The most predictable story in the world gets recycled whenever a first-term president becomes unpopular and his jittery party starts wondering whether other options are better than nominating him for re-election. So with President Joe Biden’s approval ratings sagging below 40%, here comes a column by Ed Kilgore at New York magazine asking whether Democrats are “stuck” with Biden in 2024.
To answer, set aside (legitimate!) questions about whether Biden, now 79, is too old for a second term. Tune out consideration of whether Democrats believe he would be a good second-term president. Turn to the way electoral politics actually unfolds.
Unpopular presidents have lost re-election bids — Donald Trump, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford. The last two times an unpopular president who was eligible dropped out of a re-nomination fight, in 1952 and 1968, his party lost anyway. This is hardly surprising. If a president is unpopular, then his party will be unpopular. George W. Bush couldn’t run for a third term in 2008, but given his low approval ratings, Republicans never had a chance that year.
All of this suggests that if Biden remains unpopular, the Democrats are probably doomed whether they nominate him or not. Indeed, given partisan polarization, it’s unlikely that candidates matter much in most presidential elections. But we don’t and can’t have side-by-side comparisons, and it’s not surprising that party actors would be wary of re-nominating an unpopular president, regardless of what the evidence suggests.
Which gets back to the question whether the 2024 Democratic nomination is Biden’s if he wants it. Party actors have no formal veto over any candidate. But they do control many of the resources — money, expertise, party-aligned media — that are critical to winning primary elections. If a united party wanted to dump an incumbent president, it surely could at least severely injure him.
After all, most White House staffers, and almost all presidential appointees in the executive branch, have backgrounds as loyal Democrats, not mainly as Biden supporters. Imagine if Biden’s cabinet threatened to walk out unless he agreed to end his campaign for re-election. He could go on anyway. But it’s hard to imagine him doing so. Similarly, Biden would be hard-pressed to continue if enough major Democratic donors refused to support him, or if he had difficulty staffing his campaign with experienced party operatives. Of course, if things came to that point, it might not matter anyway, since a president that unpopular among party actors would probably be trounced in primaries.
But realistically, even the least popular presidents keep the support of half or so of their party’s voters, and it’s likely that many party actors would stick with Biden if he tried to run. His cabinet and White House staff would probably do so because they like holding their jobs, if for no other reason. In the era of campaign finance abundance, it’s hard to believe that even an unpopular president would fail to raise plenty of cash. And some organized groups within the party would want to reward even unpopular presidents for their support. That was even true for Jimmy Carter, the president with the fewest ties to his party after four years in the White House; one reason he was able to defeat Senator Ted Kennedy and win re-nomination in 1980 was that some unions and other organized groups choose to back him.
The real question, then, isn’t whether Democrats are stuck with Biden. It’s about a scenario in which enough party actors want a second term for him that he has a solid chance for re-nomination, but enough others want a new candidate that it’s also possible that he could lose. If that’s the situation, it really comes down to what’s in one politician’s head, and that’s always difficult for outsiders to predict.
Remember this about Joe Biden, however: His talent has always been to adjust his positions to remain right in the center of the Democratic Party. If the center of that party wants him gone, he’ll probably go.
There are no guarantees; no politician drops out of a winnable presidential election casually, and there’s nothing easier for a politician and those around him or her than to convince themselves that they are indispensable. Biden surely could make that case to himself. But he also has a built-in excuse for bailing out — age — that few presidents have had. And he really is a party man. So my best guess is that if enough party actors push, he would back away.
It’s also possible that he intends to retire anyway, and just isn’t ready to say so.
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
