Democrats Are Taking an Enormous Risk

‘T here is no gambling like politics,” wrote Benjamin Disraeli. “Nothing in which the power of circumstance is more evident.”

To which the contemporary Democratic Party appears to be saying: “Political gambling? All in, please.”

Yes, yes, I know. On TV and in the newspapers, America’s professional progressives are obliged to pretend that President Biden is a great and beloved man, with a spry affect, a pristine soul, and a panoply of cherished accomplishments, and that he is therefore the best choice to lead them in 2024. But, surely, in private, they must suspect that that’s all fluff? Thanks mostly to the Republicans’ ongoing yen for political suicide, Biden is, indeed, the favorite in next year’s presidential election. And, if circumstances conspire, he will likely stay that way. But if they don’t? If, as P. G. Wodehouse had it, “fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping”? Then, all bets are off.

It is possible to win American elections on purely negative terrain, but, as a rule, those who attempt it do not leave themselves much room for error. There is nothing special about Joe Biden that exempts him from this standard. His policies have failed. His ludicrous pitch as the man who would bring “unity” is in tatters. He’s widely regarded as too old, too untrustworthy, and too out of it to run the White House for much longer. He’s disliked — and deservedly so. Since 1952, only one U.S. president has ever had lower second-year approval ratings.

The good news for Biden is that his most likely challenger next year is the man who holds the record: Donald Trump. The bad news for Biden is that, since their last matchup, his pitch has gone from fantasy to reality and barely survived the trip. In essence, the Democrats’ current plan is to bet it all on a nasty, incompetent, peculiar old man whom a supermajority of voters do not want to run for president again, in the hope that, despite that man’s many shortcomings, he might represent the best candidate to take on the other nasty, incompetent, peculiar old man whom Americans do not want to run for president again. Will this work? Perhaps. Would any self-respecting political outfit want to risk it? I think not.

One does not need Cassandra’s gifts to augur the many ways in which Biden’s candidacy could collapse. Reportedly, Democrats are worried about the possibility that the 80-year-old Biden could take a devastating tumble in public and kill his bid in an instant. But if Biden is, indeed, as frail and senile as most voters have come to suspect, it will not require a spectacular moment to expose the problem once and for all; it will happen cumulatively, over time. Running for president is difficult. In 2020, Biden was able to use the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to stay on his porch. In 2024, this option will not be available. If, as seems likely, Biden isn’t up to the task of campaigning, it will be clear from his ineloquence, his confusion, the slowness of his wit. In the four years since he announced his candidacy, Biden has deteriorated considerably. There is no good reason to believe that the next two years will yield a turnaround.

And that’s before we get to Harold Macmillan’s “events.” The last presidential election came down to about 40,000 votes in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia. Does anyone doubt that those votes might be tipped back by stubborn inflation, by the interest rates that are necessary to address that stubborn inflation, or by the recession that three-quarters of Americans believe is coming and nearly half believe is already here? How about by some ill-timed chaos at the border, or by the arrival of rolling power outages caused by green zealotry, or by a reversal in the fortunes of the labor market? That Biden is slightly less unpopular than his most likely opponent is true. It is not, however, much of a slogan. When prodded, “slightly less” can become “slightly more” extremely quickly. How strange the change from major to minor.

If, after all, Biden’s foil is not Donald Trump, this risk will become greater. It is not unreasonable for the Democrats to suspect that Trump will prevail once again in the Republican primaries, and, by making himself toxic to the middle of the country, effectively do their job for them. And yet they will not know whether they were right to assume this until it is too late. Given what we now know, Biden vs. Trump isn’t a terrible bet to make. But Biden vs. DeSantis? Biden vs. Scott? Biden vs. Pence? Those are different kettles of fish entirely. How ironic it would be for the Democrats to invest everything in the second act of Joe Biden as anointed Trump-killer, only to watch as a younger, less damaged candidate accepts the Republicans’ invitation, and barnstorms around the country reading from a wholly different script.

Clearly, two can play this game. Having decided that everything is at stake, the Republicans have looked around this vast country of ours and resolved to put the guy who lost the last election at the top of the public opinion polls. In response, the Democrats have concluded that, their apocalyptic rhetoric notwithstanding, they, too, can afford to live a little dangerously. It’s early days, but the signs are already pointing to the floor of the casino, where on Election Night 2024, Americans of all stripes will relax into their anguish in the knowledge that there’s plenty of whiskey left, that the dealer is paid to be here all night, and that, in the long run, we’re all going bankrupt anyway.