Are would-be
Democratic
presidential contenders all gutless wonders?
With the
prevailing
media wisdom being that President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address amounted to a
campaign kickoff
for
reelection in 2024
, one wonders why there’s so little talk of a serious Biden opponent for the Democratic nomination.
THE BIDEN ECONOMY HAS BEEN GREAT — JUST NOT FOR AMERICANS
Granted, incumbent presidents rarely face major challenges from their own party, and never do they lose. Indeed, since 1900, only twice, the Republican contests of 1912 and 1976, has the first-term-incumbent’s party even entered a convention with the outcome seriously in doubt. Some reticence among would-be challengers is thus understandable.
Then again, never has a president run for reelection after age 75, much less after 80. Never before has one run after 20 straight months of being seriously underwater in job approval. Never has one run when huge majorities of people, and significant majorities of his own party’s voters,
don’t want him to run again
, much less want him to win.
And never, with the media-shielded exception of Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, has one appeared to be so doddering while at the same time being saddled with a controversial radical (Henry Wallace) as vice president. Obviously, if people seriously fear a president might not last for a whole term, they don’t want a vice president unfit to ascend to office. (Roosevelt’s latter problem was solved when party leaders engineered Harry Truman’s selection as his new running mate.) With Vice President Kamala Harris’s approval ratings
even lower than Biden’s
, the possibility of being unable to prop up Biden until past his 86th birthday (to finish another full term) scares the heck out of lots of voters.
For all those reasons, the political calculus for a Democratic challenger should be obvious: Biden is vulnerable, so why not try to unseat him? Meanwhile, an even more important consideration, one of patriotism, should prevail: With Biden already looking barely up for the job at 80, is it really safe for the nation to re-up him until age 86 — or to let the extraordinarily unimpressive and unpopular Harris remain in the position to succeed him if he must step down midway through a second term?
Meanwhile, on policy, there is plenty of room toward the political center from Biden, who has governed overwhelmingly from the left. A Democratic challenger could easily promote modern liberal values while still refusing to go woke-progressive-left the way Biden has. A Democratic challenger could promote tolerance and understanding for gender-bending people without waging war on parents. A challenger could want to consolidate the much broader social safety net ushered in by Presidents Barack Obama and Biden while still agreeing to ratchet down federal debt slowly through some spending caps.
A still-liberal challenger could stop fighting against most forms of school choice. A challenger could call for reforms that would depoliticize the FBI. And stop fighting against voter identification while pushing for greater access to polls. And accept at least some limits on abortion so that gruesome late-term (and
even post-birth
) dismemberment or suffocation is outlawed. And
redirect some Internal Revenue Service funding
from invasive audits of middle-income people to significantly expanded “help desk” resources for taxpayers honestly confused by the convoluted code.
The whole country would be better off if the Democrats put forth a nominee who, while still identifiably strongly liberal, would push back against her own party’s radicals while embracing policies much closer to what public opinion actually supports.
To leave Biden unchallenged is to leave the nation bereft of better leadership. The opportunity is there for a competitive campaign. Refusal to wage one is a cowardly dereliction.
