2024 Presidential Election

What if Biden Hadn’t Run?

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

One of the most debated questions of 1960’s politics is still a subject of great debate: what would have happened if LBJ hadn’t dropped out in 1968? If you want to get older political hacks into a debate, just ask them this. Some of them literally end up debating themselves.

The new emerging “group think” inside the Beltway and the political press is that if Joe Biden had never run in 2024, or dropped out earlier, Kamala Harris or some other “stronger” Democrat would have been better off. The number of “if/then” off ramps in the theory alone probably should disqualify it. The popular theory now though is that the problems in 2024 were somehow “local” to Biden and his team, and the party would have been better with some other mythical candidate that could separate from his record. I’m making the assumption that they think some other candidate could have taken some demonstrably different position that would have drawn out more Democrats or converted some third party or Republican voters. I’m very skeptical. Joe Biden had political weaknesses. There’s no one else who would seem likely to navigate those rough waters easier in the party and environment that existed in 2024.

Presidential elections are not a job interview. Resume comparisons don’t win or lose them. They are not battles to show who has superior white paper positions on specific policy issues. They are largely contests to articulate a broad cultural vision for the country that appeals to more people. The Democratic Party being mostly a coalition of interest groups puts them at a disadvantage against a party that is mostly a cultural and ideological unified front. Democratic candidates have to do outreach that is interest group specific, and sometimes puts groups at odds with each other. It’s very hard to do that and also present that as a strong, unifying cultural vision of what kind of country you’re building. Biden, for his faults, had a fairly sturdy brand. Anyone running in his place in 2024 would have had to build that. Yes, more time would have been nice. Given that they would not have been President at the outset, I’m not sure how anyone believes they wouldn’t have been forced into some fairly uncomfortable political compromises. This was an issue for Kamala Harris, but it would have been even worse for someone attempting to beat her for the nomination.

The truth is that the Democratic brand is further from the average voter right now than the Republican brand. Given how ideological wealthy, big Democratic donors and small dollar online Democratic voters are right now, no one was going to enter and move the Democratic Party fundamentally in its image, unless they were personally a billionaire that could somehow evade those donors demands. Virtually no Governor or Senator currently alive could have entered the race and evaded Republican attack ads on inflation and being for “they/them,” or not backing police. Maybe a major celebrity with a brand could have outrun those labels. Democrats have been resistant to nominating those kinds of candidates.

Biden and his inner circle, after a deceptively good midterm election, decided to run him for re-election because they thought he had the best chance of winning. My estimation is that they were likely right, and certainly no definitive evidence exists that says they’re wrong. Had Biden not been the nominee in 2020, Democrats probably would have lost. There’s sufficient evidence to say they’re wrong were likely to lose either way in 2024. Biden started from a better position than anyone else though, and remains the only person to have beaten Trump. Most of this narrative that Democrats probably would have been better if Biden was out of the way earlier is just spit balling by interest group and media leaders that didn’t get why Biden won the first time. This is why I have genuine worries about the future of the Democratic Party.

A Wimpy Resistance

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

“This is not who we are.” During Trump’s first term as President this was the standard position of Democrats and lefties of all stripes. There was at least some argument for that position then- while Trump had been elected in 2016, it seemed more like an unlikely error than the judgment of the people. After all, he had only received 46% of the vote, and Hillary Clinton had more votes than him. No one can claim that now. Joe Biden’s attempt at normalcy was basically rejected by the public. Trump won again. This time he won the popular vote too. And he has a supportive Congress. It can’t be argued now- the public wants to disrupt the status quo. They don’t mind the “mean tweets” and nastiness. They’re for this.

Oh I know the refrains. “What about egg prices,” and other mocking statements. It is sort of true. Trump made mildly aggressive statements about Gaza and Ukraine, said provocative but limited things about federal employees, and generally focused on what was “wrong” in Biden’s America. So sure, in theory he’s now overstating his mandate. Let’s not pretend he didn’t say he would be chaos. He did say he would overturn Washington’s “status quo.” He promised to be a hurricane. He is.

Democrats are simply unable to respond. Congressional Democrats can’t stop anything. State Democrats have extremely limited ability to stand in the way. Rallies and protests often come off looking more silly than strong. Unlike 2017, people aren’t rallying to the cause. The Democratic Party is the least popular it has been in a generation plus. Further left elements are less popular yet. They all lack the credibility with the public to attack. People aren’t taking them seriously.

Trump promised to hurt the people who oppose him. He’s carrying through on it. Unfortunately we may have to see ourselves through some of this mess before there is a public will to stop it.

The Next Four Years

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

I want to start by wishing the 47th President well. As of now, he’ll be President of the United States, including mine, for the next four years. I didn’t vote for him in any of his three campaigns, but clearly he inspired something in tens of millions of Americans. We must hope they are on to something now, as his failure would be the nation’s. I obviously disagree with him on many things. There’s still no point to hoping he makes a fool of himself though.

With that said, I do operate in an outcome driven world. I think results matter. I expect Donald J. Trump’s second term to be a failed Presidency. I see two pathways to failure- either he does pass harmful things like tariffs into law, bad the results of his success are painful, OR he’s ineffective and life doesn’t really get better this term. He may succeed at cutting some government spending on the margins, or at deporting a couple million people here illegally, but I doubt he gets everything he wants. Maybe the economy continues on autopilot and people decide that’s fine. If he actually pushed through most of his promised agenda from the 2024 Election, I predict tough times ahead.

What do I expect? More tax cuts for “inheritance baby” class levels of wealth. Deregulation of corporate America. Ukraine to have to surrender land to Russia. A roll back of environmental protections. Cuts to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies. Two more conservative judges on the Supreme Court. Cuts to public education. More death in the Middle East. I don’t think any of this will be good. I think it will harm lives.

Look, there’s no reason to hope I’m right. There’s no point to keeping an enemy list of everyone performing at or attending his inaugural (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden all are above that). You don’t need to pray for failure. If you believe in what you voted for last Fall, you believe it will come out in the wash. It’s time to move forward now. Joe Biden is gone and Donald Trump will be four years from now. Best of luck to the guy. I’m out living life today. If you’re raging at your television right now, please get out and touch grass.

The Wise Man’s Warnings

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Joe Biden is leaving Washington with few to no allies. His own party sliced his candidacy to death, reportedly lead by the man who made him Vice-President 16 years ago and the powerful former Speaker he was friends with for decades. The media has laid his Vice-President’s defeat at his feet. The opposition blames him for everything from migrants at our border to inflation. Despite record low unemployment, record four year job creation, and rising wages, the public thinks his economy stunk. It’s hard to think of any positive coverage or feelings towards the 46th President right now. Even the activist groups he rewarded with student loan forgiveness, gun control legislation, and a record number of judges have moved on from the Biden White House. It’s fitting that he eulogized President Carter in one of his last major speeches. His Presidency will, in the near term, be equated with President Carter’s.

To be fair, Joe Biden brought some of this on himself. He built a White House around him filled with people who really didn’t owe their careers to him. That White House lacked powerful voices that were articulating his vision. His promises and achievements to liberal interest groups cast him as a “normal” Dem at a time when the Democratic brand is at it’s lowest popularity in a couple decades. His cabinet was full of experts and wonks, but short on inspiring messengers to put out to communicate with America. His public promise to pick a woman Vice-President opened the door to Republicans attacks on her as a “DEI hire.” He aged before our eyes, as an 80 years ago old man should, but never really addressed the elephant in the room. He picked a cautious Attorney General when he needed an aggressive pitbull. He allowed bad actors on the Supreme Court, in the Israeli Prime Minister’s office, and running tech companies to drag out his Presidency. He seemed unaware of his sagging poll numbers as his re-election campaign sulked along for months, lacking any real, positive vision of why he deserved a second term. The Hunter saga drug on way too long. Trump remained too focal in his message. He clearly got nothing right with that June debate. Joe Biden got a lot wrong. Probably stuff I left out of here. For that reason, he’ll wake up on Tuesday as a former President.

I mentioned President Carter above, and he’s a great reference point for President Biden- Biden will leave office with 36% approval in his final poll, President Carter was at 34%. Carter went on to live nearly 44 years out of office, and his approval improved substantially. Harry Truman and Donald Trump left office in roughly the same range, and both saw markedly solid improvement out of office. LBJ left with 49% approval, but has also seen some image improvement. It is in fashion right now to regard Biden as nothing more than a pause in the two Trump terms. History suggests that won’t be a popular view soon.

The Biden Administration began in the midst of a major pandemic and on the heels of an attack on our Capitol on January 6th. Because those events subsided, we largely have politically forgotten about them. In time, that is likely to matter more. Sure, it is possible that the doomsayers are right, and Trump ends democracy and feeds us propaganda about Biden, but I’m not in that doomsayer camp. I think it is just as likely that the next four years are less eventful than people think, maybe even disappointingly so, and the passage of time leads to higher marks for President Biden. I don’t know that he’ll ever see it in his lifetime, but he may even become a fairly popular figure. Maybe even a 21st century version of Truman or LBJ.

Many of Biden’s critics in Washington will never rise to the level of giving a farewell address from the Oval Office. Few men really do, and sometimes their speeches are actually fairly memorable, because they say something actually profound. Joe Biden did that this week. In a speech that is being panned by critics across the spectrum, he gave us shades of President Eisenhower’s farewell, in which he warned us about the military industrial complex. President Biden warned us about the unchecked powers of big tech companies and the dangers of a few very rich men consolidating power within an oligarchy. This coming Monday we will watch an inauguration largely funded and attended by tech giants from Apple, Amazon, X (Twitter), OpenAI, and Meta, to name a few. These billionaires run companies that make them unbelievable wealth, in an industry almost totally unregulated by Washington. Many of them have extremely large government contracts that fund their excess. Several of them spent unheard of amounts of personal cash to influence the election. Others have censored the free flow of information to the public, on the behalf of the incoming President. Biden’s warnings about these dangers in his farewell are less predictions of the future and more an acknowledgment of where we are now. We may have little ability to stop them right now, but we probably need to make this front and center to our future.

For 50 years, Joe Biden had a front row seat to history. Now, as he put it, it’s someone else’s turn to stand guard. Democrats shouldn’t go overboard and call for an end to capitalism and free enterprise. Democrats should heed his warnings though. The next four years of Trump will be about deregulating corporate America, cutting spending on programs that benefit normal people, and cutting taxes for the super rich. This isn’t going to benefit successful six figure earners that worked hard and made it. It’s going to benefit people who inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from their daddy. The next four years is designed to benefit them, not us. The Democratic Party Biden is leaving behind is not equipped right now to fight that battle. We need to heed the voice of experience and wisdom, and find authentic voices who can credibly articulate our case.

Goodbye, good sir.