His party should be grateful he’s seen as forgettable.
His party should be grateful he’s seen as forgettable.
T he normal people in my life — the non–political junkies — have started asking me if the Democrats are setting up Biden with this classified-documents scandal. They aren’t the only ones wondering. They woke up shortly after the new year and suddenly Merrick Garland was appointing a special counsel, Republican Robert Hur, to investigate the president. What gives? Tucker Carlson floated the idea that the documents mess is the beginning of the end for Joe Biden.
And now the headlines are rolling in. Democrats worry it will be Biden’s “Hillary emails moment.” The AP says that Biden’s political future is “clouded by classified document probe.” His chances of winning in 2024 are “getting more unlikely.”
I have no idea if Biden is being pushed under the bus. But it would be really stupid if he was. Even if Biden were 20 years older and started doing guest appearances on HBO as the Crypt Keeper, he would remain the best option for the Democrats.
Even with a tiny congressional majority, he and the octogenarian leadership teams in Congress were able to steer a course between Republicans on one side and the House Progressive Caucus on the other. Once inflation in fuel prices began to abate, Biden’s poll numbers steadied and Democrats refused to crash and burn in the midterms.
Biden is never going to inspire Democrats the way Bill Clinton or Barack Obama did. Clinton marked the advent of power for the Baby Boomers. Obama’s historic victory speaks for itself. But in an age of polarization, a lack of inspiration on one side implies a consequent lack of fear on the other, which has its political advantages.
While it’s easy to find this or that conservative commentator denouncing Biden as the worst president the country has ever had, the truth is that the conservative-base voter and the Republican-leaning independent voter have never hated or feared Biden the way they hated and feared Bill Clinton, or the way they eventually came to hate and fear Barack Obama. Biden, whether because of his age or affect, just does not inspire conservatives to reach for their sick bags, to produce and consume as much political kitsch, or to turn out for Republicans in midterm elections. Biden is the reason the 2022 midterm elections didn’t look more like 1994 or 2010.
Why is that? Partly, because Biden does not strike the average voter as a member in good standing of the Democratic Party of soulless, upwardly mobile, overeducated Millennial technocrats and identity-politics tyrants. Those people kind of hate Joe Biden. And Joe Biden’s triumph in the Democratic primary of 2020 was a victory — perhaps the last — for a multiracial, working-class coalition within the Democratic Party led by relatively moderate, older black voters.
Another reason is that Biden’s obvious frailty — his lack of vigor — is his greatest strength. It prevents him from ever being a utopian or appearing like one. It forces him to keep the implicit promise of his anti-Trump campaign, that there would be entire weeks during which most Americans don’t even have to think about the president. Once the Biden administration was disabused of Jon Meacham’s plan to turn him into a hybrid of FDR and LBJ, Biden’s approval ratings started their slow march back up. A president who is no longer determined to have a historic presidency — merely a successful one — is one who isn’t threatening his political opponents with historic defeats and reversals.
After Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party and ascent to the presidency, and then two of the strangest years of everyone’s life during the pandemic, Biden is becoming the candidate of normalcy. And like a normal candidate, he is preparing for his reelection by quietly emphasizing his moderation — his passage of a popular infrastructure bill and more recent attempt to do something about the scenes of chaos at the American border.
I understand why Democrats are nervous about running such an aged and frail man for president again. But, if the alternatives are people such as Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg, well, you’re going to miss Joe when he’s gone.