Myths about Biden’s electoral strength could spell trouble in 2024 / Natalie Jackson

Myths about Biden’s electoral strength could spell trouble in 2024

By Natalie Jackson

Democrats need to remember that 2020 was a nail-biter, 2022 isn’t necessarily replicable, and concerns over Biden's age will only grow.

People gathered in McPherson Square react to the presidential race being called by CNN in favor of Joe Biden over Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States, Saturday, Nov. 7, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

It always amazes me how quickly we forget the anxiety that surrounds close elections. The five anxious days it took for The Associated Press and networks to call the outcome of the 2020 election is burned into the brains of close election-watchers like me. Yet some commentators have developed overly rosy narratives about the Democratic wins in 2020 and 2022 as they make the case for President Biden’s candidacy in 2024. These narratives are based on selective interpretation of 2020’s outcome and fail to recognize how rare 2022 was.

The backdrop to reanalyzing 2020 and 2022 is that Biden faces a lot of obstacles for an incumbent president. He is the oldest president we’ve ever had, and it’s not particularly close. Age debates are going to be a feature of this election, even if Donald Trump, who’ll be 78 at the time, doesn’t top the Republican ticket. Former U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley is campaigning directly on the idea that it’s time for a new generation of leaders and proposing cognitive testing for politicians over age 75.

There is indeed a fine line between genuine concern about the ability to do a job because of age and discriminating against someone by assuming they can’t do a job because of their age. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a perennial Democratic presidential candidate himself, compared such ageism to sexism, racism, and homophobia.

Unlike some other -isms and -phobias, though, concern about age-based decline is based on the fact that humans do decline as they age. Polls from YouGov and the University of Massachusetts Amherst show broad public support for the concept of age limits for elected politicians. Questioning whether someone is still able to do one of the most difficult jobs on the planet if reelected at 82 years old—an age at which many people struggle to function, and an age none of my grandparents even reached—seems like a reasonable question.

The pro-Biden arguments haven’t seemed to focus much on his health, though. Most focus on his strength as a candidate and politician. Indeed, the Biden administration itself says Biden’s fitness is self-evident. As White House communications director Kate Bedingfield told NPR, "The test of whether the president is capable of being president is watching the president be president.” Pro-Biden media coverage takes the approach of touting his electability. As one example, in the span of 24 hours, The New York Times published Ezra Klein’s op-ed making the case for Biden and a morning newsletter from David Leonhardt implying Biden is the only electable Democrat on the national scene.

There was a record-scratch in my head when I read this passage four paragraphs into Klein’s piece: “Biden proved—and keeps proving—doubters like me wrong. He won the Democratic primary, even though voters had no shortage of fresher faces to choose from. He won the general election handily.” Yes, Biden won the overall popular vote by more than 7 million votes. But in the Electoral College, the part that matters, he won the three decisive states of Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin by a total of about 43,000 votes. Only about 80,000 votes separated Biden from Trump in Pennsylvania. In order to make sure these narrow results were accurate and would hold as all the votes were counted, media outlets waited until the Saturday following Election Day to call the race. That’s not winning “handily” or showing unusual electoral strength. That a seven-million-vote win could be called “close” in any way is a different matter, but it is the system we have.

Additionally, the 2022 election results have been overestimated as an indicator of strength for Biden and Democrats heading into 2024. It is true that Democrats minimized losses and even gained a seat in the Senate, an excellent outcome for the party in power in a midterm. But the conditions that led to that outcome could be extremely difficult to recreate: Democrats held on to the Senate largely due to Republicans nominating objectively weak candidates, and abortion was unusually important following the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June, a once-in-50-years event.

It is unclear whether abortion will remain as a top vote driver for 2024—in 2022 exit polls, it was the second-most important issue to voters after the economy. And, while Democrats defeated some prominent Republican election deniers, plenty of election deniers won their races. I’m not betting on the perfect-storm combination of bad candidates and a shock Supreme Court decision holding for a second consecutive election.

Biden looks very likely to run, and he could certainly win a second term. But selective memory and interpretation of his electoral strength is not what will get him across that line, nor does it help when the media takes on a cheerleader role rather than looking at the facts. Attention to real vulnerabilities and national conditions as they unfold for 2024—yes, including Biden’s age and Haley’s accurate point that our government is still overwhelmingly run by Boomers—is what will motivate the base to turn out and persuade swing voters.

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