Democrats' Anger Toward Joe Biden is Misplaced

It's understandable, but it mistakes the reality of why the party lost.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

A lot of Democrats are not feeling charitably toward President Biden. That has only intensified since his decision to pardon his son Hunter, which — if it has any impact politically — won’t be good for the party.

At the core of this anger is the belief that had Biden announced after the midterm elections in 2022 (or at least at some point in 2023) that he wouldn’t run for reelection, the party would’ve had a much better shot at beating Donald Trump. Such a timeline would’ve enabled a full primary, which might have opened the door for a better positioned candidate than Kamala Harris to win the nomination. At the very least, it would’ve helped flesh out Harris’s message and helped voters to feel like they knew her if she had captured the nomination.

Yet, while that narrative makes sense, it ignores the global political situation that confronted Democrats in 2024. The theory also unravels when one digs deeper into what might have happened if Biden had stepped aside.

First and foremost, Democrats would’ve been huge underdogs no matter who the party nominated. Why? Because voters across the globe are angry. As ABC News reported, in democracies with elections in 2024 “over 80 percent saw the incumbent party lose seats or vote share from the last election.” That included some historic losses, and involved both liberal and conservative parties.

That sobering reality undercuts the idea that a different Democratic candidate would’ve won. It assumes that that person would’ve been so popular as to avoid these strong global headwinds. Yet, the bottom line is that the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic, most especially the inflation caused by reopening the economy, left voters in a sour mood and looking for someone to punish. Or as no less than president-elect Trump put it, “When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that."

Nonetheless, it’s plausible to argue that Trump, despite his unique strengths, also had unique weaknesses that would’ve enabled a different Democrat to win.

That, however, raises the question of who exactly would’ve been the mythical candidate who could’ve pulled off a victory?

The person almost certainly would’ve had to be someone with zero ties to Washington or the Biden Administration. As we witnessed, Harris struggled to differentiate herself from Biden, because she was his vice president. That meant she owned the administration’s unpopularity and its most controversial decisions. The same would’ve been true of someone else in the administration like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

It might even have been true of Democrats in Congress — people like New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, or Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock. All three are potentially strong presidential candidates who may have had something to offer that Harris didn't. Yet, as Pennsylvanians learned all too well, Republican messaging on inflation hurt any Democrat in office. Senator Bob Casey had seemed as close to invincible as someone in a purple state could be before the election cycle. Yet, he lost in an upset after an avalanche of ads blaming him for prices going up, as well as for purportedly supporting many of the same liberal positions used to attack Harris.

Casey’s loss exposed how anyone who voted for Biden’s program would’ve suffered from the same attacks.

Additionally, timing would’ve played a role in terms of who might’ve run. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Maryland Governor Wes Moore, for example, didn’t take office until early 2023. Warnock and Kelly had just gotten done running back-to-back Senate campaigns in 2020 and 2022, and may not have been interested in immediately pivoting to running another grueling two year campaign.

When considering all of those facts, the pool of potential candidates who might’ve plausibly done better than Harris would’ve been something like Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Gavin Newsom, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker. All could’ve run as outsiders — and blamed the Biden and Trump Administrations for the problems upsetting voters. They could’ve said look I know you’re mad at the president from my party. So am I. But the guy before him contributed to everything, and now he wants the job back. Reject him, and pick me, I’ll actually fix the mess both of them caused.

While this general line of attack would’ve been promising, at least two of those governors, Pritzker and Newsom, would’ve been even more open to ideological caricature than Harris was. Both have signed and supported very liberal legislation in their extremely blue states (just Google their names and “signs controversial law” for a potential taste of the opposition research material). Whereas Harris got hammered for positions she took during the 2019 Democratic presidential primary, they’ve actually enacted things that — whether you agree with them or not — Republicans could’ve weaponized. Also, as commentators have pointed out since the election, poor Democratic governance in big cities and blue states has soured many voters on the party.

That makes it far from clear that blue state governors would’ve been stronger candidates than Harris.

Realistically, then, that probably leaves Whitmer. There is a case she would’ve been the party’s strongest potential realistic nominee in 2024. She’s the popular governor of a pivotal swing state, who could’ve run as a true outsider. She could’ve criticized Biden from the left on some issues, and from the right on other issues. She’d have almost certainly fared better in her own home state of Michigan than Biden or Harris.

Yet, the idea of Whitmer as the mythical Democrat who would’ve won has flaws. First, nominating her would’ve involved shoving aside Harris — the first Black woman vice president — for a white nominee. Given that Democrats already struggled (relatively speaking) with voters of color in 2024, it’s entirely possible that a Whitmer primary win could’ve exacerbated the problem. That’s especially true given that the party nominated all three sitting/immediate past vice presidents who ran between 1968 and 2024 (Hubert Humphrey was the nominee in 1968, but lost the nomination in 1972).

Further: there is another elephant in the room with regard to a Whitmer candidacy: one thing that hurt Harris was the unwillingness of some voters to support a woman as president. Whitmer would’ve had the same problem, which may have limited her ability to make inroads with people who voted for Trump against Harris.

No one can know for sure how another candidate would’ve fared. Yet, it’s far from clear that any of the plausible non-Harris candidates would’ve been so strong as to overcome the global headwinds.

But there was another possible outcome had Biden stepped aside earlier. Harris might well still have won the nomination — which is what typically happens when vice presidents/immediate past VPs run for the presidency (Humphrey, Walter Mondale, George H.W. Bush, and Al Gore all won their respective party’s nominations). It’s reasonable to argue that a longer campaign would’ve let her better develop a message and connect with voters, many of whom ended up feeling like they didn’t know the vice president after the truncated campaign.

Yet, as we saw from how Trump’s campaign hammered Harris over things she said during the 2019 primary, running a primary campaign is perilous for candidates in an era of smart phones and social media. Gone are the days when someone could run to the left or right in a primary and then credibly pivot back to the center. Every answer is on video just waiting to serve as a weapon for the other party. So while Harris’s message might’ve been sharper, it’s also possible that what she would’ve had to do to win a primary would’ve hurt in the general election.

This analysis makes clear that Biden stepping aside earlier probably wouldn’t have made a difference for Democrats. If anything, it’s possible to argue that the president dropping out a month or two earlier would’ve helped. In that scenario, the party could’ve opened up the nomination process, enabling someone like Shapiro or Warnock to run. They might even have avoided making the sort of commitments Harris made in 2019, because instead of running in primary elections, they’d have only been appealing to a small pool of convention delegates.

But realistically, the truth is most voters had never experienced any sort of even moderate inflation. Even a 50 something would’ve been a child or teenager when the inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s ebbed. They had no frame of reference to say “hey this actually isn’t so bad compared to the past,” like an older voter might’ve had.

And they hated what they experienced. They felt worse off. Making matters worse for Democrats, these voters had experienced a Trump presidency, and they felt better off between 2017 and 2021 than they did between 2021 and the present. That was an almost insurmountable obstacle for Democrats. When you listen to voters, it's clear many of them have a sense of Trump as uniquely cable of handing the economy because he's a businessman. It’s absurd given both his checkered business record and his first presidency. Nonetheless, it’s how many voters feel.

Other issues worked against Trump, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t enough to overcome the economic reality for most Americans.

Finally, while it’s fair to criticize Biden for trying to run when it was clear that his communications skills had eroded (and only he and his team know when he started declining), it was also reasonable for him assume his approval rating could rebound. He was in politics while three presidents who experienced bruising midterm elections and mediocre-to-low approvals (Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama) won reelection, while a fourth president, George H.W. Bush was in excellent shape entering the third year of his presidency, and ended up losing. So one can understand thinking that as the pandemic impact ebbed, Americans would warm toward the economy and accordingly to the incumbent president.

In fact, one lesson of 2024 is that inflation — unlike a recession or high employment —isn’t something that really ever goes away. Prices might stop increasing, or wage increases could begin to outstrip price increases. Yet prices won’t go down absent a bad economy that hurts in other ways. Which means that voters are never going change their negative perceptions about the person in office presiding over high inflation, unless it’s a case like Reagan, who could plausibly blame the last guy from the other party.

Moving forward presidents in both parties will want to avoid high inflation at all costs.