As Biden turns 80, it’s time for the Democrats to face their succession problem
Some think the president is too old to run for re-election, but his party lacks quality rivals to take his place. Freddy Gray reports
Joe Biden turns 80 tomorrow and he was said to be in excellent spirits. Aboard Air Force One this week, flying to and from various global summits, the Commander-in-chief reportedly had a “spring in his step” thanks to last week’s midterm election results.
His party may just have lost the House of Representatives, yet the Democrats held the Senate. The Republican “red wave” did not come crashing in. The White House’s much-mocked electoral strategy – brushing off concerns about the economy and focusing on the twin threats of Trumpism and the abortionstopping “far-right” – appears to have been vindicated. Team Biden is now congratulating itself in particular on the timing of its “student debt forgiveness” programme – which is thought to have brought out large numbers of young voters.
Even if Biden had been thrashed in midterms, he’s understood to be stubbornly insistent that he deserves a second term. Barack Obama did much worse in his first midterms, so now Biden’s inner circle – including his wife Jill, the power behind the throne according to Joe himself – are said to be increasingly bullish about his re-election chances in 2024. Or, as one Democratic operative in Washington puts it: “Who gives up Air Force One? The answer is nobody. He’s not going anywhere. Period.”
Biden feels he’s had a rough couple of years, but now has a chance to shine. He prides himself on his ability to “work across the aisle” and boasts that he has spent decades dealing with Republicans in Congress. He also knows, from his years as Obama’s vice-president, that obstinate opposition can be a useful foil. After losing the midterms in 2010, Obama and Biden blamed almost all their failures on the stubborn Republican majority blocking them in the House. Obama and Biden then won again in 2012.
There are, however, gloomy clouds on the horizon. The American economy is teetering towards a slump. “Things are slowing down,” admitted Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and Washington Post owner, this week. “You’re seeing layoffs in many sectors of the economy. The probabilities say if we’re not in a recession right now, we’re likely to be in one very soon.” Or, as that other somewhat worse-off billionaire, Donald Trump, put it in his presidential campaign announcement in Florida this week: “The citizens of our country have not yet realised the full extent and gravity of the pain our nation is going through. But they will very soon.”
Trump’s gamble is that, by 2024, Americans will be so sick of “The Joe Biden economy” that they will in desperation turn to him again as their saviour. A severe financial slump could make that notion less far-fetched than it now sounds.
“The feeling here is that the party got away with it,” says one Dc-based former government official. “The fear is that they are going to learn all the wrong lessons from these results and think that Biden is doing a great job.” Others point towards the polls showing that some 70 per cent of Americans think their country is on the wrong track. Biden’s “job approval” score has dipped too in recent days, despite the upbeat mood music from the White House.
The other looming concern over Biden is that everyone can see he is not a young 80 year old. He has had two brain aneurysms, walks gingerly and often looks lost. His gaffes are worse than mere verbal slips. Last month, for instance, he claimed that he passed the student debt scheme through Congress by “a vote or two”. In fact, he implemented the measure through executive order.
Influential Democrats insist in public that the president is full of stamina and all the talk of senility is dastardly Republican slander. Off the record, they admit: “He just seems old”.
Back in 2020, amid the Covid pandemic, Biden’s supporters called him a “placeholder president” – an emergency fix to the disaster-in-chief that was Trump. Few envisioned him as an 86-year-old plodding around the West Wing in 2028? Over the summer, polling suggested that 64 per cent of Democratic voters would prefer a candidate other than Biden in 2024.
The problem for the Democrats is that nobody knows who that candidate is. “The party elite, who would be glad to see him ousted, have a major problem: there is no alternative,” says one long-time Democratic operative in Washington DC. “They’ll stick with him because they have no choice. If they have to prop him up, if they can physically somehow keep him standing, they will run him,” says another influential Democrat in New York. Political insiders tend to agree that the “Democratic bench” looks weak, but that isn’t stopping a lot of speculation as to who might conceivably knock Biden off his perch in 2024.
In normal times, the vice president would be the natural replacement for a President whose health was fading. But these are not normal times and Kamala Harris has bizarrely low approval ratings. She was notable in the midterms for her absence: Democratic campaigners just didn’t want her speaking at their events because she’s thought to be a vote loser. “Appointing her was an accidental stroke of Biden genius,” says one Republican strategist. “She’s zero threat to him.”
America’s most popular Democrat is Bernie Sanders, who at 81 is the grandfather of the American Left. His advisers say he is “focused on helping Biden have a successful presidency”, but that he has “not ruled out another run for president”. But would the party really push out Biden for being too old, only to replace him with someone even older? That seems doubtful.
Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s transportation secretary, is the most often-touted name when Democrats start talking about elevating someone younger. He’s 40 and, if elected in 2024, would be the second youngest president of all time after Teddy Roosevelt. He showed considerable talent as a public performer when he ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020 and finished third in the primaries.
He is also a married gay man, which excites American liberals obsessed with elevating traditionally underprivileged groups. But Buttigieg is also widely scoffed as a classic “laptop class” candidate – a former Mckinsey consultant who turns off anyone who earns under $100,000 a year. He also polls very badly with Africanamericans and a candidate who can’t mobilise black voters will not win the Democratic nomination.
Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, has now emerged as a leading Democratic lady, especially as she defied the polls in the midterms and was re-elected by more than 10 percentage points. Michigan is seen as a crucial state in presidential elections and she’s talked about as someone with working-class credentials. “She thinks like a general, looks like a ’40s film star and talks like she’s ice fishing for muskie,” according to the author and historian Sarah Vowell. Others are less convinced. “Oh please!” says an older Democratic hand. “She’s the New York Times’s idea of what working class America wants.” Whitmer was one of the most pro-lockdown governors during the pandemic, which makes her a darling of Covid hawks, but deeply unpopular in many parts of liberty-loving America. If the party wants youth and femininity, the face that springs to mind is that of Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, the telegenic Latina who is now widely recognised as the most effective Democrat on social media. AOC, as she is almost universally known, has a brand, a personalised clothing range and a talent for fiery speeches in Congress that inevitably go viral. She also has an almost Trump-like ability to make her opponents angry, which politicos see as a great asset in the internet age. She appeals to millennials and Generation Z and says all the right progressive things on climate change, LGBQT issues and social justice. She will reach the minimum age required by the US Constitution for a president – 35 – just a month before election day in 2024. That said, party hacks still consider her too inexperienced to lead the free world. She only entered the House of Representatives four years ago. AOC 2028 is a more realistic idea.
If the party wants a woman of experience, Hillary Clinton has still not yet retreated from political life. She may have failed repeatedly and spectacularly, but a surprising number of Democrats still believe she will try again if she thinks Biden can be removed in 2024. “Believe me, she’s thinking about it,” says one wellconnected Democrat. “She never stops thinking about it.”
A more plausible scenario could be that a Democrat with a lower profile emerges as an untainted challenger in the coming months – someone experienced who can work the Democratic machine and appeal to metropolitan liberals without putting off the American heartland. That could be the Ohio senator Sherrod Brown or North Carolina governor Roy Cooper.
But any of the above would require dramatic changes in the internal dynamics of America’s ruling party. The most credible scenario of all is that the octogenarian president, buoyed by his relative success in the midterms, battles on, believing he can turn the US economy around just in time to win again. “Don’t compare me to the Almighty,” Biden likes to say. “Compare me to the alternative.” What he means is that, for all his flaws, most Americans still see his presidency as preferable to a Trump-led America. But that saying rings alarmingly true in Democratic ranks, too. Unless the Almighty intervenes.
‘Appointing Harris was an accidental stroke of Biden genius. She’s zero threat to him’