Days after what may go down as one of the most disastrous presidential debates in American history, President Joe Biden is reportedly convening with his family to discuss his strategy going forward. According to these news reports—most of them based on sources who would not reveal their names—Biden’s family is adamant that he stay in the race and are furious with the president’s staff, blaming them for Biden’s debate performance (and also for the fact that he was not wearing enough bronzer).
It’s infuriating reporting: a president making a potentially nation-changing decision on the advice of people who all have personal, professional, and/or financial interests in him staying in power; members of his team not only playing the blame game but zooming in on largely irrelevant details while missing the obvious, massive, glaring problem in front of them. It’s as if they’re looking at a guy who needs his gangrenous leg amputated and observing only that he could use a pedicure.
There is, in fact, much to blame on Biden’s staff and his inner circle, but virtually none of it has to do with the debate—except maybe for the decision to put him up on that stage in the first place. Perhaps Biden really did just have a terribly off night. But the man is in his 80s, and this is far from the first time he has publicly struggled with what appears to be age-related cognition issues. Members of his team are adamant about denying that this is the reality, and while they could be right that his cognitive issues are not as bad as they seemed at the debate, that doesn’t change what an American voting public witnessed (or believes it witnessed) with its own eyes.
Joe Biden was old when he ran for president. He and his team should have spent the past four years road testing surrogates and grooming potential successors. Instead, they’ve sidelined their vice president and failed to place the spotlight on any of the Democratic Party’s many bright, shining potential stars. Now the very predictable has happened: The oldest-ever American president is showing his age, voters are reasonably wondering whether he will be up to the extremely demanding tasks of governing until he’s 86—86!—and there is no obvious Plan B.
Under normal circumstances, Plan B would be the vice president, and a small handful of commentators are already voicing support for Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket. The reasons are obvious enough: She is the vice president, after all; she is by most accounts a perfectly competent if not particularly compelling leader; and skipping over her has the potential to anger and alienate core Democratic constituencies (Black voters, female voters).
But Harris is also unpopular. Unlike some other potential candidates, she has already introduced herself to the American people, and they have not rallied behind her. This is not entirely Harris’ fault; more than just about any politician in recent memory, she has had spectacularly bad political timing. She spent decades making the kind of career moves that should have perfectly positioned her for electoral success: She’s a progressive multiracial woman who was nevertheless a prosecutor who took crime seriously. She rose through the ranks of the San Francisco district attorney’s office. She’s telegenic and exacting. Many of the criticisms of her feel thin: She is accused of suffering from some of the same problems faced by so many female politicians, battling complaints that she seems stiff or inauthentic or unlikable. This is partly because we are simply still not used to seeing female leaders, and especially not Black female leaders, competing for power and winning.
But she really suffered from running for president in 2020. That year was in many ways a cultural blip, and one of its most significant irregularities was the brief turn against policing and prosecution. In any other election year, including probably this one, a tough-on-crime stance is a benefit to politicians, especially those with national aspirations. But 2020 was a year of mass protests against police violence. Progressive prosecutors won high-profile elections, and although no police forces were actually defunded, the slogan “Defund the Police” became a progressive rallying cry. Even many Republicans seemed amenable to criminal justice reform. “Kamala is a cop” became a pointed and effective attack line because there was a major and long-brewing national backlash against cops. Career prosecutors were not the moment’s rising stars.
Four years later, the political landscape is very different. The GOP is back on its tough-on-crime platform, and moderate Democrats are following suit. Several of the progressive prosecutors who came to power in the heady era of Black Lives Matter protests have seen significant backlash, and the most prominent among them was voted out of his job in one of the most liberal cities in the country. “Defund the Police” has gone from stirring slogan to “that never happened.” Harris was introduced to the American public during a sliver of time when the public was going to be least amenable to her. It didn’t help either that she was running four years after a hypercompetent seeming shoo-in lost to Donald Trump, an outcome so stunning it led many to conclude that the country wasn’t ready for a woman in the White House—at least not right now, and at least not one running against this particular man. It’s hard for a candidate who ran, lost, and spent four years as second-in-command—familiar but inconspicuous enough to seem impotent—to reintroduce herself and get a fresh start.
The Biden administration has made little attempt to shift public perception or strengthen Harris’ position. Yes, she went on a national abortion rights tour—in part because the president can barely bring himself to talk about the one winning issue Democrats currently have going for them—but it was toothless, and the media barely covered it (what was there to cover?). Biden’s team could have spent the past four years helping to remake Harris into a recognizable, trusted, and powerful leader. Instead, it sidelined her, and the primary narrative about her vice presidency seems to be: “Where’s Kamala?”
This is not necessarily unusual for vice presidents, who are notoriously shunted to the background. But Biden and his team can surely count, and the number 86 should have been tick-tick-ticking in their brains every single day for the past four years. He’s already the oldest president in American history, older even than every other still-living president except for Jimmy Carter, who was elected nearly half a century ago and is currently in hospice care. That Biden is turning to his family is understandable, but they are among the least well situated to evaluate this situation impartially and accurately. News reports emphasized Hunter Biden’s eagerness for his father to stay in the race, for example. And one has to question the wisdom of turning to Hunter, a man whose lifelong bad decisions have torched the lives of those around him and repeatedly embroiled his father in scandal, for guidance on anything.
After all, we tend to filter those we love and have long known through the distorted lens of time and affection. When you see someone often, you can miss just how much they’ve aged or declined. When you love someone dearly and understand that their sense of self and worth comes from having a particular job or being able to complete a certain kind of task, the normal human impulse is to help or even encourage them to stay in that role for as long as possible.
But Joe Biden is not asking to maintain his corner office while junior employees fix his errors, or keep driving despite a few Mr. Magoo fender benders. He’s asking not just to be president of the United States but to compete against a uniquely dangerous candidate when he has proved that many of the necessities of headlining a winning campaign—like convincing the public you are minimally cognitively fit—are increasingly beyond his capacity.
American voters deserve better than an elderly candidate with what appear to be declining faculties who no one is confident will even live through a second term. In other words, Americans deserve better than both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. But Trump is who the Republicans have picked, and just because their party refuses to put up a candidate who meets basic standards of human decency doesn’t mean that Democrats should take it as a free pass to lower their own standards too.
Joe Biden has been an excellent president, truly one of the best of my lifetime. It’s July, and the election is just a few months away. Biden stepping down now would be wildly disruptive, and finding a replacement would be so vicious and chaotic it could also tank Democrats’ chances in November. It’s always easy to be Monday morning quarterback for these big decisions, but what should be obvious are that the party higher-ups, the Biden administration, Biden’s closest advisers, and the Biden family did Democratic voters and the country as a whole a huge disservice by not planning for any contingencies and by not allowing the party the kind of robust primary it deserved to actually pick the strongest candidate. Now the national debate is over which of a series of very bad options is the least bad for Democrats.
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