In the past half-century, there have been two presidential elections that Democrats should have won by a landslide but did not.
The first was in 1976. If there ever was a year when the stars were aligned to scuttle the Republican candidate, our bicentennial year was it. The economy was in chronic stagnation and inflation—a condition then known, but since forgotten, as “stagflation”—and Richard Nixon and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, had both resigned in disgrace. By grace of the recently enacted 25th Amendment, the executive branch was governed by two men (Gerald Ford, Nelson Rockefeller) neither of whom had been elected to their respective offices; and in 1975, the Vietnam war had come to its ignominious end. Even Ford’s 1976 running mate, the caustic Sen. Robert Dole, was probably a drag on the GOP brand.
Two years earlier, in the aftermath of Watergate, Democrats had gained 49 seats in the House, propelling their majority above the two-thirds mark. And in the Senate, five new Democrats had been elected, leaving them with a comfortable 61-39 imbalance of power.
In the presidential primary campaign, aspirants ranged from Jerry Brown and Morris Udall to Henry Jackson and George Wallace—and the ultimate victor, Jimmy Carter, was arguably the most conservative Democratic nominee in modern times. Yet Carter, the media favorite, barely squeaked by the stolid Ford: He was elected with a bare majority (50.1 percent) of the popular vote, reflected in a close Electoral College ballot (297-240).
The other election, of course, was last year’s. Like most journalists—and, I suspect, most Americans—I expected Hillary Clinton to prevail. Long before her stunning loss in November, there was a bipartisan consensus that Clinton was a maladroit campaigner waging an uninspired campaign; but Donald Trump was, and remains, Donald Trump. The only inkling that there was anything amiss was reflected in a certain mystification about opinion polls: If Trump was as vulgar, dangerous, and incompetent as the press daily reminded us, why wasn’t Clinton 20 points (or more) ahead of him?
The answer, in retrospect, was twofold: Clinton’s ineptitude was a genuine liability, and Trump’s appeal was unprecedented. Which is why, even as President Trump lurches daily from gaffe to “scandal,” the Democrats should probably avoid that smug feeling. For while the not-especially-loyal opposition ought to be generating a wealth of plausible challengers for 2020, it is not.
Among other things, the Democratic party seems to be suffering from sclerosis. Seventy-five-year-old Bernie Sanders may or may not run next time around, but he and his followers seem to be largely on the offensive against fellow Democrats. Jerry Brown, who will be 82 in 2020, might be considering a fourth run for the White House but seems to have little appeal outside California. Even the youth contingent—Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts (68) and Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York (59)—seem to repel more voters than they attract.
This may explain, last week in the pages of the Washington Post, the inaugural appearance of former vice president Joseph Biden’s trial balloon. Roxanne Roberts is a veteran of the Post Style section and wrote a suitably affectionate profile: The bumptious Biden, she reported, is “America’s favorite uncle [and] arguably the most popular former vice president in history.” But while the question in her title—“Is Joe Biden ready to run?”—was clearly rhetorical, she didn’t avoid mentioning Biden’s liabilities: His limited popularity on his party’s resurgent left, his history of plagiarism and minor family scandals, and, not least, his age.
In January 2021, an incoming President Biden would be the same age as our oldest president (Ronald Reagan) was at the end of his second term. To be sure, people are living longer these days, and given the baseline, Biden’s mental capacity is not likely to be noticeably reduced by that time. But the two most recent “popular former vice presidents” who ran for the White House—Richard Nixon, who was 55 in 1968, and Walter Mondale, 56 in 1984—were practically a generation younger than Biden will be four years hence.
In the Age of Trump, none of this suggests that a Biden candidacy is unlikely or even implausible since, as Roberts reminds us, voters “don’t really care about conventional wisdom anymore.” Yet even as Biden, who clearly regrets last year’s decision not to run, sends the customary smoke signals into the air—a memoir about to be published, a fundraising PAC (American Possibilities), even academic sinecures (the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania, a Biden Institute at the University of Delaware)—the only surprise is that Biden’s inability to withdraw from the limelight is also the only sign of life in current Democratic ranks.
For as Georgia’s would-be congressman Jon Ossoff learned in June, it’s not enough to point at Donald Trump, gasp in horror, and expect to win.
Philip Terzian is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.
