Prominent members of the Democratic Party are lining up behind President Joe Biden to endorse his reelection campaign – not because they think Biden is a worthy option, but because they dread a likely alternative: Kamala Harris winning the Democratic nomination and former Donald Trump, subsequently, winning the presidency.
The notion is becoming widespread but remains hush-hush. Democrats are reluctant to air their fears publicly.
“Nobody wants to be the one to do something that would undermine the chances of a Democratic victory in 2024,” Representative Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) told POLITICO. “Yet in quiet rooms the conversation is just the opposite – we could be at a higher risk if this path is cleared.”
Phillips is one of the only Democrats openly acknowledging the growing sentiment within the party. Phillips has been vocal, in calling for Democrats to turn to a new generation for leadership.
Yet, few have rallied to Phillips’s cause.
Instead, most have “fallen in line behind [Biden’s] yet-to-be-announced candidacy.”
“It’s fear, plain and simple,” Phillips explained, referring to the hesitancy of Democrats to call for a new nominee, and the unwillingness of prospective candidates to step forward.
“People are focused on self-preservation and their aspirations.”
Joe Biden is too old for a second term
I have been writing about Biden’s age for months. He’s too old to serve a second term. He’s already 80. He appears to be on the decline.
A second term would last through Biden’s 86th birthday. An 86-year-old president? It’s an absurd premise. The US life expectancy for a male is 76 years old. Biden is already four years past the life expectancy. Are we going to bank on Biden living ten years past life expectancy?
That’s what would be required in order for Biden to survive a second term. And what about campaigning? Is Biden cut out for the rigors of running the country, while campaigning full-heartedly, traveling from coast to coast, speaking publicly, shaking hands? A presidential campaign is a lot to ask of an octogenarian.
Phillips feels similarly. “If he were 15-20 years younger it would be a no-brainer to nominate him, but considering his age, it’s absurd we’re not promoting competition but trying to extinguish it.”
Kamala Harris is a poor alternative
As Phillips indicates, Democrats are willing to stand behind a sub-standard, geriatric candidate because the alternative is worse.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s tenure as Biden’s subordinate has not gone well. Harris’s popularity is low.
She has failed to make any trackable progress on immigration or voting rights reform – two big-ticket items Biden assigned Harris. And throughout Harris’s tenure as vice president, rumors have persisted that she is a horrible boss, whose deep-set insecurities and willingness to lash out at underlings, has made for a toxic office culture.
The result has been a staff exodus; Harris’s office is beset with high turnover, prompting observers to wonder whether the turnover is hampering productivity.
Whatever the full reason, Harris is unpopular. So much so that Democrats are unwilling to promote an alternative to their 80-year-old incumbent for fear that Harris, from her vice presidential loft, would be well poised to earn the nomination – which would likely lead to the election of Donald Trump.
Actually, Democrats have such little confidence in Harris, that some observers are asking whether she should be included on the ticket at all; in an election with an octogenarian, increased scrutiny will be applied to the vice president, who runs a higher than average chance of one day replacing a deceased president.
The mere premise of Harris waiting in the wings, as a contingent in case of Biden’s demise, is causing some Democrats to go mad.
BONUS: The Fall of Joe Biden Has Started
BONUS: Donald Trump Looks At His End
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
Spud360
February 18, 2023 at 11:01 pm
An attempt to show both Harris and Biden as unfit for office. Pure hype with a lot of what ifs and misleading faults statements.
coco
February 20, 2023 at 9:58 am
The article never mentioned “unfit”. It mentioned a fact about average life expectancy and a POV about Harris’s likeability. Both very important factors in a presidential race.
Al C
February 20, 2023 at 2:48 pm
WE are now living to be 100 so we better get used to this. This demographic is growing larger, they are our grandparents, and they still have the right to have their voices heard. Some people make it there not as easily as others, but some show surprising resilience to elder ages.
While I agree VP Harris is not a competitive or popular choice for the upcoming race, it is discriminatory and prejudiced to disallow or reject a candidate for their senior age barring mental competency. After 4 years of self serving narcissism, we need a president who is the leader of all the adults in the room. My opinion is not based on politics. It is about experience and fitness to hold office. President Biden is a man for his time and the fatherly president we need now.
Mark B
February 23, 2023 at 9:59 am
Let’s go BRANDON. He is a joke. Name one thing he has done good for this county. One thing he didn’t F-up. Inflation, Afghanistan, the economy and the Covid-19 pandemic. Where is the unity he promised, cause it’s not the MAGA republicans.
Biden made a series of claims about his own past that were just not true. It was these easy-to-understand, hard-to-defend personal falsehoods – more than his false claims about complex policy issues or obscure statistics, which supporters could more easily dismiss as good-faith errors. He is a flat-out liar.
To try to sell his economic policies, Biden sometimes made inaccurate statements about what experts had said about them. In May alone, he falsely claimed that there was a consensus among economists about how many jobs his American Jobs Plan would create, significantly overstated how many jobs the firm Moody’s Analytics in particular predicted the plan would create and falsely claimed that the last five leaders of the Federal Reserve had said the plan would produce economic growth – wrongly describing both the contents and the authorship of an article that was actually written by five former Internal Revenue Service chiefs.
Where Pop Corn
Where Hunter- 3 years and IRS and the investigative council can’t charge him with anything–coverup.
His handling of the situation at the southern border ?????
He canceled Operation Legend amid a record crime wave in US cities.
His war on fossil fuels helped drive domestic production down and gasoline prices through the roof.
He is a puppet of the left that doesn’t know what day it is.
Richard F
February 25, 2023 at 1:33 pm
Re: Life Expectancy:
• It appears that this author does not understand the dynamics of life expectancy. When actually looks at the US Life Tables, life expectancy is determined as being the point at which 50% of people born in a given year die. People who exceed their predicted life expectancy then form a new norm. These are healthier people than the average, and the further you get away from life expectancy, more likely you are to be a high functioning older person. The reality is that nature culls the herd of the less healthy and/or the genetically less robust people, leaving a stronger, healthier population of people whose residual life expectancy actually begins to extend further because of this natural selection. When you look at an 80-year-old born in 1943, their life expectancy goes well beyond the 50th percentile that makes up the current life expectancy for that cohort
• This author got it wrong. Those who exceed life expectancy are generally healthier and more cognitively intact elderly, often known as the “super elderly.”
• As a clinical neuropsychologist, I have seen no evidence that Biden’s cognitive functioning is declining. His speech falters at times. This is a manifestation of his lifetime stuttering problem, not an indication of impaired cognitive functioning. Yes, his voice may be getting a little weaker. That is not unexpected, nor as some slowing of gait as one ages. Stephen Hawking couldn’t talk, walk, or wipe his own ass. Nonetheless, he produced some of the most advanced scientific work in this state. People who judge Biden on the basis of his mild stuttering effect (which causes him to pause in his speech as a lifetime compensatory strategy) are ignorant and uninformed about the human brain. Trump never even thought to compensate for his myriad deficits, including his inability to slow down his gait on a mildly declining ramp (not to mention airplane stairs) and holding his maximally offensive tongue and delusional thought processes (stolen election, changing NOAA hurricane data with a sharpie, suggesting disinfectants and lights as cures for COVID, etc.). He was perfect, as he reminded us at every possible opportunity.
• Biden, on the other hand, has extensive political experience. In addition, he is the common sense to compensate for deficits rather than deny them and end up looking like a total fool with absolutely no judgment, like his predecessor. He also knows how to manage a government with many years of experience in our political system, and he does not surrender himself yes-men and make rogue, uninformed public statements that his desperate fans gobble up as truth from the gods.
• One should not confuse humility with weakness. When one of Abraham Lincoln’s advisors or some general said “We know that God is on our side,” Lincoln replied, “We would be better to hope that we are on God’s side.” Would you rather rather have a jihadist or an experienced, thoughtful person pouring leader. I haven’t heard anyone talk about using the 25th Amendment with Biden. It was common talk within the Trump administration. Pulling this age card is like saying that Kamala Harris is incompetent because she is Black. You may not agree with Biden’s policy, and you may not like VP Harris, but rejecting them because of ageism or racism exposes one’s ignorance and lack of a valid argument against them. You don’t have to be woke to understand the stupidity of racism or ageism. You simply have to be a thinker. Or you can say seeing things like “Mexican immigrants are rapists and criminals,” and “THERE’S my African-American!” such as Trump called out spotting the one black person in the throng of his rally.
• Stick to the facts instead of resorting to uninformed prejudice. The latter does nothing but expose a small mind.
Linda Smith
February 25, 2023 at 3:57 pm
Your ultra partisan attack is pure Russian propaganda and vitriol, typical phony arguments without cause. He is a wonderful president,absolutely for the people and not corporate abuse and thievery thank God everyone is seeing through the GQP MAGA hype. There is nothing positive about that criminal party and its traitors.
John Lannefeld
February 27, 2023 at 12:30 pm
The author is a typical thirty-something who regards anyone past seventy as either being mentally dead or having one foot in the grave. I am not a Biden supporter, but I would never base that on age alone. There are many of us “older” folks who still have all of our faculties, both mentally and physically. The author should tread very carefully on the issue of age, youth a stuff that will not endure.
Mark
February 27, 2023 at 12:56 pm
While I like Biden, he really cannot run for another term as his cognitive skills are in decline. We do not need this after Trump. Harris being VP, may become the President due to Biden dying but never will she get to the Presidency by running for office. Why? Mainly she was in CA politics with Gavin Newsome which has turned CA into Mexico Norte by allowing all illegals from Mexican boarder to come and live in the USA without fear of removal…citing CA to be a “Sanctuary state”. Harris was the attorney General at the time. BothBoth of them have destroyed CA
Bambino
February 27, 2023 at 4:29 pm
Harrison Kass says (I have been writing about Biden’s age for months. He’s too old to serve a second term. He’s already 80. He appears to be on the decline.)
What planet have you been living on for the last 6 years Harrison. Biden’s been on the decline for at least that long and any ordinary person can see that’s what’s going on for the last 3 years without professional training.
Stephen T
February 28, 2023 at 9:48 am
I detest Hillary, but I’d gladly vote for her against either of the democracks in office today.
william
March 2, 2023 at 4:02 pm
Lets just vote for the best people for the job and not as red blue or purple.