Biden remains Trump’s biggest threat | Opinion

As a Trump supporter, I wasn’t surprised by President Joe Biden’s debate performance. Biden’s performance was shaky at best in 2020. The pressures of the presidency have only made him even less worthy. did What surprised me was the outpouring of calls from the left for Biden to step down. Despite the disastrous debate, Joe Biden has the best chance of winning for the Democratic Party in November.

The first reason why Biden scares me as a Trump supporter is pretty simple: Republicans have never beaten Biden and his political organization.

Democrats seem to forget that Biden is the president. In choosing Biden, 2020 Democratic primary voters chose a moderate establishment figure with strong credibility among key Democratic voters, such as black Americans, and who could appeal to white working-class voters who are more culturally conservative on economic issues. They were right: Biden flipped Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona on his way to the White House. Not only did he win, he beat his 2024 opponent.

Indeed, Republicans performed better than expected in 2020. In its final election forecast, FiveThirtyEight’s model predicted that Democrats would not only maintain but expand their majority in the House; Democrats lost 13 seats to Republicans. As for the Senate, FiveThirtyEight predicted that Democrats would reclaim their majority by an average of 51.5 seats. When the dust settled, the Senate was 50-50.

Though he struggled in lower-level races, Biden won the race that mattered most: He won the White House, securing control of the Senate for the Democrats, and two years later, when Republicans were expected to take both houses of Congress, Biden’s blue wall withstood the expected “red wave.”

Sure, the polls aren’t good for Biden right now, and they could get worse in the coming days. But leading the polls in July is not the same as winning on election night. Just ask Hillary Clinton. Surely Democrats could point to one concrete defeat at the hands of the president before abandoning Biden? And they don’t have one. That’s enough to scare me, and should be reason enough to keep Biden on the shortlist.

But the calls to replace Biden have grown so loud that it’s worth considering alternatives, none of whom would perform better than Biden in key states.

After the debate, reporters bombarded California Governor Gavin Newsom with questions about surrogating for Biden. Newsom said the suggestion was “nonsensical.” And he was right: The little polling data available suggests Biden will likely rank lower than Trump in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, battleground states that could give Trump the electoral votes he needs to win.

For many swing-state voters, Newsom represents Californianization, particularly in Arizona, where more than 140,000 Californians are set to move in 2021 and 2022, many of whom see themselves as post-COVID political refugees. The same is true in Rust Belt states, where Newsom’s more progressive environmental policies would likely not play well.

Newsom also doesn’t have the same support as Biden among key Democratic constituencies. In California’s 2021 recall election, he lost support not only from Black voters but also from Latino voters and white voters without college degrees. That bodes poorly for the governor, especially in a battleground state like Georgia.

The same can be said about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of Biden’s possible successors. She has reportedly rejected the idea of ​​replacing Biden, and she too is polling poorly. A real-time poll conducted after the debate by the progressive think tank Data for Progress showed Whitmer, like Biden, lagging behind Trump.

But the biggest question for Newsom and Whitmer is the most obvious candidate to succeed Biden: Vice President Kamala Harris. Would Democrats be comfortable choosing someone other than the current vice president to replace Biden, someone who represents the party’s core base and could become the first black woman to become president? Probably not.

Would Democrats want that? Harris’s favorability rating is 16.3 points lower on average, making her nearly as unpopular as the incumbent president. In the few polls that feature Trump vs. Harris head-to-head, Harris has lost support in every battleground state except Michigan.

All three of Biden’s candidates to replace him would be beneficial to Trump. During the 2024 campaign, Trump has tried to distance himself from the abortion issue and appear more moderate. He has rejected the label “conservative” in favor of “normal.” That’s not easy to do when your opponent has seen himself as the embodiment of the center-left for the past half century. Newsom, Whitmer and Harris make the maneuver easier.

One alternative Democrats could probably get away with to replace Biden is Michelle Obama, who is hugely popular not just among Democrats but the American public at large — at the end of President Barack Obama’s term, the former first lady was more popular than the president himself.

Mrs. Obama is a capable and powerful political force, but filling in just four months before an election would be asking too much of even the most politically gifted person. While the issues surrounding Biden’s replacement mentioned above are up to voters, the challenges Mrs. Obama will face have to do with the internal dynamics of the Democratic Party.

One of the ways Biden tried to break out of Obama’s shadow after winning the presidential election was through personnel changes. Biden stuck to his closest aides and avoided picking Obama-friendly names. Ron Klain was named White House Chief of Staff. Janet Yellen was chosen as Treasury Secretary over Obama’s close aide Lael Brainard. Biden appointed longtime aide and friend Tony Blinken to head the State Department, and he chose General Lloyd Austin to head the Pentagon over Obama’s Deputy Secretary of Defense Michelle Flournoy.

Now the Biden world and the Obama world are pretty much at each other’s throats. Biden’s Israel policy has been harshly criticized, with former Obama staffers denouncing it as immoral and election-unwise. They are also highly critical of the Biden campaign. While Obama notoriously eschewed traditional Democratic organizations in favor of his own, the Biden campaign continues to work closely with the Democratic National Committee in his reelection effort. The old party establishment has repaid by instituting rules throughout the primary process to protect Biden from the kind of coup that is just now emerging. Even if the Democratic elites were to agree to replace Biden, they would likely face a full-scale revolt from the thousands of Biden campaign field workers and volunteers who joined the campaign in the name of the incumbent and do daily work at the grassroots level. To run anyone other than Biden would require a restructuring that would make Don Shula blush.

The Democrats have no choice but to field the incumbent president. Biden is the strongest candidate they can muster this term. That alone scares me and should be enough for the Democrats to keep Biden in the race.

Bradley Devlin: American conservatives.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.