Biden’s new strategy may work if he fails to prove that the “elites” are right.
On Monday, as lawmakers returned to Washington after their recess (the first time the two chambers met in person since Biden’s disastrous debate defeat), the president launched an early morning preemptive attack: He sent Democratic lawmakers a stern letter urging them not to show up, and reminding them that more than 14 million voters across the country selected him as their nominee in primary elections.
“That’s for them to decide,” Biden wrote, “not the media, not the pundits, not big donors, not some select group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned.”
A few minutes later, Biden called into MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where Democrats regularly convene for chit-chat. The president again declared the debate was just “a bad night.” In the debate’s aftermath, he said, he’s spent the past 10 days holding campaign events and manipulating the ropes to try to gauge party sentiment.
“I wanted to make sure that I was right that the average voter out there still wants Joe Biden, and I believe that is true,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Asked about donors, editorial boards and elected officials who have asked him to step down, Biden was defiant. “I don’t care what the billionaires think,” he said. “They were wrong in 2020. They’re wrong in 2022. … I’m not going to tell you any more about what I should or shouldn’t do. I’m running.”
He’s right that political experts have been wrong about him in the past. Four years ago, many doubted he could beat Trump. And even more predicted a Republican “red wave” in the midterms, rather than the pink ripple that sorely disappointed GOP strategists. Biden did indeed lead the Democrats to impressive victories and better-than-expected results.
But as any investment advice advertisement can tell you, past performance is no guarantee of future results.
On “Morning Joe,” especially, Biden seemed keen to warm to the idea of running as an insurrectionist against the Democratic establishment, of which he has certainly been a bonafide member for decades, but who has been on the rise and fall in American politics for some time now.
On Sunday, Biden received rapturous cheers from the African-American congregation at the Mount Airy Church of God in Christ in Philadelphia. Black voters are the most loyal of the Democratic base. They also tend to be the most pragmatic, as the 2020 primaries showed. African-Americans in South Carolina calculated that Biden was the candidate most likely to beat Trump, giving him a landslide victory and helping him secure the nomination. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus have been among the most vocal in their continued support of Biden, and so far none have called for him to withdraw.
The president is now trying to resurrect the persona that won him votes four years ago. With Monday’s letters and phone calls, we witnessed the return of “Average Joe” Biden, a man who will always fight for ordinary Americans and who doesn’t care what self-proclaimed bigwigs think, no matter how well-intentioned they may be.
“Democratic voters voted,” he wrote. “They elected me as their party’s nominee. Are we now saying that the process didn’t matter? That voters had no say? I refuse to say that. … How can we defend democracy in our country when we ignore democracy in our own party? I cannot. I will not.”
Will this be enough to quell the rebellion against Biden? Maybe. Counterintuitively, given Biden’s age, time is on his side.
Whatever congressional Democrats may be thinking, there was not even a trickle, let alone a surge, of them calling for Biden to resign on Monday. And for the rest of the week, Biden will host the NATO 75th anniversary summit. While Biden is committed to foreign policy, it is highly unlikely that his party will say or do anything that would undermine him. If a frank press conference scheduled for Thursday goes well, the Biden team will claim that the controversy is now in the past.
But he can only play the rebel card once: if he fails again, he will no longer be able to blame the anti-democratic “elites” – he will have no one to blame but himself.
