Latest Biden troubles come as Democrats mull whether he’s their best 2024 bet
W. James Antle III
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President Joe Biden is increasingly looking like a candidate for reelection, but the latest controversies encircling his White House raise new questions about whether Democrats should welcome that fact.
The pendulum on Biden’s reelection swung back in his favor after Democrats successfully weathered the midterm elections, retaining the Senate and minimizing House losses. Biden was not immediately reduced to lame-duck status.
CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS CONTROVERSY RAISES QUESTIONS ABOUT BIDEN’S THINK TANK
But Republicans did win the House and will be in a position to give fresh scrutiny to the shady business dealings of Hunter Biden. This comes on top of a classified documents scandal that is of the president’s own making.
At a minimum, these controversies could blunt promising lines of attack against former President Donald Trump, who is under his own special counsel investigation for mishandling sensitive government information and has already announced he will be a candidate in 2024. It is already reminiscent of the Hillary Clinton emails saga, a scandal viewed as overblown but also detrimental to their electoral prospects.
The steady drip of new document news is already sapping the enthusiasm that surrounded Biden after the Democrats survived the midterms, when the share of the party’s voters who thought he could win reelection jumped 11 points to 71%. While the story could be largely resolved by the time 2024 rolls around, it is presently unfolding against the backdrop of Biden’s reelection decision.
Rank-and-file Democrats have been telling pollsters they would prefer a different nominee than Biden for months. During the midterms, two-thirds of all voters said they didn’t want him to run for reelection.
But Washington Democrats are coalescing around Biden. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), the leading Democrat who has appeared to be making moves consistent with a national campaign, has said he is not running. The main alternatives inside the administration are Vice President Kamala Harris, whose poll numbers have been a persistent problem, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has had struggles of his own.
All this sets Biden up well to be the first octogenarian major party presidential nominee, itself likely to become an issue in the campaign, especially if the Republican standard-bearer is someone other than — and younger than — Trump.
David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser who remains an influential Democratic establishment figure, signaled as much last year. “The presidency is a monstrously taxing job and the stark reality is the president would be closer to 90 than 80 at the end of a second term, and that would be a major issue,” he said.
Biden has been through all this before. Last summer, his job approval ratings fell to the 30s, he was underwater even in a number of blue states, and a New York Times/Siena College poll found that 94% of Democrats under 30 didn’t want him to run again.
The president then went on a run legislatively, with a handful of bipartisan bills reaching his desk and the Democrats finally coming together on a reconciliation bill they dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act. The Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, further galvanizing liberals ahead an election where younger Democrats might have otherwise seen little reason to vote.
Biden was left for dead after disastrous early showings in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, which followed months of sleepwalking through Democratic presidential debates in 2019-20. But he won the South Carolina primary handily and was then on a glidepath to the nomination.
It is entirely possible that by the time it matters electorally, stories about where Biden kept classified documents and what Hunter was up to will be as forgotten as headlines suggesting he could lose to Buttigieg or Bernie Sanders.
The conventional wisdom about Biden has swung back and forth multiple times, usually moving back in his favor by the time the voters head to the polls. And Republicans have frequently squandered opportunities to take advantage of Biden’s weaknesses through self-inflicted wounds.
But Democrats will need to begin their 2024 decision-making basically now. A Biden announcement could come as early as March, months before there is any clarity about the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
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Democrats have reluctantly bet on Biden more than once, and that bet has mostly paid off up to this point.
Now Democrats have to ask themselves how long they can keep playing with house money.