President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance undoubtedly damaged his reelection bid — to the point where many Democrats are demanding that he be replaced at the top of the 2024 ticket. But Biden was behind before his debate against former President Donald Trump, for reasons that Democrats would rather ignore.
Trump didn’t need Biden’s debate debacle to have the inside track going into the homestretch. After all, this is why Biden’s campaign agreed to debate. Trump’s lead and Biden’s inability to cut into it, the election’s dominant issues, the presumed boost Trump will get from his vice presidential pick, and Trump’s strength on the campaign trail, all work to Trump’s advantage — irrespective of who Democrats nominate.
Biden’s debate implosion makes it easy to forget the gap Democrats already had to close. According to the RealClearPolitics average of national polling on the day of the debate, Trump led Biden across the board by 1.5 percentage points in a two-way race, 2.6 percentage points in a five-way race, 3.2 percentage points in the top battleground states, and 3.7 percentage points in favorability rating.
So Biden already faced an arduous four months of public campaigning — the weakest element of his game, at least until his latest debate.
In contrast, Trump is strong on the campaign trail and closes well. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had a 7.7-point lead as late as Aug. 10. She won the popular vote by just 2.09 points. In 2020, Biden had a 10.2-point lead as late as Oct. 12. He won the popular vote by 4.4 points.
Compounding Biden’s 2024 problem before the debate was his inability to significantly close on Trump, despite massive campaign spending in the months preceding the debate. His additional planned $50 million ad buy targeting Trump’s New York felony conviction looks even more like an uphill effort now.
Most importantly, Biden’s campaign has flailed on the issues. According to RCP’s average of national polls in early July, Biden’s approval rating was just 39.7%. Bad as this is, Biden was rated even lower on his handling of the economy, inflation, crime, immigration, and foreign policy. Nor do any of these issues promise to get markedly, if any, better for Biden over the next four months — certainly not enough to provide any positive political impact.
Finally, Trump’s vice presidential selection has always offered a good chance of giving him a further boost. This could be particularly useful in swinging one of 2020’s six battleground states to him.
But doesn’t all this go away if Biden is replaced? Nope. A new nominee would inherit Biden’s old issues.
Even if Biden decides to withdraw, far from a certainty and something he, his family, and his campaign deny, a new nominee brings new problems. Vice President Kamala Harris, the most logical and logistically the easiest replacement, is viewed even less favorably than Biden. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is presiding over a basket case of a state — the Left’s failures on steroids. And the process to make either of them the nominee — convincing Biden to step aside, reaching agreement, executing it, and not creating party fissures in the process — is far from smooth.
And once there, the new nominee would be stuck in the same hole Biden has dug for himself. If you don’t believe so, then ask yourself: Is a new nominee going to disavow any Biden stances of the last four years?
Are they going to admit that Biden’s overspending helped fuel inflation and that she or he is prepared to control spending? If so, which of Biden’s profligate spending programs will be cut — green energy, student loan forgiveness?
Is the new candidate going to admit that the southern border is a catastrophe and will be closed using the same authority that Trump used four years earlier before Biden and his administration undid them?
Is she or he going to say that Biden’s foreign policy has been a fiasco and that his signs of weakness from Day One helped ignite crises across the globe by emboldening Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea, and their surrogates?
The answer to all of these questions is emphatically “no.” It is “no,” because anything less will ignite a firestorm within the Democratic base, thereby rendering the party even more divided than it is now. Remember how Democrats got here: Biden was the party’s only consensus candidate. Abandoning him means threatening that consensus too.
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Democrats’ real problem is their collective inability to respond to Trump. It’s a problem they have had for eight years. Biden has been exactly who and what they wanted him to be — someone who would embrace and implement their extremist, elitist policies.
The next four months favor Trump: They did before the debate, and they do after the debate. Changing the Democratic nominee won’t change that any more than changing jockeys makes a slow horse faster.
J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023.