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DECEMBER 6, 2022

Meyerson on TAP

Why Joe Biden Shouldn't Run for Re-Election

Ever look at the actuarial tables for 80-year-old men?

All things considered, I'm high on Joe Biden. He's the first
president since Lyndon Johnson who's been serious about addressing
economic inequality and-what was far less of a problem in the
1960s-mass wage stagnation. I was enthused that he took some of Bernie
Sanders's economic policies as his own and put a scaled-back version
of them into his much-lamented Build Back Better bill. I consider his
successes in enacting major legislation grappling with the climate
crisis and boosting domestic industry to be historic achievements. I
appreciate his skill at spearheading and keeping together the coalition
of nations that are supporting Ukraine. Some of his appointees,
particularly in agencies that are charged with promoting workers'
rights, have promoted them more creatively and effectively than any
administration since FDR's. I was no fan of his intervening to stop
the railroad strike, but

**raisons d'état** can compel a president to do that kind of thing,
and as the above-mentioned FDR actually sent in the Army to break
strikes in armament factories during World War II, I think historians
will cut Biden some slack; they've cut it for FDR, in assessing his
pro-labor bona fides.

I say all this as a prelude to the point of this On TAP, which is my
belief that Biden should

**not**seek re-election. Yes, I know that Biden's suggestion (well,
actually, diktat) to the Democratic National Committee last Thursday
that they move South Carolina up to the head of the 2024
primary-election pack made clear his determination to run. Nonetheless,
I hope we (you and me both) can convince him that running isn't really
a good idea.

The problem isn't Biden as such, it's simple chronology. Biden
appears to be in pretty damn good shape today, but he'd be 82 if and
when he takes the oath for a second term, and 86 when that term wraps
up. Republicans are sure to run hard on that issue, which almost surely
will be their only attack on Biden that will be empirically verifiable.
Yes, I think Biden would be able to defeat Donald Trump despite those
attacks, but I'm not sure he could defeat any of the younger GOP
alternatives to Trump should one of them be nominated. I also strongly
suspect that some nontrivial number of Americans who otherwise might
vote for the Democrat in 2024 will be given pause by the thought of
voting for someone who'll be 86 at the end of his term. Let alone
someone who might not make it to the end of that term.

Face it: Sometime between now and January 2029, when his second term
would conclude, Biden might come down with an ailment that afflicts a
statistically verifiable majority of American male octogenarians: death.
Were that to happen, of course, Vice President Harris would move into
the White House. If that were to happen, say, in the final year of
Biden's presidency, there would already be a crowded field, including
Harris, vying for the 2028 nomination, and there's a decent chance
that Harris's rivals would keep on vying. If that were to happen
earlier in Biden's second term, however, barring some immense scandal,
I don't think any Democrat would opt to wage a primary challenge to
the first woman president, and a Black woman president at that.

The problem with that is it's not at all clear that Harris would be a
strong candidate in the 2028 general election. She could dispel some of
my apprehensions by delivering a more stellar performance in (the Oval)
office than she has thus far as vice president, but only some of my
apprehensions, as the electorate's readiness to elect a Black woman
from liberal California, particularly after she'll have been savaged
by right-wing media, is, to put it gently, uncertain.

But don't fret exclusively about a hypothetical 2028 election: I
don't doubt that Republicans will raise the specter of a Harris
presidency when they raise doubts about Biden's life expectancy in
2024.

OK, OK-Biden has already made his intentions clear. To which I can
only respond: Say it ain't so, Joe.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

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