If Joe Biden Loses, It's Joe Biden's Fault
A majority of Democrats and Americans have consistently told him to pass the torch.
For well over a year, a majority of Democrats have made clear to Joe Biden they don’t want him to run again. From July 2022 to February 2023 to September 2023, the message has been the same — pass the torch to someone else, Joe.
Yesterday’s CNN poll was particularly brutal for the incumbent president — a majority of Democrats and Democratic-aligned independents said they want a new nominee and are concerned about his age, a majority under 45 said he doesn’t inspire confidence.
The CNN poll followed two viral articles — this and this — by statistician Nate Silver, which raised concerns about Joe Biden’s age and Kamala Harris’ ability to take his place and beat Donald Trump.
But for all that said — if the expert class doesn’t understand that Biden’s age is both a real concern for voters and a valid concern, they’d better be prepared for a getting second Trump term instead. This election is probably going to be close, and Trump might be only one Biden-has-a-McConnell-moment away from winning.
Despite poll after poll after poll revealing Democrats — and Americans more generally — want a new Democratic nominee and have serious concerns about Biden’s age, journalist David Roberts wrote a thread — presumably in response to the Nate Silver pieces — excoriating pundits and journalists for discussing the matter. In the lengthy diatribe, Roberts argued that “obsessing over Biden's age in public” will “weaken Biden in the election & raise the chances of Trump winning.”
To borrow Biden’s own language, here’s the deal: a majority of Democrats — not just Americans, but Democrats from the president’s own party — have consistently said they do not want him to run again, though they have also said they would support him over Trump. (I would do the same.) Back in 2019 and 2020, Biden even agreed with them. Moreover, they have consistently expressed serious concerns about his age — Biden will be the oldest person to ever campaign for the U.S. presidency.
In other words, Biden has been warned multiple times by his own political party that he should step aside for a different nominee. Nonetheless, the president chose to ignore his party and announced a re-election bid via video in April 2023. So far, his lackluster campaign appears to be repeating many of the mistakes that led to Hillary Clinton’s devastating loss in 2016.
If Biden is the nominee next fall — I still think there’s time to consider alternatives like Jared Polis or Gretchen Whitmer — and he is responsible for Trump retaking the White House, Joe Biden and his aides will be to blame. Not Democratic voters, not independents, not social media trolls in St. Petersburg or Beijing, not Republicans, and not journalists. If the children ask me to buy tacos for dinner over and over again, but I come home with pizza instead, the pizza is going to go uneaten and it will be my fault for not listening.
Joe Biden and Democratic Party elites have a choice to make: listen to the voters who want a different nominee or roll the dice with an unpopular octogenarian that voters blame for their increasingly precarious livelihoods. A democratic Democratic Party would listen to its own members. If they don’t, they own the consequences.