to be president, much older than the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, who will only be a sprightly 78 when he takes office.
I think many Democrats assumed that Biden would simply be an elderly caretaker president who would not do much but would steady the ship after the chaotic Trump years. Then he would pass the baton to one of the leaders from the next generation and step aside graciously. But Biden ended up surprising everyone by accomplishing a whole lot and under very difficult circumstances. Battling a once in a century pandemic, Biden managed to pass some of the most substantial legislation since the New Deal with a very narrow majority in the House, a couple of obstructionist Senate divas from his own party and an opposition that's gone batshit crazy. It's far more than anyone expected.
Yet to say people are unenthusiastic about a second term is an understatement. A recent NBC poll found that 70% of Americans don't want Biden to run again — and that includes 45% of Democrats. But as JV Last at the Bulwark points out, that's actually par for the course:
Every president has a percentage of people who don't want him to run for reelection, even in his own party. This was true of Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, Carter, and Ford. Really. Check out this Washington Post headline from September of 1982:
As it happens, the rap on Reagan was also that he was too old, a criticism he defused in the debate with rival Walter Mondale when he said, "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience" and everyone howled. He went on to win one of the biggest landslides in American history. That's not a line Biden can use on Trump, of course, since Trump is also as old as Methuselah, but it shows that while you can't avoid the issue, it can be dealt with with humor and self-deprecation.
Biden ended up surprising everyone by accomplishing a whole lot and under very difficult circumstances.
In his speech on Tuesday, Biden made his pitch: he wants to finish the job. As this article in Vox lays out, he has made a surprisingly good start. Coming into office and having to fix the carnage from the pandemic was no easy task. The economy was in crisis and he managed to quickly pass the American Rescue Plan which paved the way for it to recover quickly. Unemployment is now the lowest it's been since 1969 and inflation is falling after a steep rise due to the global emergency. Wages are rising quickly, especially in service and manual labor jobs.
He then helped negotiate the largest investment in clean energy in U.S. history and secured billions in badly needed new science spending. And unlike Trump, he actually signed the promised massive infrastructure legislation.
Despite all that, the country is still in a funk with most people believing the economy still sucks and having a grim view of the nation's direction. It's entirely predictable that Republicans and right-leaning independents would feel that way. That's partisanship. But I think Democrats are still suffering from the collective PTSD Trump has inflicted on the nation. Studies and surveys show that partisan hostility is at record highs and with the country so closely divided that doesn't make for a very stable and optimistic environment. Biden's tepid poll numbers bear this out.
Nonetheless, while Democrats may wish for a younger candidate and are sour on the direction of the nation, most polls also show that they will vote for Biden in a general election anyway. And that's because of their views of the opposition.
The Republicans, meanwhile, are at each other's throats.
Republicans have become so extreme and are still so enamored of Donald Trump, a man who incited an insurrection and convinced a majority of his own party that the election was stolen despite absolutely no evidence, that Democrats are motivated to vote regardless of who the nominee might be. They are as determined to keep Trump out of the White House and deny the Republicans a congressional majority as they were in 2020. Negative partisanship is driving them and it's a potent force.
Still, it's foolish to underestimate the positive power Biden, as president, actually has.
Incumbency is always a huge advantage and it's particularly important under these circumstances. As Last noted, "any other Democrat you could substitute for Biden asks voters to take a chance—and in so doing would turn Trump into the incumbent, since he is a known quantity." Meanwhile, the party remains united and it appears that Biden isn't going to have a serious primary challenge. (Bernie Sanders endorsed him immediately after his announcement.) The Democrats are in a good position to beat the GOP. Again.
The Republicans, meanwhile, are at each other's throats.
Trump is already facing what is shaping up to be a monumentally ugly primary with several rivals already lining up and possibly more to come. They may hate the Democrats, and Biden especially, but they hate each other just as much. And it's only going to get worse as the race goes on. The contrast couldn't be clearer.
Joe Biden has not been anyone's dream candidate. Nobody is writing songs about how they have a crush on him or lining up for hours to be in his presence. He's not that kind of politician. But he's managed to do a pretty good job under difficult circumstances while keeping his usually fractious coalition together. And he has a record of beating Donald Trump.
The Democrats could do a whole lot worse and it appears they know it.
