Some Democrats were questioning President Joe Biden’s fitness to run for a second term privately as early as January 2024, believing that his age and performance were going to be detrimental, paving the way for Donald Trump’s return to office, as The Guardian reports.
While the report details the legacy Biden leaves behind as he officially steps down on Monday and Donald Trump is sworn in — his leadership during the pandemic, infrastructure legislation, the Chips and Science Act, the Inflation Reduction Act which promoted clean energy, signing the first major federal gun control legislation in nearly three decades — it also claimed that one of Biden’s biggest downfalls was that he didn’t know when to step back.
Per the report, Biden was bolstered to run for a second term — despite fears surrounding his age and low approval ratings — by the positive 2022 midterm elections results, where Democrats retained the Senate and only narrowly lost the House of Representatives.
Though Biden appeared emboldened, after all he had defeated Trump previously, some Democrats were concerned. Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) announced he would challenge Biden in the primary. “We’re at grave risk of another Trump presidency. I’m doing this to prevent a return of Donald Trump to the White House,” he told The Washington Post in 2023.
While Phillips was publicly dismissed for his candor, privately others in the party were similarly worried. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told The Guardian that he received a concerning call from an unnamed Democratic senator in late January or early February 2024.
“I said, ‘Is there any particular reason why you called me? I’d like to know.’ He said, ‘You do realize, off the record, that Joe Biden is not going to be our nominee?’ I was stunned. I said, ‘What, how, why?’ He said, ‘I just was at a meeting with him with several other senators and he couldn’t even function. We can’t run him.’”
The senator in question attempted to discuss the situation, which brought ire from the White House. “He was punished, as several of them were. They gave him the cold shoulder for a while. The point is that a lot of people had figured it out but they didn’t care,” Sabato said. “I’m stunned that they got away with it and have produced term two for Trump and it’s going to be the longest four years of our life.”
Of course by June, the disastrous presidential debate showcased very publicly the private fears discussed among some Democrats earlier in the year and the public’s growing concerns over Biden’s age. And then in July, Biden announced he would not seek reelection and endorsed Kamala Harris. But as Sabato noted, it was late in the game.
“Joe Biden reminds me of students I’ve had that I expected to give an A to and I got the final exam in the term paper and I’ve realised the best I can do is B-minus, C-plus,” Sabato told The Guardian. “He was so disappointing in the end and he should have known better. The fact that he was running for re-election is just inexcusable.”
“If Kamala Harris or any other Democrat had a normal campaign, two years of runway, they would have gotten airborne and could have overtaken Trump’s plane. But she didn’t have the chance and no one would have. Biden has just had his greatest achievement wiped out. He saved us from Donald Trump a nd now he restored Donald Trump. How do you grade that?”
