While undoubtedly the right call to make, Joe Biden’s belated decision to step aside Sunday, and endorse Kamala Harris for president, comes too late to stop ascendant Republican nominee Donald Trump from winning a second presidential.
What’s more, the Democratic establishment will only have itself to blame when the party loses control of the White House, after trying and failing to pull a fast one over the incredulous American people.
For months, leading Democrats misled the public about the octogenarian president’s cognitive fitness, insisting that a “sharp” and “alert” Biden was still firmly in command. This façade would, of course, crumble before their very eyes last month when a disastrous debate performance against Trump exposed the full extent of Biden’s decline to millions of prospective voters watching live.
Three weeks of failed damage control efforts, coupled with an outpouring of support for Trump following last week’s failed attempt on his life, left the embattled Biden with little choice but to step aside. A rip-roaring Republican National Convention (RNC), which saw “Trumpamania” run wild through host city Milwaukee, Wi., was likely the final straw for Biden’s slipping re-election hopes.
Polls coming out of the four-day extravaganza showed Trump ahead of Biden in all seven key battleground states, notably holding a three-point edge in RNC host state Wisconsin. Biden also trailed Trump by six points in his birth state of Pennsylvania.
The dismal numbers coming out of swing states led Democratic Party elders, among them reportedly Biden’s onetime boss Barack Obama, to raise alarms about his shrinking path to re-election.
Yet it’s not immediately clear that Biden’s decision to step aside improves the Democratic Party’s prospect heading into November’s presidential election, especially with Harris now the likely frontrunner for the party’s nomination.
A Harris versus Trump campaign could well turn into a de facto referendum on the Biden administration’s deeply unpopular policies relating to the United States’ southern border with Mexico — policies that are so widely hated that they’ve been publicly blasted by prominent Democrats like New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Shortly after becoming vice president, Harris was tapped to lead a national initiative to stem to northward flow of migrants from Mexico and Central America. Harris would soon emerge as the face of the Biden administration’s border policies, notably telling Central Americans not to come to the United States during an early state visit to Guatemala.
For all of Harris’s tough talk, the number of illegal immigrants inside the United States would double under her watch, ballooning to an estimated 20 million as of June. A spate of high-profile crimes involving undocumented migrants has soured the American public on the Biden/Harris border policies, with some eight in 10 voters telling pollsters they disapprove of the administration’s handling of the influx of migrants.
Several speakers accordingly used this week’s RNC to test out lines of attack on Biden administration “border czar” Kamala Harris. Republican primary runner-up Nikki Haley, for example, quipped that Harris had “one job” as vice president. “And that was to fix the border.”
“Now imagine her in charge of the entire country,” Haley continued to a jeering audience.
While there is no guarantee that Harris will be the Democratic nominee, the party denying her the nomination against the wishes of the departing Biden would be a bad look. With just over 100 days to go until the Nov. 5 vote, there will likely be an impetus for the party to close ranks behind the president’s hand-picked successor.
Whoever takes the Democratic nomination from Biden — be they Harris or one of a handful of other rumoured contenders — will likely find it to be a poisoned chalice. No matter what name appears next to the “D” on the presidential ballot, the election is all but certain to go to Trump.
Democrats, who both covered up Biden’s cognitive decline and failed to put together a viable succession plan, will have only themselves to blame for the party’s imminent shunting to the political wilderness.
National Post