PETER BAKER: Democrats pining for alternative, Biden team has message: Get over it
Sunday March 3, 2024 -- A new poll shows that nearly two in five Democrats say that the president should not be their nominee. But no one who matters to the president seems willing to suggest he step aside.
Posted — UpdatedBut even as many Democrats in Washington and around the country quietly pine for someone else to take on former President Donald Trump, who leads nationwide in the poll by 5 percentage points, no one who matters seems willing to tell that to Biden himself. Or if they are, he does not appear to be listening.
Surrounded by a loyal and devoted inner circle, Biden has given no indication that he would consider stepping aside to let someone else lead the party. Indeed, he and the people close to him bristle at the notion. For all the hand-wringing, the president’s advisers note, no serious challenge has emerged, and Biden has dominated the early Democratic primaries even more decisively than Trump has won his own party’s nominating contests.
“There is no council of elders, and I’m not sure if there was that an incumbent president, no matter who it was, would listen to them,” said David Plouffe, the architect of President Barack Obama’s campaigns and one of the strategists who helped him pick Biden as his vice presidential running mate in 2008. “He thinks, ‘Hey, I won, and I beat the guy who’s going to run against me, and I can do it again.’”
Members of Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern. The president’s closest aides push back in exasperation against those questioning his decision to run again and dismiss polls as meaningless this far before the vote. They argue that doubters constantly underestimate Biden and that Democrats have won or outperformed expectations in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and even a special House election this year.
“Actual voter behavior tells us a lot more than any poll does, and it tells a very clear story: Joe Biden and Democrats continue to outperform, while Donald Trump and the party he leads are weak, cash-strapped and deeply divided,” Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director, said Saturday. “Our campaign is ignoring the noise and running a strong campaign to win — just like we did in 2020.”
The discontent is not necessarily a judgment on the merits of Biden’s presidency. Many Democrats say he has done a good job on many fronts — winding down the pandemic; rebuilding the economy; managing wars in Europe and the Middle East; and enacting landmark legislation on infrastructure, climate change, health care, industrial policy, veterans’ care and other issues.
“Would I rather that Joe Biden were 65? Sure, that would be great,” said Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution and a member of the Democratic National Committee. “But he’s not. And that’s why I think we’re in the silly season where everybody is casting around for some alternate scenario.”
All the talk, though, is just that. Biden is helped by the fact that no one from the next generation of Democrats waiting in the wings, like Vice President Kamala Harris or Govs. Gavin Newsom of California or Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, has a proven national following or track record of success in primaries.
“You could name five or six alternatives to Biden, but they haven’t been through the system,” said Kamarck, one of the country’s leading experts on the nomination process who has just published the fourth edition of her quadrennial guide, “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know about How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.”
“We don’t know enough about them to hand them a nomination,” she continued. “It’s crazy. The whole thing is so nutty. There is no alternative.”
Kamarck said that more and more, Democrats have come to accept that. “Democrats are increasingly getting very, very vocal in their defense of Biden,” she said. “The guy’s a good guy. He’s not senile. He’s made good choices. The economy’s the best economy in the world. I mean, shut up. Let’s get behind this guy.”
“There were only two people who could prevent Joe Biden from being the nominee: Joe Biden if he decides not to run or someone serious who would challenge him,” said Plouffe. And no matter how appealing a younger Democrat might seem in theory, he added, nothing is certain until someone actually runs and wins. “The political graveyard is full of people who look good on paper,” he said.
An important moment for the president to assert himself will come Thursday night when he delivers his State of the Union address to what historically should be his largest television audience of the year. He will talk about his record and what he wants to do for the next four years. But as important as any policy pronouncement will be how he presents himself.
“Where most Democrats are,” said Plouffe, “is, ‘OK, this is going to be really hard, a high degree of difficulty, but ultimately, there’s probably enough of the country who doesn’t want to sign up for a second Trump term that we can make this work.’”
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