Joe Biden is old. For all the cynicism surrounding Roy Hodgson’s return to management, at 75 the Crystal Palace boss is half a decade younger than the US president. Were Biden to win re-election, he would be 86 on his final day in office. This is how times works.
Biden isn’t even especially popular. His approval rating sits at 42.5 per cent, according to FiveThirtyEight. Among independent voters, who were critical to delivering victory in 2020, his approval is just 25 per cent. Indeed, 70 per cent of Americans do not think the president should run for re-election. The reason he is – and why he might yet win – is simple: politicians, like football managers, only have to beat whoever’s in front of them.
Donald Trump left office not only under a cloud of insurrection and impeachment, but deeply unpopular. A majority of Americans say that criminal charges should disqualify him from running for president in 2024. 65 per cent of voters say he is dishonest. And 60 per cent do not think he should run for re-election either.
Biden, for his part, has enjoyed a surprisingly productive first two years in office, especially given his slim congressional majorities. The roughly $2trn Covid-19 relief package, $1trn infrastructure bill and the game-changing (if misleadingly named) Inflation Reduction Act alone mean that the Biden administration will go down as a historically consequential one, regardless of any sequel.
Not that you would know much of this from his first re-election campaign advert, which has somewhat higher production values than the interminable man-or-woman-walking-down-a-deserted-town-centre videos you see from Labour councillors running for selection.
The piece opens with the January 6 insurrection, and is largely focussed on themes such as securing freedom and democracy, with Biden saying he is running once again for the “soul of America.” These concepts are pretty fundamental to any liberal democratic state, and are not wholly shared by large swathes of the Republican Party, though it is not always easy to get people to vote along those lines, not least in hyper-partisan America.
Unlike Trump, who may face Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a contested Republican primary, Biden faces no serious opponent for his party’s nomination. Nor do Democratic elites appear to welcome one. But therein lies the problem. It seems pretty obvious that Democratic voters would prefer Biden, but younger. From an electoral maths perspective, this person would ideally be a governor or senator from a swing state, who can marry the president’s centrist vibes with liberal policy chops.
That person might have been Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia or Governor Jared Polis of Colorado. The problem is, even if Biden were to decide not to run, or be persuaded of the merits, there is already a younger Democrat in the executive in the shape of Vice President Kamala Harris.
In 2020, Biden chose Harris as his running mate, then a senator from California. It was a historic selection and Harris became the first woman, the first black American and the first South Asian American to be elected vice president. But it was also a curious decision. Harris is not an especially popular politician, and did not even make it to the first ballot when she ran for president in 2020.
Therefore, in the absence of a Biden but younger candidate, the Democrats appear to have settled for the OG.
Elsewhere in the paper, Prince William quietly settled a phone hacking claim against Rupert Murdoch’s UK media organisation for a “very large sum of money”, the High Court has heard. The settlement was reached in 2020, according to documents filed in Prince Harry’s latest legal case.
In the comment pages, Matthew d’Ancona writes that thanks to Diane Abbott, Keir Starmer now faces a decision he mustn’t duck. Anna van Praagh admits she used to be a republican, but now she has lots of reasons to celebrate the King’s Coronation. While Emma Loffhagen says women’s football’s ACL injury plague shames sports science.
And finally, Josh Barrie is out to ruin another of your favourite dishes: supermarket quiche – a “claggy mess of anaemic density.”
