There’s only one way that Biden in his senescence can get reelected.
There was news of a sort this weekend about America’s senescent steward, President Joe Biden: Politico Magazine published a remarkable piece by Jonathan Martin titled “Here’s How Biden Can Turn It Around” that opened by admitting that Biden was simply too old either to run for office or to govern properly, before pitching us on how to reelect this man. The paragraph, which caught the eye of most every American political observer this morning, stated:
The oldest president in history when he first took the oath, Biden will not be able to govern and campaign in the manner of previous incumbents. He simply does not have the capacity to do it, and his staff doesn’t trust him to even try, as they make clear by blocking him from the press. Biden’s bid will give new meaning to a Rose Garden campaign, and it requires accommodation to that unavoidable fact of life.
Well then! The outrageousness of this blunt admission was immediately flagged by Charlie Cooke, who wrote a scathing and proper analysis that didn’t even bother with the rest of the piece, treating Biden’s incapacity to properly execute his official duties — apparently conceded by many if not most inside observers — as simply a failure to meet a basic threshold qualification for the job. I think not bothering with the rest is a mistake, not only because we can trust that Charlie’s argument (though brutally correct) will not stop either Biden or his campaign team, but more importantly because it meant he missed out on the chance to have enormous fun with the so-called recommendations of plugged-in Democrats later in the piece on how to save the campaign.
If this is the best they can come up with, folks, then they’re in trouble. (“The level of despair was striking,” is how Martin characterizes his responses from all wings of the party.) Given that the piece is sourced from people outside the Biden administration’s inner circle frustrated at their inability to get to his ears, it’s no surprise that it leads with the most important admonition of all: Listen to your critics more often. Some of the rest is solid but rather obvious advice: Hammer abortion politics like a piñata, keep Manchin and Romney onside to prevent a No Labels third-party run, try to get disaffected anti-Trump Republicans like Liz Cheney and the Bush family network to run interference, etc. But most of these nuggets are rather quotidian political brainstorming, not real insight. (One item I found genuinely intriguing: Biden was advised to avoid monochromatically attacking Trump solely over January 6 and instead focus on his record, on the logic that what worked once, in the 2022 midterms, will not work twice.)
And the overwhelming bulk of recommendations are basically some variation of “Get the old band back together and hope they’ll save you.” The underlying assumption clearly seems to be that since Biden himself will not be able to campaign, he’ll need a heavy dose of surrogates — and thus we are treated to a Marvel Cinematic Universe–like roll call of recommended Democratic heavy-hitters from the ’90s onward. The list of potential surrogates and “campaign shake-up” players betrays a truly sweaty-palmed desperation: Bring back Rahm Emanuel from Tokyo to run the campaign! Bring back Ron Klain to keep order in the White House and placate the Left! (There is no discussion about how these two particular choices might work hilariously at cross-purposes with one another if “keeping progressive activists happy” is the goal.) Get Mike Donilon out of the White House and onto the campaign team! Get the Obamas to do campaigning across the nation in 2024! Bring back Bill and Hillary Clinton to secure Middle East peace!
That last recommendation, apparently floated in all sincerity and not as a test to see whether readers had stopped paying attention near the end — is a perfect encapsulation of just how pathetically out of ideas Democrats are for invigorating the campaign of a president who apparently can no longer fully perform the duties of his office, much less run for it. I can think of little that would thrill supporters of Donald Trump — and repel both normal voters and the loud online progressive Left alike — more than the return of the Clintons to muck about in the Middle East peace process, of all things. All in all, it reads less like a campaign reboot strategy than a list of ideas hastily thrown together at the last minute by The Simpsons’ Lionel Hutz. (“Surprise surrogates! Each more surprising than the last!”)
Notably absent from Martin’s passel of potential surrogates, amid his lengthy “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks” brainstorming session, is Kamala Harris. (She is mentioned only once in the piece, to quickly dismiss as fantasy the idea of her being dropped from the ticket.) This is an “all hands on deck” situation, to quote Politico, and apparently the best role anyone can think to assign to America’s vice president is to go hide in a room somewhere as quietly as possible, because people find her odd and alienating. (I imagine Harris receiving her campaign assignments something like this.) Harris, as the horribly unpopular successor-in-waiting to an aged president seeking another four-year term, is a political problem that simply cannot be solved. Therefore she is delicately ignored, because what is there to be done at this point except price in the damage?
This brings me to my final point, which is that much of the advice on offer for Biden’s campaign tellingly amounts to little more than “It sure would be nice if the Democrats could do that one over again.” This is perfectly summarized by Martin’s take on how to “fix” the administration’s economic messaging: “Perhaps the most overwhelming economic messaging advice I picked up from Democrats was for him to heave ‘Bidenomics’ into the dumpster. Attempting to make voters believe something they don’t is folly. Attaching your name to that strategy borders on masochistic.”
It’s a bit late for that now. That would be great advice to have given the administration back in June, before they bound themselves to the mast of Bidenomics self-branding in a fit of madness. People aren’t going to forget the term now; that ship has sailed — straight into a whirlpool. In fact, on the basis of Joe Biden’s horrible weaknesses — I haven’t even mentioned Hunter Biden here, and neither does Politico until near the end, where it recommends Biden go on 60 Minutes and “answer every question,” as though we live in a Frank Capra film or something — nothing can save Biden’s doomed reelection campaign.
Except events, dear boy, events. And unfortunately for Republicans, the one impending political event we can almost certainly count on is the renomination of Donald Trump as Joe Biden’s opponent. This — and this alone — is all that saves the Democrats from certain defeat next year. Only Trump’s presence (and all he brings to the table) gives Biden a fighting chance now. It may be enough. But Biden is a captive to fortune at this point, dependent less on what he or his campaign does than on whether America feels on Election Day that even this mentally desiccated husk of a man leading the country for another four years is preferable to his opponent.