When both Barack Obama and The Economist are yelling at you, it's time to listen.
Joe Biden's reelection campaign is clearly a disaster.
President Joe Biden was warned that he shouldn’t run for reelection — over and over again — but he dismissed the pleas from his own party and announced a campaign anyway. Unsurprisingly, the unpopular politician who lost primary after primary before elite intervention in 2020 — and then a basement general election campaign that allowed him to hide his frailty and weaknesses — is now struggling. He’s struggling so much that even Barack Obama and The Economist are effectively yelling at him to fix things, lest his personal failures facilitate the return of Donald Trump to the White House. When these mainstream, normie voices start yelling, you should probably listen.
At a recent lunch, the Washington Post reported that former President Barack Obama “grew animated” when discussing the problems with Biden’s campaign, especially micromanagement from the Oval Office.
Obama grew “animated” in discussing the 2024 election and former president Donald Trump’s potential return to power, one of the people said, and has suggested to Biden’s advisers that the campaign needs more top-level decision-makers at its headquarters in Wilmington, Del. — or it must empower the people already in place. Obama has not recommended specific individuals, but he has mentioned David Plouffe, who managed Obama’s 2008 race, as the type of senior strategist needed at the Biden campaign.
“Animated” probably refers to shouting or yelling. Obama is clearly extremely worried that Biden is about to hand the White House back to Trump on a silver platter. And, given Biden served two terms as Obama’s VP, it won’t just be Biden’s legacy on the line, but also his own.
While Obama is yelling at Biden in private, The Economist — perhaps the most normie publication imaginable — is doing so in public. The magazine has published two pieces — this and this — expressing alarm about Biden’s weaknesses as a candidate, his decision to run for reelection, and the potential for Trump to return to power.
The Economist suggests it is probably too late to replace Biden as the nominee, but argues that replacing Kamala Harris with a stronger vice presidential candidate could help to rescue his campaign and allow him to serve as a kind of co-president during a second term when his frailty will only become a bigger challenge.
The president is not a good campaigner and is up against a candidate whose rallies are a cult meeting crossed with a vaudeville show. He needs someone who can speak to crowds and go on television for him. That person is not Ms Harris.
One way she could serve her party and her country, and help keep Mr Trump out of the White House, would be to forswear another term as vice-president. Mr Biden could present his second term as a different kind of presidency, one in which he would share more responsibility with a vice-president acting more like a ceo. Either way, Mr Biden needs the help of an army of enthusiastic Democrats willing to campaign alongside him. At the moment he and his party are sleepwalking towards disaster.
While I think replacing Harris could help, it won’t change the fact that the guy on top of the ticket is a deeply unpopular man who will be turning 86 before the end of his second term. I would submit that if primary challenger Dean Phillips is particularly successful in New Hampshire, Biden would have another — perhaps his last short of a health situation — exit opportunity. According to Politico, Phillips “has set 42 percent as a barometer for success,” so if he does achieve that outcome, Biden might consider acknowledging his weaknesses as a candidate and making space for other Democrats, like Gretchen Whitmer and Jared Polis, to join the primary.
There are many potential paths forward that could lead to a Democrat retaking the White House instead of Donald Trump, but the reality is that Joe Biden’s broken campaign is currently making a second Trump more — not less — likely. Perhaps Biden and his aides can turn things around, but the president doesn’t seem to appreciate constructive feedback.
If Barack Obama doesn’t see significant progress from Biden World by the end of the month, he should invite the president to yet another lunch and, at that meeting, ask him to pass the torch to a new nominee. If Biden refuses to announce an end to his reelection campaign on his own terms, Obama should actively encourage other Democrats to join Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson in challenging the incumbent president. It may be time to start moving from yelling to action.