Things are a disaster at home and abroad, and the recent debacle in Afghanistan has Republicans floating invoking the 25th Amendment as well as impeachment. While I suspect these efforts will go nowhere, they do speak to the growing problem of Joe Biden’s incompetent presidency and the likely growing desire for Democrats to achieve a course correction before 2024 or risk losing the presidency big-time—maybe even to Donald Trump.
It is safe to say, especially after watching Biden’s trainwreck interview with George Stephanopoulos, that he’s been broken by this failure in Afghanistan. He’s not well. Kamala Harris, despite bragging about her role in Joe Biden’s decision-making process on Afghanistan, has fled from the cameras, hoping to salvage her political viability while Biden takes the fall on his own. She’s clearly got her political future in mind through all of this, and if the idea of her ascending to the presidency scares you (as it should), one thing to consider is that there is one person who can prevent her from becoming president.
And that person is Joe Biden.
While Joe Biden has already promised to run for reelection in 2024, the American public is skeptical that he’ll even finish out one term. But, as Biden’s popularity trends downward, it’s hard to see how he manages to fix what he’s broken, especially when he’s shown so little interest in actually fixing anything.
Barack Obama once infamously said that if he couldn’t fix the economy, he’d lose reelection. “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”
He didn’t fix the economy, of course, but was reelected nonetheless. Make no mistake about it; Joe Biden will not get the same leeway that Obama did. Also, Obama’s challenger, Mitt Romney, was weak and uninspiring. It continues to appear as though Donald Trump is running in 2024, and he’s widely favored to win the GOP nomination. A recent poll shows that if the election were held today, he’d beat Joe Biden handily. Who else would lose to Trump, according to recent polling? That’s right: Kamala Harris.
Worse yet, Americans don’t think she’s even qualified to run to country. According to a new Rasmussen Reports survey, “only 43% of Likely U.S. Voters think Harris is qualified to assume the duties of the presidency, including 29% who think she is Very Qualified.” This is a decline of six points since April. Moreover, a majority, 55 percent, says she’s not qualified to assume the duties of the presidency.
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If Harris succeeds Biden via resignation, impeachment, or invoking the 25th Amendment, Democrats will be stuck to run her in the next election. I don’t think anyone believes Democrats want that.
So, what can Joe Biden do to not only give Democrats a chance in 2024 but save the country from the notoriously unlikable Kamala Harris? It’ll be on him, shortly after the midterm elections, to announce that he won’t run for reelection. That prevents Kamala Harris from becoming president through succession, forcing her, if she wants to be president (and of course, she does) to face primary challengers, of which there will be plenty.
Biden could even help Democrats in the midterms by making such an announcement a month or two ahead of them. Otherwise, Biden’s incompetence will likely hurt Democrats in the 2022 midterms—and may cost them the U.S. Senate.
At this point, neither Biden nor Harris are candidates to bank on in 2024—particularly Kamala Harris, whose own unpopularity preceded the Afghanistan disaster.
There have been unconfirmed reports that Joe Biden hasn’t been sleeping well this week and wants to extend his vacation rather than go back to the White House. As many of us warned last year, Biden wasn’t mentally or physically able to handle the presidency. Maybe he can last a full term, but even people who convinced themselves he could handle the job can’t be convinced that he’d last two. So if Biden wants to save the country (and his party) from Kamala Harris, he needs to serve out a full term but not run for reelection. It’s the only way.