Was it just a bad debate performance on Biden's debate performance? Let's be clear: it was bad. I've been writing a commentary series on the debate, but probably the incident that sticks out to me most is covered in my last essay. Trump was going on about how he handed off a well-managed Southern border under control and how "Open Borders" Joe was letting in violent criminals, mentally ill people, even terrorists. So Joe tries to turn the table on Trump, saying the only terrorist was the guy in the Trump Administration who shot and killed 3 American soldiers. I'm thinking to myself, "What the hell is he talking about? I'm reasonably well-informed, and I never heard of this." To this day, I haven't seen anyone else, all the fact checkers, etc., talk abut this allegation (maybe they did, but I haven't seen it). I must have spent over a half hour searching the web to no avail. I eventually found a 2019 clipping of some Saudi military member, apparently an unidentified militant, visiting a Florida base opened fire and killed 3 American soldiers. Now maybe Biden intended to question whether the Trump Administration vetted foreign visitors on American military bases, but the entire context got mangled in his response.
I still recall Joe Biden's improbable primary victory in 2020. Biden was an old-fashioned New Deal/Great Society mainstream Democrat with traditional constituencies of labor and minorities. Others may disagree with my summary (I haven't voted Democrat since the late 80's), but I thought Biden's argument was an electability argument against an incumbent President, a former VP to a still popular 2-term POTUS. with a telegraphed commitment to serve for only one-term, an implicit recognition a second second term at 82 yo, unprecedented in American history, was unlikely viable.
It is really not that surprising that Biden backed away from a one-term transitional model. He made 2 principal points: (1) he felt without a 2024 candidacy, he would effectively be a lame duck, losing political leverage during his term; (2) he had proven electoral success against likely reelection opponent Trump. The problem is, if anything, the Presidency tends to age a person beyond normal. Biden's approval ratings have been below normal--in the late 30's/early 40's for an extended period of time. That's not necessarily the kiss of death; I remember IL Gov. Blagojevich winning reelection despite bad ratings (but then so had his opponent). I don't underestimate the advantage of incumbency and for the likelihood of Biden to narrow any gap to Trump. And I thought Trump's 4 trials would affect the election more than they have.
But Biden was in a state of denial over the viability of his candidacy. Yes, he won the most popular vote by about 4.5 points in 2020 (which, of course, is irrelevant in our electoral college system). [Most states choose to allocate all their electoral votes (# House districts + 2= # US Senators; note that House seats are rebalanced each decade based on US Census results) to the winning plurality vote. Personally, I would assign an electoral vote to the plurality winner of each district and 2 for the statewide winner, which is the system currently used in Maine and Nebraska.] But keep in mind Biden's winning margin in key battleground states was really thin:
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There are reasons that Biden's ratings have fallen, and a lot of it has had to do with the highest inflation ib over 4 decades; real household income has actually lost ground; rising mortgage rates have devastated the housing market. Part of the problem is massive federal spending on Biden's watch (over $7T increase in the national debt), and Biden reappointed Fed chair Jerome Powell: the Fed had flooded the money supply and failed to raise rates when inflation started to rise. Then Biden failed to anticipate a flood of migrants after the expiration of Title 42. Part of his leadership failure was an inability to set expectations. There was his mismanagement of the exit from Afghanistan. But much of Biden's agenda was based on ideology, even at the expense of the middle class, including massive green subsidies in the oxymoronic Inflation Reduction Act, His sanctions on Russian oil (post Ukraine) roiled the global markets. He tried to bribe the middle class by largely emptying the strategic reserve while largely freezing new public land oil & gas exploration on his watch. He constantly played political hardball (remember the standoff with Speaker McCarthy over raising the debt ceiling?) And of course I opposed the administration's intervention with social media companies to suppress free expression on COVID-19 policies, etc., and Biden's attempt to mandate vaccines through workplace regulations in large companies clearly exceeded statutory and constitutional authority and was justifiably rebuffed by SCOTUS.
As a libertarian, I could probably cite 1001 things Biden has said or done I disagree with. But really I don't expect most voters to agree with my perspective. I'm just amazed that Biden, with a largely split Congress, betrayed any interest in pragmatic/centrist governance, Even the so-called bipartisan "infrastructure bill" is misleading: "Today, the Senate voted to advance a trillion-dollar bill that spends just one-tenth of its total on roads and bridges while funding “digital equity,” dysfunctional Amtrak systems, “green” subsidies, and more. And as last week’s CBO report shows, and as conservatives predicted, the bill is not paid for and instead increases the deficit by more than a quarter trillion dollars." The fact remains, Biden wanted to spend trillions more to record spending and was rebuffed by GOP legislators. I think I finally snapped on Biden when he referred to the end of massive pandemic spending as his "cutting the budget deficit".
Whereas it is difficult to project what would have happened if Biden had cut some bipartisan deals without worrying about alienating the partisan base he needed for reelection or by his adding billions to the national debt by forgiving student debt (vote buying) [imagine the optics of blue-collar workers without degrees having to pay off the bills of entitled graduates earning more money], keep in mind he barely won those independents in the battleground states. I really don't know if those independents were turned off by Trump post-election 2020, but if Biden won 51% of the vote and his current approval is around 40%, it's highly probable enough voters changed their minds for Trump to flip results in the battleground states.
But the problem goes beyond his partisan leadership. Part of it has been the appearance that Hunter Biden, his son, has used his dad's position to gain access and personally profit; for example, if I'm a CPA and my significant other has a stake in the company I'm auditing, I have to report that position, and I believe my partner has to unwind that position. I don't believe Hunter had anything to do the Burisma scandal in Ukraine and I know the USG opposed the corrupt prosecutor Shokin before Biden demanded his termination. Other parties had demanded Shokin's removal, but Biden took the credit. Shokin lied, arguing Biden wanted him out to stop his investigation of Burisma. The point is, Hunter should never have taken the board seat at Burisma, especially given his dad's position relative to Ukraine matters. In fact, it was an issue in the Obama White House. Biden should have had Hunter turn down or resign from the board to minimize the appearance of a conflict of interest. I've consistently maintained that position even as I repeatedly debunked GOP lies of Biden corruption.
But Biden stubbornly held onto his renomination even as polls began to do something I hadn't seen in the last 2 cycles, Trump winning a greater number of polls. But more importantly, not only did most Republicans and independents think Biden was too old to reelect, but a huge plurality of Democrats, including the all-important youth vote.
Obviously, the debate was the turning point. I mentioned one example at the the beginning of the post, but I have written 3 essays on the debate, and Biden was incoherent at times which were difficult to analyze.
The end was sad to see but inevitable. A contagion of Dems thought he was not only risking the White House but the Congress; big donors were deserting him. I think by doing what he did, it led to nomination for Kamala Harris without a real competition for the nomination.
