WaPo Columnist: What If Joe Biden Didn't Run Again, That'd Be Cool Right?
Et tu, David Ignatius?
Doktor Zoom published and emailed this post before its time. He has been dealt with accordingly.
In one of the more puzzling political columns I’ve read in a long time, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius calls for Joe Biden to drop his 2024 reelection campaign (WaPo gift link) — but only after an impressive catalogue of what Biden has accomplished in his first term. If you didn’t see the headline — subtly, “President Biden should not run again in 2024” — you’d be forgiven for thinking the first few paragraphs are making the case for Biden’s reelection.
Ignatius notes that while plenty of Democrats were skeptical of Biden in 2020, he turned out to be the right guy to fight what Biden called “a battle for the soul of our nation” — as Ignatius says, Biden “was a genial but also shrewd campaigner for the restoration of what legislators call ‘regular order.’”
Ignatius ticks off a list of Biden’s political wins, starting with the 2020 election and continuing through last fall’s defeat of Trumpers in the midterms, plus the Justice Department’s prosecution of insurrectionists from the creepy January 6 Capitol mob to their ringleader, former “president” Donald Trump. Ignatius’s admiration of Biden is entirely sincere:
What I admire most about President Biden is that in a polarized nation, he has governed from the center out, as he promised in his victory speech. With an unexpectedly steady hand, he passed some of the most important domestic legislation in recent decades. In foreign policy, he managed the delicate balance of helping Ukraine fight Russia without getting America itself into a war. In sum, he has been a successful and effective president.
Ignatius, a damn good writer, knows exactly what he’s up to: The praise and appreciation, all genuine, is scaffolding for a heavy sigh as Ignatius gets to his real point:
But I don’t think Biden and Vice President Harris should run for reelection. It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished. But if he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.
Biden wrote his political testament in his inaugural address: “When our days are through, our children and our children’s children will say of us: They gave their best, they did their duty, they healed a broken land.” Mr. President, maybe this is that moment when duty has been served.
David Ignatius is a serious writer, so he wouldn’t stoop to quoting the tearjerker line from a kid’s movie, but I have no such scruples: with the removal of Trump, he thinks it’s time to say, “That’ll do, Joe, that’ll do.” (No, we don’t think Joe Biden should move to the Big City for a sequel.)
Ignatius argues that two liabilities could drag Biden down in a likely rematch with Trump: his age, and his choice of Kamala Harris as vice president. Ignatius cites the recent, very flawed AP/NORC Poll which found that 77 percent of Americans consider Biden too old to serve another four years, including 69 percent of Democrats. (Ignatius conveniently leaves out the bizarre response from Republican cultists, of whom only 28 percent consider Trump too old, even though he’s just three years younger than Biden.)
Ignatius posits that “Biden’s age isn’t just a Fox News trope; it’s been the subject of dinner-table conversations across America this summer,” although we suspect that most of those conversations outside Fox households have also included a healthy dose of “fuck Fox News, though, it’s OK if Joe pets a dog.”
This is where we back up a moment and acknowledge that even though “Joe’s a senile meat puppet” is bullshit on par with “Hillary had 14 strokes and is unable to walk up stairs” in 2016, that bullshit did stick to her with at least some swing voters, so goddamn it, we don’t really know how you battle it, and if we did, President John Kerry would have already given us a ride on his swift boat as a reward.
If a lot of Americans are concerned about Biden’s age, Ignatius says, then naturally they may be more attuned than in most elections to who might succeed him, and Ignatius thinks Kamala Harris may be a liability too, although he adds that trying to replace her would probably hurt Biden more than it might help.
We guess David Ignatius has met the KHive.
Here’s the thing, though: Ignatius doesn’t really make a strong case that most voters will decide any of that is worth casting Biden aside for, especially not at this point in the neverending election cycle. Biden’s approval ratings may not reflect what he’s accomplished, but people can’t stand Trump either, and the prospects for the guy with 91 felony indictments don’t seem likely to improve with time.
Most importantly, Ignatius is making these arguments in September 2023, which seems a bit late in the game to be thanking Biden for his service and taking him to the Amtrak station with a gold watch. Ignatius acknowledges that, sort of, but he claims there’s still time to start a fresh Democratic primary now — or even next month? Um. What?
Time is running out. In a month or so, this decision will be cast in stone. It will be too late for other Democrats, including Harris, to test themselves in primaries and see whether they have the stuff of presidential leadership. Right now, there’s no clear alternative to Biden — no screamingly obvious replacement waiting in the wings. That might be the decider for Biden, that there’s seemingly nobody else. But maybe he will trust in democracy to discover new leadership, “in the arena.”
Or maybe we should keep our focus on the flawed but capable guy who pleasantly surprised us with his decency and ability to govern, because the fellow in the first half of Ignatius’s column still sounds like a hell of a guy, a candidate I’d be happy to vote for again. I just don’t see any advantaged in tossing the Democratic Party into a brand new primary chaos pit like the other party has been wallowing around in all this time.
[WaPo (gift link)]
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Methinks the guy is just upset that there are no Democratic Primary debates for the media meat grinder.
"I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump."
TRUMP ISN'T STOPPED YET. THE JOB ISN'T YET DONE. THE COUNTRY HAS NOT FUCKING HEALED, YOU STUPID MOTHERFU