The Biden problem

Sixty-one per cent of Americans don’t want Biden to run again for US president. That includes nearly four in ten of those who voted for him in 2020.*

So what? He’s running anyway. The process starts in earnest next week in Iowa, with the very serious risk that it will end with the return of Trump.

Elephant / room. Ten months out from the most polarising and consequential US election in memory and possibly in history, the 81 year-old incumbent

• is trailing Trump in head-to-head opinion polls;
• has lower approval ratings than any post-war president at this point in his first term;
• is failing to impress voters with his economic record despite low inflation and the lowest unemployment since the sixties; and
• isn’t getting any younger.

Double-down. Even so, he’s shown no sign of stepping aside to make way for a more vigorous candidate. No senior party figure asked him to either. Instead, Democrats are attacking third-party candidates and the lone primary challenger as Trump-enablers, and road-testing talking points to make the case for four more years.

Circled wagons. Democrats consulted for The Biden Operation, a new Tortoise podcast available now in the Tortoise app, offered a six-point justification for sticking with their man:

1. A choice – is what voters will face in November, unlike the referendum on the incumbent that opinion polls offer now; and when the choice is between Biden and the architect of January 6th, the argument goes, Biden wins.
2. The economy – will be decisive and a broadly positive story in 2024, thanks to falling interest rates and heavy investment in red states catalysed by Biden’s inshoring and green energy incentives. Just because he isn’t getting the credit now doesn’t mean he won’t in the end.
3. The base – loyal voter turnout will be critically important, and Trump’s base in terms of national vote share is shrinking because of the 91 felony counts of which he stands accused.
4. Influencers – Biden doesn’t have to sound like Biden. His minders will be relying on influencers (think Taylor Swift) to reach niche demographics on his behalf. 
5. Better Biden – this argument says he’s actually a better candidate at 81 – more focused, less garrulous – than he was at 77.
6. Fitter Biden – the physical version of point 5 says he may look frail but at least you can believe what he and his doctors say, which can’t be said of Trump.

Good luck with much of that, critics will say. But Biden’s outriders are ready to play hardball. One told us he had it on good authority that Trump had heart stents fitted in secret while president. Expect more of that as the campaigns get dirtier and…

Stakes rise. Biden’s people say he’s the party’s only proven Trump-killer and has to stick around for the re-match because the stakes are so high. For precisely the same reason, the few Democrats brave enough to break ranks say he should step aside. 

What they agree on is that the American republic has not faced a threat as profound as Trump since the Civil War. The threat comes in three parts, says Susan Glasser, co-author of The Divider, a book on Trump’s first term:

• Personnel – Trump felt constrained by conventional conservatives in his first term but he won’t make that mistake again: Project 2025, run by the Heritage think tank, envisages 20,000 political appointments to federal departments in the first year of a new Trump administration.
• Time – in 2016, Trump’s transition was unexpected and a rush. Next time it won’t be.
• Madness – Trump is in a “spiral of escalation,” Glasser says. “He needs to do more and more outrageous things to keep the adoring audience that he lives for.”

Saturday was the third anniversary of the January 6th insurrection. Biden marked it with a fired-up speech at Valley Forge attacking Trump for embracing political violence. The idea was to link George Washington’s fight for independence in 1777-8 with what Democrats say is a fight for American democracy in 2024. If reminders of January 6th don’t resonate as a Biden re-election theme, the danger is that nothing will.

*Economist/YouGov, December 2023