Biden a winning candidate — if you ignore history

I’ve long been amazed at how quickly a talking point can become accepted wisdom, even when it makes no sense, and even when believing it can be perilous for a political party.

Lately, I’ve heard a few senior Democrats making the same argument about their party’s 2024 presidential nomination - that not only can President Biden beat Donald Trump or another Republican, but that he is probably the only Democrat out there who can.

Which would be persuasive, if it didn’t ignore pretty much everything we know about modern politics.

I’m not saying Biden wouldn’t win, or that he hasn’t earned the right to run again. Being underestimated is the recurring subtext of Biden’s career. Time and again, he has proved the prognostications wrong - most recently in this month’s elections.

After almost a half-century as an understudy, Biden is now clearly his party’s leading man. Aside from more polarizing contemporaries such as Bernie Sanders and Nancy Pelosi, no other Democrat has the national stature to glide easily into the role of standard-bearer.

And, as Biden likes to point out, he is the only candidate who has managed to beat Trump. In fact, it’s been a quarter century since Democrats won a presidential campaign without Biden on the ticket. Think about that.

But just because you’ve won before doesn’t mean you will again. There’s plenty of recent history to suggest that renominating Biden would be reckless, for both the party and the country.

The cliche about presidential elections — that they’re about the future and not the past -happens to be true. Biden will be closing in on 82 by the fall of 2024, which would easily make him the oldest nominee in history. His pace and stamina remain impressive, but if anyone says he seems a decade younger than his age, they’re being kind.

His approval ratings, even at a feel-good moment for his party, hover around 40 percent, which is historically low. The odds that he will govern during a recession over the next two years, on the other hand, are alarmingly high.

Given those conditions, you would have to think that being an incumbent, in our time of perpetual dissatisfaction, is more a curse than a blessing. Consider this: In the first seven decades of the 20th century, only two incumbents lost a presidential campaign. In the 50 years since, nine sitting presidents have appeared on the ballot, and four of them (Ford, Carter, George H.W. Bush, Trump) have lost.

Three of those four presidents — all but Trump — lost to governors who promised to reform Washington from the outside.

To this point, Biden’s presidency has the feel of Gerald Ford’s or George H.W. Bush’s.

He’s solid and statesmanlike, reassuring but uninspiring. His fate, like theirs, might be determined by factors beyond his control.

If Trump isn’t the nominee in 2024, Republicans will very likely choose a candidate whether it’s Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or someone else — who fits the classic outsider profile. That would stack up well against Biden’s main weaknesses: age and establishmentarianism.

But even if Trump regains his hold on the party, the strongest contrast Democrats could offer would probably be someone younger, less familiar and untethered to the economy he or she would inherit.

It’s true that no Democrat fitting that description has a national following right now (with the possible exception of Pete Buttigieg, who might retain some outsider cred despite being the transportation secretary). But that’s what campaigns are for.

The longer Biden waits to make a decision, the longer he freezes the field of potential outsiders, and the less time any of those Democratic candidates would have to introduce themselves to the country.

In other words, with every day of uncertainty that passes, the more Biden’s renomination becomes the only viable option.

Which is why, were I someone like Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer or Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, both of whom just won clear victories in their states, I’d start running now.

I’d make clear to anyone who asked that I would defer to Biden in the event that he’s actually running by the fall of 2023. But in the meantime, I’d go out and behave very much like a candidate for president, giving highprofile policy speeches and showing up in primary states.

That way, among the Biden alternatives, I’d have the news media mostly to myself for a while, and I’d already know what policies were resonating with voters if the president decided to step aside at the last minute.

No aspiring candidate should assume that Biden will end up running for reelection, even if he says he will. And leading Democrats shouldn’t assume that renominating the president is the safest course for 2024.

In reality, it might be the riskiest thing they can do.