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AWhile he is the Democratic frontrunner in 2019 and is favored to defeat Donald Trump in 2020, reports suggest that Joe Biden will only serve one term if elected.
The campaign quickly declined.
Now, one wonders if it would have been better if he had followed through with the report.
During the 2024 campaign season, Biden announced his plans to run for re-election. This comes despite concerns about his age and whether he can serve another four years. Then, Biden interrupted the debate against Trump and the Democrats panicked.
The 81-year-old dropped out of the race and endorsed VP Kamala Harris to beat him to the top of the ticket. The rest – namely Trump’s electoral victory – is history.
The disappointing result for the Democrats has led many to point to Biden as the reason for Harris’ loss, with some saying his ill-advised decision to run again overshadows his legacy.
He claimed that his decision to run and then drop out prevented the Democratic primary from choosing his candidate. He also said it prevented Harris from fully campaigning.
“Joe Biden is the sole reason Kamala Harris and the Democrats lost tonight,” one Harris aide said bluntly. Political Magazine.
“There has to be accountability and Joe Biden should not be running for a second term,” said Andrew Yang on CNN. “They should have stopped in January, not July.”
“Maybe in 20 or 30 years, history will remember Biden for some of these accomplishments,” Thom Reilly, co-director of the Center for Independent and Sustainable Democracy at Arizona State University, told PBS News. “But in the shorter term, I don’t know if he can escape the legacy of being the president who defeated Donald Trump only to usher in another Donald Trump administration four years later.”
Biden is far from the only Democrat in recent memory accused of overstaying his welcome in political office. Late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and late California Senator Dianne Feinstein come to mind.
However, some strategists argue that Biden’s scapegoating is unfair.
“I think it’s unfair and stupid that some people, including my party, are trying to use it as a narrative,” said Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright. The Independent.
“The reality is that Kamala Harris would not have been the leader of our party for more than 100 days if Joe Biden had not chosen her as his vice president,” Seawright said. .
“Harris entered the campaign short because of the infrastructure and resources because of what Biden was able to achieve as a candidate and president,” he said.
Harris dominated Biden’s $95m campaign war chest when he rose to the top of the party’s ticket in late July.
Seawright called for an end to the blame game, admitting “nobody wins when families fight.” He also rejected the idea that Biden’s early re-election bid would tarnish his legacy.
“Joe Biden brought the country together. He delivered historic results that no one can dispute,” he said.
Rob Godfrey, former deputy chief of staff for Nikki Haley when she was governor of South Carolina, also said. The Independent that making Biden the scapegoat for Harris’ defeat — or Trump’s win — is unfair.
“It’s hard to blame things for a loss like the vice president when the Trump campaign deserves great credit for a great win and a resounding victory,” he said.
“The question of how the sitting president’s decision to leave the race – when, what terms and whether it should trigger some kind of primary process that could produce a stronger Harris effort, less tied to the unpopularity of Biden – is more fair. ask, and be one for historians to judge.”
The debate over the question “will rage for years,” Godfrey predicted.
Democratic strategist Christy Setzer said the election results show that the Democratic party will lose regardless of whether Biden or Harris wins.
“When you see the state move six points to the right (and less in a state at war), that means, frankly, there’s nothing Harris can do, especially in three months,” he said. The Independent in email. “But also say that if Biden loses, maybe before the debate.”
He emphasized other factors that could have contributed to Trump’s victory.
Trump’s victory signals a larger global trend to elect candidates who have served in recent years as many countries grapple with inflation, he said. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his conservative party were ousted, South Africa’s African National Congress lost its 30-year parliamentary majority and French President Emmanuel Macron’s snap election showed a drop in support for his party. Post-pandemic, voters seem restless for change.
As for Trump, he is spreading fear to show why the change is necessary. He warned that Harris, who is vying to become the first elected female president, would be “walk(ed) all over” by other world leaders because of her appearance. He added the baseless claim that Haitian migrants eat animals to show “this is happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” He even vowed to send the military against those who disagreed with him, which he called “the enemy from within.”
This tactic seems to have worked. “Americans show more anger than is reported,” Seawright said. “It was an emotional election. People voted against rather than for.
The role of media and social media platforms in elections is also examined.
“I also believe Democrats have been harmed by the spread of disinformation on social media platforms owned by right-wing billionaires,” Setzer said.
Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X who donated almost $75m to the Trump campaign, has pushed anti-immigration rhetoric and claims of baseless election fraud; he is the most followed user on the platform.
“It’s really important to have someone who is partisan living in that digital real estate,” Emerson Brooking, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Laboratory, said. New York Times this week. The outlet analyzed Musk’s tweets over a one-week span in September, finding nearly a third of the posts were “false, misleading or missing important context.”
The amplification of unchecked content could be at the heart of the election’s outcome, Setzer said.
But it’s not just X writing that reaches voters. Trump tried to appeal to the so-called “bro vote” by sitting down with podcasters such as Theo Von, Logan Paul and Joe Rogan. The strategy seems to have worked; people of all ages overwhelmingly voted for him.
There’s also Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser turned right-wing podcaster, who gives some insight into this misinformation strategy, telling Bloomberg journalist in 2018: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with it is to flood the zone with s**t.
On his show “War Room,” he echoed Trump’s claims about the Covid-19 mandate, the Biden family, and election fraud. The mega-popular show, found to be the biggest offender of spreading election misinformation, led the other top 20 political podcasts tracked from the date Biden received the Democratic nomination until January 6, 2021, according to the Brookings Institution’s 2022 analysis. .
Setzer attributes the right-wing shift to the spread of misinformation: “When voters (correctly) realize that crime is at a 50-year low, the stock market is at an all-time high, that the economy is actually the best in the world, they vote for Democrats in huge numbers. Misinformed believers, vote for Trump.
“That’s why it’s very difficult to say what the Democrats should have done at a different time, except – if we win power – try to manage social media platforms against the spread of deliberate misinformation,” Setzer added.
