Why I Still Worry About Joe

Democrats were whipsawed last week. First came the news from a New York Times poll that Donald Trump was beating Joe Biden in five of six key states. That was bad. Then on Tuesday night Democrats did even better than expected, easily winning the governor’s office again in Kentucky, securing both houses of the Legislature in Virginia, winning a pro-choice constitutional amendment in Ohio and taking a Supreme Court seat in Pennsylvania. That was good.

So, which is it? Is Biden doomed or boomed?

I’m on the fence on that question. All I want to do is defeat Donald Trump. If that means we run Joe at ’em again, well, fine. If it means we find somebody else, that’s fine too. I think the important thing for all of us — Democrats or not — who despise Trump and all he stands for is to remain flexible and to make the most intelligent choice, the one that gives us the best odds.

To this point I’ve thought that those odds were with Biden. My reasoning was that he had beaten Trump before and that the Dems had done well in the midterms, despite his bad polling numbers, and the midterms are usually a referendum on the current administration. Also, elections often turn on the economy, which is doing well, though nobody seems to want to believe it.

But I’ve been becoming increasingly unsure that Biden is the best bet. His poll numbers simply won’t move, no matter what he does. That Times poll was a hard wake up call. Then there’s the age issue. I don’t think it’s fair, but he does look and sound frail. Over three-quarters of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, think he’s too old for the job. I worry about what happens if he has a Mitch McConnell moment or worse in the weeks leading up to next year’s election.

I also fret over Kamala Harris. Vice presidential candidates rarely matter, but I think she will be a factor — and a negative one — in this case. She’s as unpopular as her boss and people don’t think she’s up to the job. The hard-left will argue that it’s all about race and gender. While I think they’re probably a little bit right, it really doesn’t matter. If she’s a drag on the ticket, then she’s a drag on the ticket and voters’ motivations won’t make any difference in the outcome. But Biden probably can’t replace her because of the importance of identity politics among Democratic elites.

But, since we’re playing rhetorical tennis here, a countervailing argument is what those elites might do if Biden were to drop out. Would they turn to Harris of Gavin Newsom or someone from the hard-left wing of the party, who would have an even worse chance against Trump?

Even after last week’s election results I still tend to think it’s time to look for a new ticket. There are two reasons for that.

The first is that those results were not a referendum on Biden or on his party. They were a referendum on abortion. That was literally the case on the Ohio constitutional amendment, and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Democrats in Virginia and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court candidate all ran heavily on their pro-choice positions and the anti-choice views of their opponents. And where Democrats didn’t run on abortion, they lost. That was the case in Mississippi where Brandon Presley lost to Republican incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves. Elvis’ cousin couldn’t win in Mississippi and he was pro-life.

My second reason is one offered by my friend and Texas journalist Jack Craver. In the wake of last Tuesday, Jack pointed out that Democrats shouldn’t get too excited because Trump voters show up only to vote for Trump. In fact, in Kentucky about 1.3 million people voted in BeShear’s reelection while 2.1 million voted in the 2020 election that Trump won there by 26 points. Those 800,000 voters who sat out 2023 will go to the polls next year and they will be overwhelmingly for Trump, assuming he’s on the ballot. And that will happen, to varying degrees, in virtually every state.

Moreover, it’s still the case that in off-year elections more educated voters tend to show up. That used to mean more Republicans. But now that the Democrats have become the party of college graduates the script has been flipped. It’s likely that Democrats over-performed last week and it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about 2024, even if Trump somehow isn’t on the ballot.

All of which is to say thank God for Dean Phillips. Phillips is the little known Minnesota congressman who is getting his name on Democratic primary ballots. That’s important because those ballot windows are closing. It’s vital to have a placeholder for voters who have qualms about Biden should he continue to falter between now and the early primaries. In short, we need an escape hatch.

Those of us who are focussed on defeating Trump have three options. We can stick with Biden. We could look for an alternative. Or we can keep our options open as long as we can. Despite last week’s election results, I remain in the third camp.