Former President Joe Biden returned to the spotlight months after leaving office, delivering a speech against the backdrop of a growing number of books that paint an unflattering picture of his presidency and abortive reelection campaign.
The results were underwhelming.
While there were no major gaffes, Biden displayed a lot of the tendencies that led to him being shuffled off the stage last year: halting delivery, an inability to effectively drive a message, a possibly apocryphal opening anecdote with questionable relevance to the main subject of his speech.
Much of this is understandable. Biden is 82, after all, and age has taken a toll on him as an orator. That’s why Democrats pushed him aside after a disastrous debate performance.
But Biden is looking for his place in history, and Democrats are looking for a resistance leader as their opposition to President Donald Trump hardens.
Biden will now be able to go to his grave knowing that he did what former Vice President Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, and some two dozen major Republican political figures could not: beat Trump.
Both times the Democratic smart set talked him out of running for president, 2016 and 2024, Trump was elected. When Biden ignored them and persevered, Trump lost.
The wave of Democratic goodwill that greeted Biden’s decision to reluctantly step aside last year, despite having already won nearly all the primaries and convention delegates, has dissipated since Trump defeated Harris last November.
In a spate of tell-all books about the 2024 campaign, Biden is blamed for Harris’s loss. Biden indisputably presided over the conditions that allowed his predecessor-turned-successor to launch a historic political comeback.
Harris had her own shortcomings that contributed to her failure. Biden and his top lieutenants were hesitant to pass the baton to her because they feared she would lose to Trump.
The bottom line, however, is that Biden picked Harris as his running mate. He also endorsed her for president on the day he dropped out, short-circuiting former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hopes for a more competitive replacement process.
Now Democrats must search for a new leader. The problem is that things don’t look much better than when they ultimately settled on Biden in 2020.
A new Data Progress poll found that if the 2028 Democratic primaries were held today, Harris would lead with 18%, followed by former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at 14%, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Cory Booker at 12% each. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is at just 8% and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), Harris’s running mate last year, is a point behind Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) at 4%.
Take Harris out of the equation and Buttigieg leads with 17%, Ocasio-Cortez and Booker each receive 14%, Newsom improves to 10%, and everyone else is in single digits.
A national poll this far out from the Democratic primaries has little predictive power. But it tells us that as of right now, there is no clear front-runner for the party’s nomination and that no one figure looks close to capturing its leadership mantle at this point in Trump’s second term.
Booker’s historic 25-hour speech does appear to have improved his standing, compared to his ineffective 2020 campaign. He and Harris are the only Democrats to hit double digits with black respondents, at 13% and 36%, respectively.
Harris, who was just vice president for four years and was the Democratic nominee last year, can’t quite crack 20% nationally against a field of candidates with much lower name recognition, according to the top progressive polling operation.
A field of Buttigieg, Booker, a socialist, and a slew of relatively low-polling progressives looks awfully similar to the one from which Biden emerged victorious. And perhaps also the primary Democrats so desperately wanted to avoid in 2024.
DEMOCRATS KNEW THE RISKS WITH BIDEN. WHY WEREN’T THEY BETTER PREPARED?
Maybe it doesn’t matter if Trump is as unpopular in 2028 as he was in 2020. After all, Biden managed to win under those conditions. It’s also possible we could see the emergence of a successful dark horse, like Jimmy Carter in 1976 or Bill Clinton in 1992, though Democrats don’t look like they are in a Clintonian mood.
It’s possible that the 2028 Democratic presidential nominee is someone pollsters aren’t currently thinking about. But Democrats don’t currently have a leader and a greatly diminished Biden isn’t retiring yet, at least not from the paid speaking circuit.