In addition to the challenging upcoming midterm elections, Joe Biden is also approaching his 80th birthday. The fact that his party has no alternative is one of the problems.
 |
| [Joe Biden] |
Even though Washington, DC is experiencing summer temperatures at the moment, the Biden administration is not exactly basking in the sunlight. More than a year and a half after taking office, the 46th President of the United States is faced with a mixed, almost half-time assessment: the tedious topic of corona has now largely been shelved, but many of the new government's more ambitious program projects are either in the mills of the day-to-day business bogged down or have died a silent death in Senate committees. Although the topic of corona has been largely shelved, the assessment is almost half There, to make things even more difficult, the Democrats still only have a razor-thin majority, and they are especially reliant on the participation of the two moderates who have publicly announced themselves to be Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. If you answer "no" to both questions, then the reformation process is complete. And they have denied our request a sufficient number of times over the course of the last several months.
Even though Biden's situation has recently improved somewhat - on the one hand, because he still managed to swear the Democratic Senate faction to his Inflation Reduction Act, and on the other hand, because of the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case - he is still likely to have a stomach ache approaching the stumbling block of almost every post-war presidency: the midterm elections, which are scheduled for early November and in which Republicans (George W. Bush in 2002 was the last person to have a positive record across the board at the midpoint of their term. This was at a time when the country was teetering on the brink of entering the Iraq war.) In the event that more fundamental changes are not made, at the very least the House of Representatives will most likely be won by the Republicans, and the size of the government agency will be significantly reduced.
In addition to such transitions in power, the midterm elections signal another turning point, as they mark the formal beginning of the second half of the President's tenure with them. As a result, the time horizon is inexorably moving closer to the next election cycle, which gives rise to the unavoidable issue of whether or not a second candidate would run for office again. Since Lyndon B. Johnson, no incumbent has wanted to voluntarily let go of the chalice of power; even Johnson required a miserable primary result in 1968, poor health, and a lot of pressure from within the party to step down from his position as president. This is typically a purely formal consideration. It is difficult to suppose that Joe Biden is an exception to the norm in this situation, despite the fact that quite a few Democrats would want to believe that this is the case. In any event, he has already conveyed his readiness to those who are closest to him, and being the astute power politician that he is, he has made sure that the whole public is aware of these private utterances to an excessive degree.
So everything could go according to plan if there weren't such a complicated matter about ages involved. Because the President is approaching not just the midterm elections that will take place this autumn, but also his 80th birthday in the coming months. A political mortgage for Biden; were he an athletic mid-fifties (Jimmy Carter, 1980) or even a youthful just-so-fifties (Bill Clinton, 1996), no one would dispute his readiness for and right to a second effort if he were either of those ages. But he is a political mortgage for Biden. You, however, have to deal with a predicament in public view that cannot be addressed by political strategy since you are 80 years old. Just as John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt weren't too young for office, Joe Biden isn't per se too old for that. This is not to say that it is a medical certainty. However, politics feeds on tales, and the pressure on the president to make place for younger forces rises with every moment of weakness, every failure in judgment, and every age flaw that occurs. In any case, the issue of who will succeed the current leader is one that is often in the news these days. Along with it came the challenge of finding a successor.
Because finding someone to succeed Biden may prove to be more challenging than first anticipated. In the event that the President is unable to make an appearance, the Vice President, Kamala Harris, who by virtue of her office may already lay claim to a certain crown princess status, would be the favored choice. However, the Californian has, up to this point, left a somewhat poor impression, as shown by the fact that staff have deserted him, his appearances in the media have been grating, and he has shown a growing regret over the lack of prospects for profiling. There is no denying that holding such a fragile post as the vice presidency may be a thankless responsibility for the person who holds it. However, the Harris case also demonstrates an unreasonable demand, which was originally obscured by the early enthusiasm around the historic feat of electing the first woman to the position of vice president. Although Biden's number two may be politically savvy, she is not likely to elicit much compassion from anybody other than her clientele of left-liberal coastal elites. Even the much-maligned Mike Pence had gained a significant amount of support after being in government for a year and a half.
In the event that the party deems Harris to be too big of a risk for them, Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg may be the next person on the list. He is seen as lively, has widespread support among the main funders of the party, and, in contrast to the vice president, he has already proved with a successful pre-election campaign for the 2020 election that he is capable of gaining some momentum inside the party. It wasn't until the majority of the party had settled on Biden before the Super Tuesday votes that he finally got out of the race, and he did so with his head held high and newly acquired political capital. There are, of course, a lot of points that can be made in Buttigieg's opposition to being a presidential contender, including the following: First and foremost, his age (he would only be 42 in 2024), but also his lack of expertise, his contentious history as a consultant, and the low code numbers among racial minorities are often brought up.
In this regard, the approach that Buttigieg takes to first build up internal party dominance and then strive for a Senate seat as a traditional presidential springboard might prove to be the more astute course of action. Particularly resonant in this setting: Only recently did he move his residence from deeply Republican Indiana to Traverse City, which is located in the battleground state of Michigan. Although he claims that the move was made for family reasons, the possibility that a successor for Senator Debbie Stabenow, who is 72 years old, could be sought there in the near future may have positively influenced the desire to move. In any event, there is a compelling reason to avoid the dangers of an all-or-nothing candidacy desirable. This would be the case since there is no middle ground. Especially considering the fact that it is still the case that anybody who loses an excessive amount of times in the primary elections would rapidly become politically exhausted. Former presidential hopefuls who have since been eliminated from the race, such as Dennis Kucinich and Rick Santorum, may perform their song about it.
Behind Harris and Buttigieg, there is already a significant chasm in the race. Beto O'Rourke is fighting for his political survival these days, and neither Tammy Duckworth nor Gretchen Whitmer, and certainly not the always fantasized Michelle Obama, appear interested in a job change. At Bernie Sanders, the varnish is probably finally off. Elizabeth Warren burned down various bridges to the progressive camp in 2020. Amy Klobuchar is considered to be too brittle. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, would be after handily surviving a recall referenduman application is more likely to be capable of, but it is very unlikely that he will be able to navigate past his "compatriot" Harris. Is it possible that Roy Cooper? The selection of a candidate for the position of governor in North Carolina would be equivalent to a continuation of the Biden path through various techniques (and different aesthetics). To put it another way, this is more of a conservative update than the introduction of a brand-new product.
The mathematical reasoning behind it: Cooper conveys competence and composure, maintains a certain reputation among independents, and is likely the most effective antidote to a Republican firebrand because of these qualities. According to a comment from a political scientist named Chris Cooper, who is not related to the governor in any way, "He's a Democratic governor from a purple state and has reigned in a split state - that's a formula for success." This quote was taken from The Carolina Journal. An evaluation that (with the exception of the state highlighted in purple - inset) would also apply to contenders such as John Bel Edwards or Andy Beshear. The only thing that comes to me as a possible point of contention is whether or not a white male who leans clearly moderate will still be able to be put with the progressive party wing in the year 2024. His dissatisfaction with the Biden administration's policy of avoiding confrontation may very well be mirrored in his opposition to any and all approaches that include moderation. Already, there are certain clues pointing to the fact that this is the case.
In the end, it goes without saying that the political climate in the United States is one that is always shifting. It is a well-known adage that whomever enters the conclave as pope comes out as a cardinal, and the same can be said of the White House. There is not much of a difference between the two. Who would have predicted in 2004 that during the next four years, Barack Obama, who was a rookie in the Senate at the time, would battle his way to the top? Or, in 2012, the notion that reality TV star Donald Trump could easily oust party stalwarts such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Therefore, there is a high probability that there will be unexpected developments and shooting stars, which does not make the challenge of democratic succession any simpler. It's possible that it won't happen until 2028, but it might happen as early as 2024: There is a potentially deadly rift within the party around the integration figure Joe Biden, despite the fact that more and more Republicans are coming out in support of Ron DeSantis, the popular governor of Florida, as a potential alternative to Trump.
The author Marco Bitschnau is a research associate at the Swiss National Science Foundation and a doctoral candidate in political sociology at the Swiss Forum for Migration and Population Studies (SFM) at the University of Neuchâtel.
Source: IPG