Democrats Sleepwalking Toward a Cliff

As we slip-slide into another presidential election season, an important question persists: will Joe Biden really be the Democratic nominee?  Every passing poll makes the answer more urgent for Democrats.  A recent New York Times/Sienna College survey of likely voters showed Trump ahead of Biden 48%-44% and in five out of six key states, all of which Biden won in 2020.  That’s ruffled a good many feathers in the MSM that make no secret of their opposition to Trump and are thus queasy about Democratic weakness.

But that’s just the latest dollop of bad news for Biden and the Democrats.  Previous polls show Trump ahead of Biden, that most voters, including a whopping 67% of Democrats, don’t want Biden to run and that if he and Trump are the nominees, Trump would be elected.  Trump’s support among traditionally Democratic strongholds, like black and Hispanic voters, has jumped. 

Democrats, the MSM and sundry others have done their best for seven years now to discredit, disqualify and imprison Donald Trump, but every effort only makes his support stronger because his voters see that opposition for what it far too often is – an utterly dishonest exercise in elite power at the expense of a popular leader and democracy itself.  No wonder that every attack on Trump – whether justified or not - only stiffens their resolve.

So, with its continued support for a deeply unpopular president, the Democratic Party looks like it’s sleepwalking toward a cliff.  A few weeks ago, I predicted that someone sometime will have a sit-down with Biden and explain what needs to happen: he needs to announce that he won’t run again in 2024.

His message would be simple: he’s talked to his wife and advisors and, for the benefit of the party, the country and of course his family, concluded that his age prohibits him from seeking a second term; there are countless well-qualified Democrats who can do Job One - defeating Trump - better than he can and it’s time to let them try.

Democrats are understandably leery of a primary fight between an incumbent and a challenger. They’re not about to repeat the 1980 Kennedy vs. Carter debacle, but a Biden withdrawal would avoid that and allow the encomiums to flow unrestrained.  The new candidate would issue great and absurd platitudes about the outgoing president who would ride off into the sunset as the man who defeated the Evil Orange and then oh so gracefully retired. 

Then, if the mood of the country is accurately understood, there’s a huge body of Democratic and independent voters just waiting and praying to be able to vote for someone – anyone – other than Biden or Trump.  By withdrawing, Biden would give them their opportunity and his party by far it’s best chance of retaining the Oval Office.

If you’re a Democrat, it all makes so much sense.  So why hasn’t Biden, a lifelong Democrat, done the right thing?    

The only explanation I can offer is that he believes he can salvage his chances with peace agreements in Ukraine and Gaza coupled with an economy that may be calming inflation while retaining high employment.  As to the former, peace in Gaza may be nearer than anyone previously thought and some sort of agreement looks like the only remaining alternative in Ukraine.  

I have serious doubts about whether developments abroad will redound to Biden’s benefit at the polls.  After all, here’s what one “knowledgeable American official” says about the current state of the Biden Administration:

“There is a power vacuum in Washington. No one is running the show” while America is continuing to ship as many as one thousand bombs daily to Israel. “It’s chaos in the White House. They are saying the same things over and over. They are doing what they think will get the president re-elected. He is a George the Third. It’s scary, and it is disgraceful.”  

Not exactly an inspiring vote of confidence, and then there are the many career State Department officials who’ve sent a dissent memo to Biden saying that his Gaza policy is wrongheaded, violates international law and endangers U.S. interests.

But I suspect Biden’s handlers don’t see this as the best time to announce his departure, if ever.

Which brings us to the fact that, even with Biden intransigent and such a liability, Democratic Party officials are hardly without options, should they choose to take them.  After all, any resident American citizen 35 years old or older can seek the party’s nomination.  In fact, little-known Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips is doing just that, hoping to catch a wave of disaffected Democratic voters.

One key is the matter of superdelegates.  In the wake of the outrage following the party’s overrule of Democratic voters in the 2016 primaries, the DNC experimented with reducing superdelegates’ power, but still about 16% of delegates are “automatic.”  The result next year could easily see a Biden opponent garnering a critical mass of the votes currently dissatisfied with Biden and, with the backing of the SDs, coasting to the nomination and probably the White House.

In short, I continue to expect Biden to either drop out or for someone with a chance of winning (i.e., not Phillips) to step in and, with the backing of the SDs, take the nomination on the second ballot.

What’s apparently going on now just doesn’t make any sense.  Parties with an interest in power – and no one’s ever accused the Democrats of being anything else – just don’t sleepwalk off a cliff.