Will Desperate Dems Primary Biden in 2024?

On one level, the answer seems obvious - primary Biden. The president’s approval has plunged to record lows. His age and cognitive capacity have become increasingly troubling – and will only get worse. Voters are facing raging inflation in their every financial transaction. Prices are soaring for most basic needs. Illegal border crossings and crime rates have risen to dangerous levels. Cancel culture is on the march, unchecked by a president headed to the leftward edge of a cliff. Is it time for Democrats to bite the bullet and admit that it will be necessary to find someone else to hold the presidency in 2024? Shouldn’t somebody, anybody, run if that’s the only way for the party to maintain control of the presidency?

What exactly will it take to convince the aging careerist in the Oval Office that it’s time to leave? He just hit rock-bottom approval: 33%, according to a New York Times/Siena College survey. A staggering 88% of Americans, according to The Hill, believe the country is on the wrong track. An equally startling 71% in a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll say this president should not even run for a second term. And in recent head-to-head polling, Biden is losing by as many as five points to the same supposedly disgraced Donald Trump he took down two years ago.

All that said, not only is Biden trying to appear fully committed to running again - angrily deflecting growing questions about it in private, according to multiple accounts – but, as in 2020, he believes himself uniquely capable of thwarting Trump. And with the 45th president still the favorite to win a third consecutive GOP nomination for the highest office in the land, Biden likely believes that his legacy as the Trump antidote will not be complete unless he can stop the evil orange man one more time.

So what are the leaders of the Democratic Party to do? They have a president to whom they are grateful for removing Trump, but whose performance in office now has them in a state of meltdown panic over their prospects in both the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential race. Other than mostly anonymous strategists and a few willing to be named, the Democratic establishment claims to be fully behind the renomination of the sitting president. Of course, were it to say anything short of that, it would instantly become a banner headline the party can ill afford. But for what it’s worth, according to a source with impeccable pro-Biden credentials, CNN, all prospective candidates who might consider challenging this president have ruled it out.

Political overachiever Pete Buttigieg has reactivated his Twitter account to endorse congressional candidates but denies it has anything to do with another presidential run. California golden boy Gavin Newsom has certainly raised eyebrows with TV ads in the belly of the conservative beast and a crucial swing state in presidential elections – Florida - decrying the increasingly popular Governor Ron DeSantis, a speculative presidential hopeful himself. But Newsom swears to author Edward-Isaac Dovere that he’s behind Biden all the way: “He needs troops. He has to govern. Our job is to organize, and it's to have his back."

Illinois’ billionaire governor, J.B. Pritzker, another potential presidential hopeful, recently complained about the “status quo” in a speech in New Hampshire, famously the first primary state in every presidential election season. But he warns of any primary challenge, saying it would be a replay of “Ted Kennedy running against Jimmy Carter ... They will lose and they will take away from the President. That's not what we need right now." Veteran Democrat strategist Joe Trippi describes an intra-party challenge as "murder-suicide … nothing good can come from it." But the primary Biden whispers are getting louder.

And party regulars try to appear sincere in their belief that Biden can repeat what he did in 2020. “He's still the safe brand in the midwestern states to make sure Trump is kept far away from the Oval Office," says Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), former Bernie Sanders campaign co-chair.

Indeed, despite his hard left turn after running as a conventional Democrat in 2020, Biden argues for a second term for his allegedly solid standing in the crucially competitive heartland, which proved decisive in the last two presidential elections. And Biden has said from the time he entered the presidential race three years ago that he was uniquely positioned to remove Trump from the White House. He will now suggest that, having taken Trump down once, he is in an ideal position to prevent Trump’s return – no matter his record as president, which most certainly will be compared with that of his predecessor.

Will They Primary Biden In the End?

In looking back on recent history, ahead to the midterms, and how a primary challenge to the incumbent might influence the race in 2024, there is good news and bad news for Biden. The bad is that every president of recent vintage who has been primaried – Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Gerald Ford in 1976, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1992 – never made it to a second term. The good is that an almost equal number of presidents in our time have survived midterm repudiation and gone on to capture a second term - easily. Ronald Reagan in 1984, Bill Clinton in 1992, and Barack Obama in 2012 all scored one-sided victories following huge losses in congressional elections two years earlier.

Is Biden the only candidate who could beat Trump – or the only one that could lose to him? Is Trump the only one who could beat Biden in a rematch, or the only Republican hopeful who would lose to the sitting president?

After spending most of his adult life seeking the presidency, Biden certainly won’t bow out of the race anytime soon, if only for the chaos that would ensue in advance of November’s congressional elections. And he evidently has already scheduled his campaign kickoff for next spring. But while establishment Democrats go on the record in full support of his candidacy, Biden may well be the only one in the entire political realm who still sees himself as a capable leader. And if his party receives the expected midterm shellacking, effectively rendering a no-confidence vote on Democrats in general and this president in particular, you can be certain the calls for him to step aside will only grow louder.