Biden or bust: Democrats are stuck with Joe

There is a lot of buzz about Democrats potentially replacing President Biden on the ballot next year. Biden’s polling has the party faithful very nervous, as the last 11 surveys have him losing the 2024 election to former President Trump, and also to pretty much every Republican he could face. His favorability rating is on par with those of ground glass as an appetizer and becoming the victim of a carjacking.

As the pundit class wonders whether Democrats could replace Biden, the question really is, “Should they?” What would happen to the party if they did?

I am no Democrat, and I don’t even think that Biden is up to the job of the presidency. But I still agree with those Democrats who believe that it would be a disaster to swap him off the ticket at this point.

Short of a majority of the Cabinet and the vice president invoking the 25th Amendment and publicly declaring him unable to perform his duties, Biden is running again, and he remains the Democrats’ best hope.

The 25th Amendment isn’t really an option for Democrats, not because it might not be appropriate, but because they’ve spent the last three years insisting that Biden is perfectly fine. They can’t afford the loss of credibility that would come with going back on that incessant claim right now.

So they’ve pushed all their chips into the center of the table and placed them on Joe.

An additional problem is what the Democratic Party has become in recent decades. To hear progressives tell it, there are few things more damaging and destructive to society and the world than a wealthy, straight white man. Biden, who apparently makes six-figure loans to family members, is all of those things. Their voters looked past that in 2020 because then-President Donald Trump was the greater threat.

When Biden picked Kamala Harris as his running mate, he sealed his and his party’s fate for 2024. The Harris pick was cheered for being “historic” and “a first,” but it was simply Harris’s existence they were cheering — her skin color and gender. Harris’s only accomplishment as a senator had been to get elected, but progressives are conditioned to elevate superficial characteristics as the most important things about anyone.

Harris is “historic” in another way — she may be the only Democrat with lower approval ratings than Biden’s high 30s to low 40s approval rating.

Democrats can’t replace someone unpopular with someone even less popular. But that isn’t even their biggest problem. That would be the question of whom they would pick if they were to bypass Harris.

The only Democrat with the profile and resume to be a viable last-minute replacement for Biden is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In fact, he has been running a bit of a shadow campaign to raise his profile, just in case. But Newsom is very rich, very straight and very white. He is the bipedal manifestation of what Democrats have conditioned their base to see as harmful and wrong with the world. Biden’s election shows they can overlook such things under specific circumstances, but there is no way they could stand by and let a rich, straight white man supplant a “historic” woman of color.

Can you imagine the fight that would break out at the prospect of tossing aside Harris, a Black woman who is next in line, for a white man? Which MSNBC host’s head would explode first? Which college campus would be burned to the ground first? Which member of the Squad would declare herself independent first?

It would be a disaster. And of course, this is why I hope it happens, but also why I know it won’t.

Nothing ends destructive behavior faster than holding the actors to their own standards, and in American life today, identity politics is about as destructive as it gets. To see that disastrous tactic backfire on its originators is like watching Frankenstein’s monster burn down the castle in which he was made.

Democrats have painted themselves into a corner, and with the same brush they have been using to threaten everyone else. I know what they say karma can be, but in this case, I think it’s a beautiful thing. 

Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).