Handicapping a race where both parties have handicaps
You can’t say I didn’t warn you.
In 2019, I compared Joe Biden to a Subaru with 310,000 miles on it and America to an owner pondering whether to spend $400 and maybe get another 50,000.
“America has gotten a lot of use out of Joe Biden, and now it’s time to leave him by the side of the road, unscrew the plates, and walk away.”
In a sense, I was wrong. There were some pretty decent miles left in the old car. The $400 auto strategy is one where you do enough repairs to keep problems from getting any worse, as opposed to showing up in a flashy new Audi A4 with the sticker adhesive still vaguely visible in the window.
After the Afghanistan backfire, the Biden engine has put-putted along, slow and steady. One big reason: when you elect a president, you’re effectively installing a hiring process. You’re electing a whole administration, and this one includes unsexy low-drama know-theropes types with Christmas elf names like Yellen, Blinken, Garland.
When you’re done with this column, grab a pen and write down the names of the rest of his cabinet. Good luck. They don’t make a lot of news. He’s not openly feuding with them or firing handfuls of them after a stressful bowel movement.
You could make the case that the most newsworthy person downstream from Joe (not counting Hunter) is Fed chair Jerome Powell, first appointed by Trump and then reupped by Biden. Powell hasn’t found a miracle cure for the global inflation crisis, but he seems to have moved the national boat, in a series of tight tacks, from churning seas to flatter water.
Biden is an old guy, but he’s also Obama’s son. Like his predecessor, Biden inherited a chaotic situation and micromanaged it.
His big swings have gone less well. The student loan forgiveness program — which was probably a good idea and certainly a noble cause — was built on an unsteady statutory sand pile. You didn’t need a clown car full of right-wing activists on the Supreme Court to take it down. Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O’Connor wouldn’t have gone for it either.
But, overall, well done, sweet Subaru.
The prospect of another trip around the track fills many of us with dread. I know, I know. Indiana Jones is 80 and so (in a few weeks) is Mick Jagger. But Harrison Ford can retake his muffs, and Mick only works a few nights a year.
Both parties have math problems. For the Democrats, 80 is too big a number. So is whatever dollar figure a challenger would have to raise to go after an incumbent.
For the Republicans, the math is even worse. Trump may very well be incapable of winning a national election, but with multiple no-name challengers, his path to the nomination seems uncluttered. One of the handful of things he’s good at is building a brand.
You know the body politic is in deep doo-doo when I write the following words, Karl Rove spoke for many of us this week. You read that right. Old Turd Blossom (W’s name for him) put an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday partly titled “Throw the Grumpy Old Men Out.”
His argument was that both Biden and Trump, in addition to their other liabilities, fail to slake a national thirst for a generational shift. Rove helpfully ticked through a list of eligibles on both sides of the aisle, citing the ages of each.
He concluded: “Our nation is deeply divided and angry; it faces tremendous challenges at home and dangers abroad. These are best confronted by energetic new leadership. Whichever party figures this out will have the upper hand next year.” True words, T.B. Of course, in the case of Biden, somebody has to, you know, run against him. Somebody besides RFK Jr., possibly our first “MAGA Democrat,” as the Atlantic’s John Hendrickson labeled him, or Marianne Williamson. In other words, somebody who identifies as noncuckoo.
A lot of Democrats I talk to live in the Whitmerverse, an alternate Mackinac Camelot reality where the snow may never slush upon the hillside and at 9 p.m. the moonlight must appear. I know it sounds a bit bizarre, but that’s how conditions are, in Gretchelot.
But the Michigan governor says no go, and time’s a-wasting. Conventional wisdom dictates that a primary against a sitting president is a recipe for disaster, but this does not look like a conventional scenario. As things stand, Biden would defeat Trump in the “Battle of Who Sucks Less.” But things tend not to stand, and with Biden they have a way of toppling over.
Democrats used to be boisterous and roisterous, but they seem oddly obedient these days. The Republicans have taken over Animal House. Their problem is that, when the smoke clears from their 18-month food fight and toga party, they haven’t done their homework. “Drag queens are the new Mexicans” is probably not going to get you over the finish line.
What to do, besides worry? When is the Muskerberg cage fight? That might be a pleasant distraction.