TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Tuesday, Mar 19, 2024

The vanishing presidency

The vanishing presidency

Joe Biden is beginning to feel like an ex-president after only nine months in office. The last two Democrats to occupy the White House, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, arrived with a spirit of renewal, not to mention tremendous legislative ambitions. Biden came in with a spirit of reversal: he was not Trump. His selling point was ‘competence’. Like Warren Harding a century before, he was meant to usher in a ‘return to normalcy’.
Without ‘competence’ as its rationale, what does the Biden administration have to fall back on?

After Covid and its economic consequences, after the riots that raged in the summer of 2020, normal sounded good enough. Yet that was more than Biden could deliver. What everyone had hoped would be the end of Covid has turned into an endless war on Covid instead: more masks, more shots, more closures. The war in Afghanistan which Biden did bring to a close saw our side defeated, our honour stained. Violent crime in many of our riot-ravaged cities is back to levels not seen since the 1990s, while prices in the grocery store haven risen at a pace reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter era. Normal has never seemed so far away.

Without ‘competence’ as its rationale, what does the Biden administration have to fall back on?

Some Democrats would say ‘Trump’. The ex-president shows every sign of wanting to run again in 2024. Before he does, Democrats will likely lose one or both chambers of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. Clinton and Obama both went on to win re-election after humiliating Democratic defeats in the 1994 and 2010 midterms. But by that point they had achieved all they were going to achieve by way of a progressive legislative agenda.

What are the odds that being the anti-Trump in 2024 will suffice, if Biden doesn’t have a ‘competent’ record for comparison — or accomplishments that motivate the Democratic party’s base? Biden is at the mercy of circumstance: some new normal will arise out of the agony of Covid, but that won’t provide Biden a second chance to make a first impression. Meanwhile, if inflation continues to ravage middle- and working-class pocketbooks, hikes in the minimum wage will be offset by the anger that all wage-earners are apt to feel toward Washington.

Biden’s hand does not get any stronger from here: after his presidential ‘honeymoon’, after the blow to his credibility delivered by the inept way he withdrew from Afghanistan. His first few months in office have reminded Americans of why they had so little faith in the status quo before Trump. And now the country’s pre-Trump leadership, in the form of Joe Biden and his team, has shown that it lacks the particular expertise to meet the challenges that bedevilled Trump in the last year of his term. Biden was a reboot for the establishment, but it immediately crashed again.

Clinton and Obama faced their share of early failures as well. But for them, simply being president solved what had previously been a significant vulnerability: they had each been charged during their first run for the White House with lacking experience or ‘gravitas’. They had charisma enough to win anyway in 1992 and 2008, and when they ran for reelection they had presidential authority to supplement their charm.

Biden ran on experience to begin with — at least he did in 2020, his third time seeking the Oval Office. And while no other office might lend a candidate the authority that he gets from having already been president, none of Biden’s weaknesses are nullified by his experience in the White House. He gains less gravitas from the role than a younger man or an outsider would.

Democrats might see that as a reason to encourage Biden to step down before 2024 in favour of a vice president who is 22 years younger than he is. Never mind that Kamala Harris didn’t win a single Democratic primary in 2020 and what that might say about her electoral appeal. Biden never won a presidential primary in either of his first attempts, either. Harris would have youth on her side in a contest with Trump, as well as the advantages that might accrue from being black and female. Wouldn’t she bring back the black and Hispanic voters that deserted the Democrats and bolstered Trump’s numbers last year?

This would put the Democrats’ faith in identity politics to the test. If it turned out that Harris couldn’t improve on Biden’s performance with blacks and Hispanics, the implications would be ideologically catastrophic. Kamala Harris may not be the politician on whose ballot-box fortunes the Democrats want to stake their coalition.

Biden’s fortunes are deteriorating with little more than sheer good luck holding out a prospect for their improvement. Biden was a successful politician for decades because he understood the Democratic party’s need to present itself as a centre-left party, not a fully left-wing one. He was the author of a crime bill, and even while he reliably supported abortion rights as a senator, he insisted that he privately agreed with the pro-life teachings of the Catholic church. Now Biden is the leader of a party whose activist base takes to the streets to demand the defunding of police, while brooking no dissent, even of simple conscience, on abortion.

Biden can’t conjure back into existence a centre-left party, just as the now firmly- left Democratic party couldn’t conjure up a candidate who could perform better against Trump than Biden. Luckily for them, the 2020 election wasn’t about the Democratic party or Joe Biden: it was a referendum on the incumbent. The bad news for them is that if Joe Biden is the incumbent in 2024, he will need all the luck in the world not to lose. Competence won’t return him to office.
Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×