The White House released a photo last week of a conspicuously spry-looking President Joe Biden perched atop a ladder in the Oval Office with his sleeves rolled up as he hung ornaments on a Christmas tree. First lady Jill Biden wore a chic black hoodie for the “candid” shot and sorted through a tub of stockings. Looking at the picture, it’s easy to forget that Biden is the oldest president ever, relying on his wife and aides for basic directional cues a little too often.
No matter what you think of Biden, you have to tip your cap. His political resuscitation has been simply remarkable. Appearing dead in the water not a few times — not only dead, but buried, ridiculed, and almost forgotten — Uncle Joe has defied not only the political odds but seemingly the laws of nature.
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Upon seeing the photo, I immediately recalled a moment from the 2020 Democratic primary debates, when the incomparably smarmy Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), 38 at the time, took a cheap shot at Biden’s age in order to gain some much-needed attention. (One could imagine Swalwell rehearsing the line in the mirror backstage and assuring himself that he indeed appeared “Kennedy-esque.”) The crowd appropriately groaned and hissed while Biden flashed his pearly, reconstructed whites in amusement. Biden has for years now laughed off the “problem” of his age.
Democrats need this magic to last for just one more election cycle. A smattering of unnamed party insiders has chirped to the press urging Biden to step aside in 2024.
A good case can be made that this is the wise move. For one, it appears less likely that the easily beatable former President Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. This makes it more enticing for Biden to ride off into the sunset with a number of legitimate achievements under his belt — including slaying the Trump dragon, uniting NATO to repel the Russian invasion of Ukraine, passing a good amount of legislation, and presiding over a historically successful midterm election for the party of a sitting president — and let someone else deal with whichever ticket emerges from the formidable GOP bench. There’s plenty to be said for going out on top, and it’s unlikely that Biden will ever have a higher perch from which to step gracefully down.
But these party insiders couldn’t be more misguided about their hopes for a Biden bow-out, as he represents the Democrats’ best chance to retain the White House. That’s because the only likely alternative for the top of the ticket in ‘24 is the deeply unpopular and politically talentless Vice President Kamala Harris. Some, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, seem to think that she could be beaten in an open primary. But this is wishful thinking of the most delusional kind. If Biden steps down, the nomination will be hers, and Democratic hopes will rest solely upon her hopeless shoulders.
This is a dilemma entirely of the Democratic Party’s own making. Its obsession with equity has left party leadership with no choice but Harris. After all, who wants to be accused of wresting the presidential nomination from the first black female vice president in our nation’s history?
Once confined to the halls of academe, intersectional theory, the reductive analytical framework that reduces complex people to the simplistic categories based on the sum total number of “oppressed” identity markers, has trickled down into the mainstream and become our dominant ethical system.
Biden was only able to bypass the intersectional thunderdome in 2020 due to palpable fear over a Trump reelection and a lack of viable candidates with high intersectional scores. Black voters in South Carolina, in their infinite wisdom, struck the decisive blow in the nominating battle by awarding their delegates to Biden. Harris, who was then simply one senator among many in the running, proved to be such a pitiful candidate that her campaign failed to make it to the primary of her home state of California. Polling suggested that Golden State voters, those who know her best, were poised to give her a finish of no better than 5th in that race. She pulled the plug in order to avoid embarrassment, and now she resides in the Naval Observatory.
It’s no secret that Harris has proven to be ineffectual in dealing with the items in her portfolio, such as the border crisis, over which she couldn’t handle the heat in a friendly NBC interview. She has also frequently been out of lockstep with her own administration. Her polling numbers remain abysmal. It’s difficult to imagine that a brighter spotlight would make people suddenly fall in love with her.
But nothing will stop Democratic primary voters from supporting her out of a desire to be — wait for it — on the right side of history. Supporting the first black female vice president for the top job will be a test of progressive credibility. It won’t be an option.
Which leaves Democrats with only one other choice: back Biden — again. It doesn’t matter that he’ll be 82 years old by the time he runs for reelection. Biden is the only plausible scenario for Democrats in ‘24 (that is, if the wildly popular former first lady Michelle Obama doesn’t suddenly toss her hat into the ring) if they hope to avoid making Harris the party standard-bearer.
It’s Biden or bust, Democratic voters. You’d better hope Uncle Joe has a few more Christmases left atop the ladder.
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Peter Laffin is a writer in New England. Follow him on Twitter at @Laffin_Out_Loud.
