Democrats Must Announce a Changing of the Guard
In America, the president is a superhero who is always fucking up. Everything in our daily lives is controlled by a series of levers in the Oval Office. This is the perception even among most highly educated people who presumably, somewhere along the way, took classes in government and economics and history. So it's not some extraordinary phenomenon that the current president, Joe Biden, has been blamed for troubling levels of inflation that have eaten into wage gains and other fruits of a strong labor market. (Unemployment has now returned to pre-pandemic levels.) There seems to be a widespread notion that he has a dial on the Resolute Desk labeled "INFLATION" that he just insists on cranking up to the max. Stop it, Joe Biden! We want less inflation!
Certainly, the American Rescue Plan that Biden championed pumped some money into the economy and likely added to our inflation problems. Combined with the multiple huge relief bills under his predecessor, Donald Trump, the spending we did to Keynes our way out of a pandemic recession probably had some effect on the current situation. But many European countries that spent far less—and have the weaker recoveries to prove it—also have serious, 40-year-bad inflation problems. It seems like, in our globalized world, there may be some additional factors in the spiking commodity prices: There's corporate concentration and monopoly power distorting markets. There's the war in Ukraine. There's the general supply-and-demand principle, where pandemic supply shocks were followed by a huge surge in demand as people reemerged into the world.
Nevertheless, Biden gets the blame.
Another strike against him was the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, now mostly forgotten, along with that entire nation and its people. Biden's State Department did a poor job getting out American civilians and others at risk from the Taliban, but a lot of the criticism—ubiquitous among the Washington media and political establishment at the time—seemed rooted in a kind of American humiliation over the entire enterprise. But August 2021 began the drumbeat of bad news about Biden, and it's continued into the present with inflation, even as the latter situation has begun to improve modestly. Respondents cited "the economy" and "inflation" as the top challenges facing the country in a New York Times/Siena College poll that also indicates Biden's political career may be on the chopping block. A whopping 64 percent of Democrats want him to step aside for a new party standard-bearer in 2024.
Except, among this group, The Issues—like inflation—are not really driving things. About a third cited "job performance" as the reason for Biden to hand over the baton, but another third simply said "age." They want someone new and younger. In fact, another 12 percent just said they'd "prefer someone new." Indications are that this is just vibes, and vibes are often how politics play out in practice. Do I trust this guy? Does he get me? Does he know what's going on in my life? Does he have a handle on things? This is somewhat related to the political science concept of "heuristics," where people use cognitive shortcuts like party affiliation to make decisions on complex political questions. But in this case, the shortcut is pretty apparent: This guy is visibly old, he's been around forever, and the job seems to be getting away from him.
It's almost secondary whether, as noted above, Biden is actually to blame for the state of things. The state of things ain't great, and he does not present as a leader who's on top of it, on the front foot, ready to remedy the situation. He did this country a valuable service—a career-defining service—in defeating a renegade president, defenestrating him from the halls of power. (Though not before that predecessor attempted to overthrow the government to remain in charge.) Biden is not single-handedly responsible for inflation, and many of the demands for some orderly and dignified exit from Afghanistan emerged from a place of pure fantasy. Biden has marshaled the free world to oppose Putin's depravity in Ukraine. But JFK he is not, and the Democrats must demonstrate to Americans that the party has a vision of the future.
The easiest way to do that is to run someone younger—and, for that matter, someone who will say forthrightly what the party stands for, not waffle on an abortion response for a couple weeks because they're afraid of poll numbers that are already bad. After the midterms, Biden should announce he will not seek a second term. The Democratic leadership in Congress should join him in stepping aside to offer the next generation an opportunity to lead. (Nancy Pelosi remains a wily operator and formidable whipper of votes, but nothing lasts forever.) Ideally, this transition would be followed by a transparent and meritocratic process to elevate new leaders based on their qualities and vision. And ideally, they'd at least be younger than 65 years old. Maybe even in their 50s! It's time.
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