USA 2024: Democratic Party Has One Problem – Joe Biden

By all accounts, the first presidential debate was a disaster for Joe Biden. The president’s campaign had made a bet that by moving the debate up to the end of June, Biden would be able to change the direction of the contest, in which, despite Donald Trump’s unpopularity with independents and myriad criminal justice issues, the incumbent still trailed in the polls. They lost that bet, because Biden looked even worse than usual, with a raspy and feeble voice, and rambling answers that at times – especially in the crucial first 15 minutes of the debate – came across as incoherent.

The response was immediate, and tellingly, it came mostly from the Democratic side. As the debate was still ongoing, commentators spoke of Democratic operatives sending panicked messages regarding Biden’s performance. And in the following days, the voices calling for the president to step aside have been numerous, including strong supporters of his policies in the leading national newspapers, such as Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, and David Ignatius. For those who had already crossed this line in recent months, the debate was vindication; for others, who had held out hope that Biden could turn on the energy as he had done in his March State of the Union address, it was a letdown that provoked a painful realization of the need to consider the previously unthinkable, forcing the president to step aside for the good of the country.

Joe Biden and his circle of close advisors began to push back immediately. His wife Jill said that he did a great job. The comment that the president had “answered all the questions” made it look like she was talking to a child, or trying to shield her shocked husband from reality. The next day the president held a rally in which he found his voice again – albeit with a teleprompter, and earlier in the day – and lamented the difficulty of debating someone who lies so much. It may be too little, too late. The first two weeks after the debate will be crucial, as new polls roll in. A dip for Biden will make it clear that overcoming the debacle in Atlanta will be a tall order, and thus the risk of Trump returning to the White House is very real. If this is the situation in mid-July, the establishment response will move into high gear, setting up a showdown with the Biden camp before the Democratic Convention.

The effects of a withdrawal from the race at this point are unknown. Biden and his team will continue to make the same argument as before, trying to downplay the misstep in the debate. As in the primaries, a change in candidate means opening up the party to internal fighting, unleashing the type of divisions that Biden has been able to limit during his term. Indeed, the president has done the party, and the country, an important service in recent years, adopting the right mix to make real progress on some of the most important issues facing the United States. He has embraced the economic shift away from globalization and developed a new form of industrial policy, triggering change to an extent not seen in decades in the West. At the same time, he seeks to maintain dialogue with working class voters and avoid being branded as an extremist on cultural issues. This mix is exactly what the Democrats needed to address the demands resulting from the populist upsurge beginning with the support for Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Despite this success, Biden has clearly not been able to unify the country. He is unpopular and faces headwinds due to the difficulties caused by inflation, the surge of immigration during his term, and two wars in which he is unable, or unwilling, to take decisive action to put an end to the fighting. Rather than convince America’s allies to adopt the type of foreign policy realism that the president himself had embraced at the beginning of his term, he is living in the contradiction of supplying Israel with weapons while calling for peace, and providing increasing support to Ukraine despite wishing to avoid great power confrontation.

There are political factors to consider for those who urge a Biden withdrawal: Vice President Kamala Harris is just as unpopular as he is, and there would be less than three months to introduce a new candidate to the country. The standard line is that changing horses in the middle of the stream is a

bad idea, and likely to hurt the party. The flip side is that a younger candidate could energize the race and provide the needed distance from what people perceive as the failures of those currently in office. There is no lack of names, in particular among Democratic governors of important states. At the top of the list is Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, followed by Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Gavin Newsom of California, although choosing someone from such a liberal state would be a risk. There are also senators and cabinet secretaries, while Michelle Obama is a long shot as she lacks direct political experience and voters could be skeptical of another attempt at a dynasty.

At a broader, strategic level, the considerations are clear. The permanent institutions of the US government, or the Deep State, as Trump and his friends would call them, have no intention of allowing a return of someone who has no respect for them. Two years ago, a Pentagon consultant told me that if Trump even gets close to the White House again, there would be a strong reaction from the national security sector to prevent his election. We are now in that situation, making an institutional push for a change in candidate more likely in the coming weeks.

The other possibility is for members of the establishment to make peace with the idea of a second Trump administration, accepting another period of disruption on economic and social issues, but working to ensure that he would be able to make few fundamental changes on strategic questions. It worked last time, as the president was blocked at every turn from implementing a new policy on Russia, and ultimately contributed to a widely-shared policy correction towards China. Indeed, there has been a significant level of continuity in the overall direction of the country between Trump and Biden, two presidents who have driven the “post-global” shift inaugurating a new industrial policy in order to face the current phase of geopolitical competition.

Internally, however, the risks are significant. Trump has shown no respect for the country’s institutions, and has made it clear that he intends to expand presidential power significantly. This time he also has the support of a large portion of the Republican establishment. The Heritage Foundation, previously strong supporters of free market liberalism, has drawn up “Project 2025,” a plan for the next Trump administration. It sets out a strategy to use government to aggressively push MAGA-style conservative positions, and also to weaken the ability for institutional resistance to top- down change.

In essence, the perception in Washington is that Trump represents a serious threat to the democratic stability in the United States, as demonstrated with his actions to contest the 2020 presidential election. This could be a key factor encouraging the establishment to push Joe Biden out of the 2024 race and try a new, younger candidate, against whom Trump would face a much tougher challenge.