Blame Biden

Post-election thoughts

For Democrats, this presidential race was probably lost on the night of the 2022 midterms.

It was then, against the headwinds of history, Democrats grew their Senate majority. It was then that they performed far better in House races than initially forecasted. It was then that they believed they had a glorious plan for victory: stump on abortion rights and warn, repeatedly, of Donald Trump’s potential to destroy democracy as we know it.

President Joe Biden, about to turn 80, was emboldened. If there were whispers that he should not seek another term, they were silenced that night. His party had won. He was in command. He had crushed Trump once, and would do so again. His advisers formed an impenetrable wall around him.

Any talk of age-related diminishment was savagely dismissed—and then Team Biden barreled forward, into disaster.

Biden, of course, would eventually drop out of the race. His performance in the June televised debate against Trump was cataclysmic. But his departure and the euphoria surrounding the sudden rise of Kamala Harris, his vice president, obscured a reality Democratic elites were far too quick to ignore: it was an intractable problem that Harris did not have to win a single vote in a primary. It had been more than a half century since any major party nominee was decided that way.

And it was Biden’s fault, ultimately, that Harris ascended in such a fashion. He wanted a second term badly enough that he wasted the entire primary season running for a nomination he would never claim. His ego blinded him and his myopic advisers enabled a foolhardy campaign. He guaranteed Harris—and only Harris—was the option for the Democratic Party trying once more to defeat Trump.

Would a different Democrat, last night, have won the popular vote and the Electoral College? We’ll never know. But open primaries are effective sorting mechanisms. The best presidential candidates are forged in them. Barack Obama had to surge past Hillary Clinton in 2008. He was not the preferred choice of the Democratic establishment.

He barnstormed across the country and took control of the future, if he’s no great shakes anymore. His surrogate work failed. Trump left his multiracial coalition in tatters. His hectoring of nonwhite men didn’t boost Harris very much.

Biden, in 2022, should have quit while he was ahead. He should have announced he was not seeking another term and fulfilled the implicit promise of his 2020 campaign, which was building a bridge to a much younger generation of Democrats. He was plainly incapable of waging a vigorous campaign in 2024. He had a chance, right at the midterms, to permit an open primary to replace him.

Perhaps Harris, the sitting vice president, wins that primary anyway. If so, she would have at least been forced to craft a compelling rationale for her candidacy. She would have had to have gone to states like South Carolina, Michigan, and Georgia to explain why, exactly, she wanted to be president and what she might do if she assumed the most powerful office in the history of mankind. A primary would have compelled her, above all, to have a message.

Few voters understood what Harris wanted out of the Oval Office. We’re not going back isn’t enough. Trump, for all his lies and inanities, had an obvious, digestible message for the voters of the seven swing states that decided the election. He wanted to drastically curtail immigration, slap tariffs on imports, combat inflation, and wind down so-called “forever” wars.

Many of these promises are nebulous and it’s plausible none are fulfilled. But it’s crucial that they existed in the first place. They formed, together, a worldview that could either be accepted or rejected.

Candidate quality matters and Harris, for all the joy she inspired, had a horrendous electoral track record. In 2019, she ran for president and performed so poorly she had to exit the race before the Iowa caucuses. Andrew Yang outpolled her and Tulsi Gabbard, who has since left the Democratic Party, out-debated her. She would have remained a senator from California were it not for Biden’s decision to add her to the ticket in 2020. Suddenly, a failed presidential candidate who had also, in her lone competitive statewide race, barely triumphed was now a leader of the Democratic Party.

A 2024 primary could have at least tested Harris’ mettle. The Democrats had no shortage of capable candidates who wanted the nomination. There were a bevy of swing state senators and governors, as well as other prominent elected officials ready to compete. Either one of them would have broken through or Harris, in victory, would have engaged with millions of Democratic voters and been better for it. She would not have been such a muddle.

That’s the danger of foregoing primaries. That’s the danger of hoping democracy can be sidestepped. It is true that incumbent parties across the world have been battered and inflation, as a global phenomenon, would have eaten into Harris’ margins no matter what she did. It’s also true, as the sitting vice president, she was the de facto incumbent. She could not plausibly break from Biden. A different Democrat would have been better positioned to pull off that trick.

Now Trump looms and Democrats, like in 2016, are staring into the abyss. This time, like 2004, they have lost the popular vote, a resounding rejection that should trigger a reassessment of all that they do and how, in the first place, they approach the American electorate. Some of this will be sorted out in the next open Democratic primary, which will take place in 2028. Some liberals believe fascism is near, and that they’ve voted in their last free election.

This is deeply wrong, and also defeatist.

Democracy will continue to exist. It simply offers no promise for particular electoral outcomes. It does not guarantee someone like Trump can’t win. In fact, it creates the possibility for men like him to rise. He won more votes this time.

When that presidential primary is held, Democrats will have their strongest standard bearer—the one who has the will of the party’s electorate behind them. Such a novel concept, I know.