There is blood in the water.
President Joe Biden’s dismal debate performance in the June 27 debate against former President Donald Trump that his campaign insisted on having almost two months before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Ill. in August has brought national and international attention to the very grim reality facing the sitting president, who spoke in a raspy voice and had trouble completing his clearly memorized thoughts at times.
Trump in contrast was disciplined and on message, keeping his composure and demonstrating a command of the issues in the campaign that he anticipates addressing should he reclaim the White House in November, hammering inflation outpacing incomes, millions of illegal immigrants and drugs flooding the border and rising crime as key points.
Almost immediately, pro-Biden spin rooms and debate analysis following debate reached a nearly unanimous verdict: Biden has got to go, to be replaced by some other untested and at this point unknown candidate.
This makes Trump the obvious winner of the debate, and the beneficiary of an entrenched establishment that was so desperate to retain power, they have sought to imprison the leader of the opposition party in an election year — July 11 is Trump’s sentencing in the New York City trial — and hid their own ailing candidate from public view until they couldn’t anymore.
The thinking is that replacing Biden (while potentially putting Trump in jail) might be the only way Democrats can win — a sort of hostage negotiation — but what if Biden still represents Democrats’ best chance of holding onto the White House?
At this point Biden has indeed been trailing Trump in national polls since Sept. 2023, but the day of the debate was only behind in the average of national polls compiled by RealClear-Polling.com, 46.6 percent to 45.1 percent.
For a Democratic president, that’s still not great — it implies Trump is ahead for the national popular vote — which could have catastrophic down-ballot implications for Democrats in November.
But what if that’s as good as it gets for Democrats?
Heretofore, and this might now change, the only candidates who did worse than Biden when pitted against former President Donald Trump was just about everyone else.
Very few polls have been done lately on this matter, but Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris in national polls, 49.3 percent to 42.7 percent. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom fares even worse, with Trump leading 48.6 percent to 38.3 percent.
In other words, this could be a no-win situation for Democrats. But unlike Star Trek’s infamous Kobayashi Maru, changing the conditions of the “test” will not be easy — or even advantageous.
The options are: Run with the vacant president, or a vacant presidency?
1952 and 1968 didn’t work out for Democrats either when Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson opted not to seek another term, with Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon prevailing rather easily in both contests.
The lack of a good candidate as an alternative stands out, but the more compelling reason is simply the utter weakness of replacing a sitting president because the state of the country had gotten so bad politically for the incumbent party. Democrats would have to admit without admitting that they had been lying about Biden’s strength as a candidate the entire time.
It’s the moment when voters realize the emperor has no clothes.
Or a more apt analogy of replacing Biden would be akin to a bank CEO trying desperately to raise capital at the last minute to keep up with deposits in the midst of a bank run. Everyone heads to the exits.
The damage being done to the country is somewhat incalculable, when the preferred option is to destroy the presidency in order to “save” it.
Confidence once lost is rarely recovered. The inevitable outcome of Biden’s catastrophic performance, and the show of weakness by his own party, which is in full panic mode, and then a bid to replace him at the August convention, whether it succeeds or not, is a further erosion of trust and confidence. This late in the game, that rarely bodes will for the incumbents.
But this is what Democrats wanted. The party could have figured this out a year ago. They broke it, they bought it.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
