Americans are giving President Joe Biden harsh reviews before he leaves office in less than two weeks, on Jan. 20. And worse than that, they appear to be judging him even more harshly than his two most recent predecessors, Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
According to a survey released on Friday by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, just one-quarter of U.S. adults (25%) said that Biden was a “good” or “great” president, compared with Trump, whom 36% of U.S. adults gave the same ranking after his first term in office ended, in 2021. (Notably, though, Trump had slightly higher “poor” and “terrible” ratings than Biden.)
Even more remarkable is that the survey about Trump was conducted shortly after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And this is backed up by other polling as well. For instance, between Jan. 7-20, 2021, Trump’s approval ratings dropped from 42% to 39%, according to 538’s average. But at present, Biden’s job approval ratings sit at about 37%, according to 538’s average.
The result of this past November’s election, where Trump got very close to earning a majority of the popular vote, showed that voters preferred a return to Trump versus a continuation of Democratic rule, perhaps especially one tied to Biden. But now we have even more verification of the degree to which voters, after seeing both men govern, simply (if slightly) prefer Trump to Biden.
According to a national tracking poll by Civiqs, just 38% of registered voters have a favorable view of Biden. In fact, he has been below 40% since Nov. 10, making the odds of a rebound ahead of Trump’s inauguration pretty slim. Meanwhile, 45% of voters have a favorable view of Trump, according to Civiqs, and his favorability has been steadily increasing since about February 2023.
The issue? Polling suggests voters either don’t know this or believe Biden was insufficient in other ways. The AP-NORC survey found that only 2 in 10 Americans (22%) think Biden made good on his campaign promises. A larger share, 38%, said that Biden did not keep his word. The remaining 39% said he tried but failed to keep his campaign promises.
Biden is also faring considerably worse than Obama was at the end of his presidency. AP-NORC found that Obama left his second term in office with a majority of Americans (52%) describing his tenure as “good” or “great.” This squares with data released earlier this week by Gallup, which found Biden’s standing is similar to that of former President Richard Nixon, who resigned amid the infamous Watergate scandal. (Unlike the AP-NORC survey, Gallup’s involved a retrospective assessment of past presidents, not a contemporaneous one.)
Former President Barack Obama
As other politicos have pointed out, Trump seems to be enjoying a honeymoon period since his win in November. It’s possible, of course, that four years of Biden caused the electorate to reassess Trump, who once had dismal approval and favorability ratings too.
The good news for Biden, if there is any, is that Americans’ negative views toward him may change over time. After all, Gallup found that other presidents who left with low approval ratings—including George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter—saw Americans’ perception of their presidencies warm with time.
Plus, knowing Trump, he’ll surely squander his goodwill with the American electorate in due time. Every honeymoon must come to an end, including Trump’s. And with the high number of unpopular campaign pledges he’s made, he’s likely to only accelerate that timeline.
Whether poking fun at politicians or simply trying to make the best of a bad Donald Trump, the writers and comedians of late-night shows lightened the load for us this year.
Hosts like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Kimmel appealed to our funny bones in the face of a ludicrous Republican Party, whose billionaire clown-king leader makes it a lot harder to be funny four to five days a week.
Here are 13 notable moments from late night, in what may have been the longest year on record.
One of the more frustrating things about Trump’s electoral success is how transparently deranged and corrupt he is. Meyers synthesized it perfectly back in March, after former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley gave up her bid for the Republican nomination.
In late March, Jon Stewart, back in his old seat at “The Daily Show,” broke down the $364 million civil fraud judgement against Trump. “We all do it. I mean it. On my license, I'm not listed as 5’7, you know, I'm listed as 30,000 square feet.”
In April, shortly before Trump’s hush money criminal case kicked off, Kimmel went after Trump and his cowardly Republican supporters, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom Kimmel described as “a little bitch.”
In April, the Republican Party was wasting tax-payer money in one of their many impeachment stunts against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Colbert had some fun with the House Republicans’ general crapitude.
Jimmy Kimmel has fun at Trump’s and RFK Jr.'s expenses before turning his attention to the story that ensured South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem would not be chosen as Trump’s running mate.
"Just to recap for those who were horrified: she shot a puppy and a goat, and she would like you to know she also shoots horses," he said. "She has at least a dozen people working for her, probably more. Not one of those dozen or dozens of people raised a hand, 'Governor, do you think maybe it's not a great idea to share that story about shooting a whole petting zoo at your house?'"
Stewart went at the right-wing’s slander-apparatus, showing that there is only one “cancel culture” and it lives inside conservatism.
"They're so full of shit that Sean Hannity can say with a square head, 'I'm not the kind of guy who gets outraged,'” Stewart exclaimed. “Sean Hannity! He's basically just a meat-bag support system for a forehead vein."
There’s a reason why election deniers don’t want to go to court. “It's not a fraud case in court where I would need evidence. It's only a fraud case out there amongst the sod and the mulch—where I can say whatever I want,” Stewart joked. “The difference between in court and out of court is that in court, someone can say ‘prove it.’”
Meyers returned on air after a summer hiatus and realized Trump had made all kinds of terrible news worth recapping. But three human weeks is the equivalent of three Trump-news-cycle years, and Meyers took a deep breath and gave it his best shot.
After losing an Emmy Award to Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show,” Kimmel channeled all of Trump’s election denialism into a fun opening monologue, filled with faux-grievances.
Stewart offered up some hope on election night, after it became clear Trump had defeated Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We have to continue to fight and continue to work, day in and day out, to create the better society for our children, for this world, for this country, that we know is possible,” he said.
"Well, fuck! It happened again,” Colbert began his monologue.
"As we're all about to plunge back into the Trump hole, here's what occurs to me,” Colbert added. “The first time Donald Trump was elected, he started as a joke and ended as a tragedy. This time, he starts as a tragedy. Who knows what he'll end as. A limerick?"
A very limited number of people like Donald Trump, and his handlers have finally come to terms with that. Yet their answer—to drag Vice President Kamala Harris into the muck with him—only works if he focuses his attention on her.
Instead, he can’t get past me, me, me.
This is hardly an original thought. Our own Mark Sumner wrote about it Tuesday, saying, “[Trump is] caught in a trap of reacting to Harris, and when he tries to struggle out, he and his arrogant campaign staff make things all the worse.” But the notion is certainly worth exploring even more.
There is an old political adage, “When you’re explaining, you’re losing.” No one wants to hear excuses, and by responding to an attack, it inherently both restates it once again, and validates it.” A smart politician knows when to ignore an attack and when to engage it.
BASH: Trump suggested that you happened to turn Black recently for political purposes, questioning a core part of your identity. HARRIS: Same old tired playbook. Next question, please. BASH: That's it? HARRIS: That's it. pic.twitter.com/RTNin7siVL
By ignoring the question about race and asking CNN’s Dana Bash to move on, she not only starved Trump’s sad attempt at an attack line of oxygen, but she made Bash look the fool for even asking it.
There was no way for the media to even talk about it without being utterly scorched, as Politico found out to its chagrin, when it changed the headline to a corresponding story three times to avoid being dragged by commenters. Here is White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre giving Fox News’ Steve Doocy the same treatment.
For all the legitimate attacks Trump faces such as on his illegal Arlington National Cemetery campaign video stunt, his flailing on abortion rights, his pledge to be a dictator on Day One, or his claims that this is the last election anyone has to vote, he also faces a ton of stupid, niggling ones. A smart politician would ignore all that noise and focus on salient attack lines. The old Trump was able to do that.
But today’s Trump, haunted by his litany of grievances, cannot escape the gravitational pull of even the slightest criticism. Rather than entertain his base with his old formula of crass bigotry and childish schoolyard taunts, he now bores people to tears responding to slights they have no clue even existed.
For example, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump is incapable of holding a coherent thought in his brain, and more and more people are discussing whether he is suffering from cognitive decline. Trump could ignore those attacks. Instead … “I do the weave,” Trump responded at a rally, likely confusing attendees and leaving them wondering what he was prattling about. “You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together ... and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say it's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.”
Democrats have been getting a lot of traction calling the Republican ticket weird. "[Gov. Tim Walz] is weird, right? He's weird. I'm not weird. No, he's a weird guy, a weird dude, you know?” Trump said at a Wisconsin town hall. “They always come up with sound bites, and one of the things they say is that JD [Vance] and I are weird. But wouldn't that guy, who's so straight, say that? JD is doing a great job—he's smart, a top student, a great guy, and he's not weird. And I'm not weird either. I mean, we're a lot of things, but we're not weird, I will tell you. But that guy is weird. Don't you think?"
Trump can’t handle Michelle and Barack Obama criticizing him at the Democratic National Convention, complaining about it here, here, and here. The former president’s joke about Trump’s manhood broke him.
He can’t even get over President Joe Biden passing the baton over to Harris. As recently as last week, on Aug. 26, he whined about Biden while visiting a campaign office in Michigan.
"It's so disappointing" -- Trump is currently at his Michigan campaign office whining that he's no longer running against Biden pic.twitter.com/2pCZovIjmI
“They basically take away his nomination,” he said. “No one has ever seen anything like that before.”
You can feel the lack of energy in the room.
No one cares about his thoughts on Biden’s campaign exit or Obama’s convention dick joke, but by repeatedly bringing up those and other items, he gives new life to the attacks. Frankly, it makes them even funnier.
But his campaign isn’t laughing. “Americans’ views of the Republican nominee have barely budged over the past nine years, spanning three White House bids, two impeachments, an insurrection, four indictments and an assassination attempt. He remains deeply divisive, with enthusiastic support and intense opposition,” The Washington Post reported Monday. “With little chance of improving Trump’s standing, Trump’s advisers see the only option as damaging hers.”
CNN had its own version of that story. “Donald Trump is trying to crush Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’ persona as a force of change and to destroy her personal credibility as a potential president as their still-fresh competition careens into the final nine weeks before Election Day,” the network reported. “In recent days, the ex-president has unveiled a broad assault using the insult-driven politics with which he won power in 2016, even as his advisers have been pleading with him to focus his attention on top voter concerns including high prices and immigration.”
There are 61 days until Election Day. These Trump advisers are right—Trump needs to drag Harris down in order to win the race. So far it hasn’t happened. Every single day that Trump is fixated on responding to Democratic attacks, big and small, is one day less that Republicans have to hurt Harris.
And yet Trump can’t focus. Even when he does, screeching about Harris being a “communist” is so patently absurd, it doesn’t land with anyone outside the MAGA bubble.
The consequences of Trump’s inability to focus speak for themselves. In the 538 polling aggregate, Harris had a favorability rating of 37.8 favorable, 52.4 unfavorable on July 21, when Biden dropped out, or a net negative 14.6 percentage points.
Today? She’s at 46.3% favorable, 46.8% unfavorable, a net improvement of almost 14 percentage points despite the combined mighty efforts of the entire right-wing noise machine. The last seven polls all have Harris either in net positive territory except one, which has it even. The trend is unmistakable.
Trump is at 43% favorable, 52.5% unfavorable. That is far better than he deserves, but still well underwater. That disparity in the candidates’ favorabilities will cost Trump the election unless they are reversed.
Yet no one can convince him to focus on Harris. He still has feelings about Biden’s exit he needs to process … and he’s doing so very publicly.
So it seems they’re doomed to watching their nominee waste valuable days by focusing on the most trivial, irrelevant topics, like arguing how attractive he is in response to jokes about his appearance (especially compared to Harris). “I was sort of like a hot guy,” he said to his confused audience. “I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter than I am now and I became president. Okay. I don't know. I said to somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now? I don't know.”
Trump: I was sort of like a hot guy. I was hot as a pistol. I think I was hotter than I am now and I became president. Okay. I don't know. I said to somebody, was I hotter before or hotter now? I don't know pic.twitter.com/7SA1wWkZ4w
In any case, tired old Trump isn’t campaigning much these days. His next campaign rally isn’t until Saturday, after having just seven campaign events last month. His people will point to all the media he’s doing, but it’s a combination of Fox News, right-wing podcasts, and other assorted MAGA media hanger-ons.
Those audiences already hate Harris. He’s not damaging her where Republicans need to kneecap her, among the broader mainstream.
House Republicans released their bogus impeachment report on President Joe Biden on Aug. 19, hoping to distract from the display of joy and unity on the first day of the Democratic National Convention. GOP leaders—and plenty of Republicans in vulnerable House seats—wanted that to be the end of it, but the extremists in the conference don’t agree and could try to force a vote. That’s got Democrats popping their popcorn, ready for the show.
When the report was released, House Speaker Mike Johnson simply stated that he hoped everyone would read it and thanked the committees for their work. He didn't say anything about what would happen next, suggesting he just wants the partisan and sloppy attempt to nail the Biden “crime family” to go away. That way, Republicans won’t have to take an embarrassing vote to impeach Biden that would surely fail.
But Johnson immediately heard back from the peanut gallery. The House hard-liners are getting ready to raise hell, and the rest of the GOP is starting to freak out over the possibility that one of the troublemakers is going to try to force the vote when the House reconvenes in September.
It takes just one member to force a vote via a privileged resolution, a procedure that has been vexing leadership since Republicans took control of the House. The likeliest suspects to force a vote, Axios hears from its sources, are ultra-right Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Andy Biggs of Arizona, and Anna Paulina Luna of Florida.
The rest of the GOP accepts reality: Forcing a vote would be a distraction at best, and would more likely piss off voters. It could very well motivate progressive voters to turn out for downballot Democrats running against vulnerable Republicans, and would make MAGA voters mad at any GOP representatives who vote against it. It is absolutely a lose-lose scenario for Republicans, and Democrats are totally here for it.
"The whole investigation has been a debacle for them, they have egg all over their face," Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland told Axios. Have the vote, he says, and “either prove that all of them are invested in this nonsense, or that they can’t even ... get all the Republicans in the House to vote for it.”
“If they actually take it to a vote, then individual [Republican] members are going to be politically punished,” he added.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida has one message for the House hard-liners: Bring it on.
"Call the vote. They should do that. That vote is a paved road to the minority," Moskowitz said, noting that there are plenty of Republicans who "have never wanted to do the vote." But if GOP House members do vote for impeachment, he continued, Senate Democrats should “call their bluff” and have a trial. “We should make them own it, every day on TV.”
"If they want to show that their top issue is impeaching Joe Biden, a lame-duck president, then we should make them own it. We're not going to go on the defense, we're going to go on the offense," Moskowitz said.
That’s just one more headache for Johnson. He’s already facing rebellious opposition from his own members to the one task Congress must complete in three short September weeks: funding the government. Having to vote on impeachment—and further roiling up his fractured conference—will only make his job harder.
September is shaping up to be a nightmare for Johnson, which is just what he deserves.
Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who led the second impeachment of Donald Trump for his Jan. 6, 2021, had a lot to say at the first night of the Democratic National Convention. He called Trump a “sore loser who does not know how did take no for an answer from American voters, American courts, or American women.”
I'll never forget the pounding on the doors of the House chamber on January 6, or the screams to follow. Hundreds of our police officers taunted and attacked. A hundred and forty of them were wounded by extremist wielding a baseball bats steel pipes even American flags. Five people died that day, and four more of our officers took their own lives in the days and weeks to come.
All of this after trump was defeated by more than 7 million votes by the great Joe Biden. It was after at 80 judges rejected every ridiculous claim raised by this sore loser who does not know how did take no for an answer from American voters American courts, or American women.
With all eyes on Vice President Kamala Harris’ surging campaign and this week’s Democratic National Convention, Republicans are trying to grab headlines Monday by releasing the report of their baseless, purely political impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden.
With President Joe Biden leaving office in January, House Republicans’ inquiry is very unlikely to move forward, and as further proof that it was all politics all along, the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees released all 291 pages of this bullshit report on the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
It’s been clear for months that the inquiry’s main drivers—Oversight Chair James Comer and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan—had nothing. In fact, in the report, Comer and Jordan basically admit as much while saying it feels like there should be something.
“An abuse of power may also be present even if, as some claim, the Biden family was only selling the ‘illusion’ of influence and access,” the report says, and adds, “It is not necessary for the House of Representatives to show that the dealings involved a quid pro quo to rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”
In other words, House Republicans have no evidence, but they don’t need no stinking evidence.
Except, of course, they do. They have to convince a majority of the House to impeach Biden and a majority of the Senate to convict him. And it’s been clear for months that they haven’t even been able to convince a majority of House Republicans to do it.
House Speaker Mike Johnson seems to know the votes aren’t there, and that the few weeks that Congress will be in session before the election will be all about passing a short-term government funding bill, which is going to be a big fight. House Republicans could come back after the election and try it, but that would really put the “lame” in “lame-duck session.”
On Monday, the White House gave the report the ridicule it deserves.
“After wasting nearly two years and millions of taxpayer dollars, House Republicans have finally given up on their wild goose chase,” said Sharon Yang, a White House spokesperson. “This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own members distanced themselves from as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories.”
“The American people deserve more from House Republicans, and perhaps now they will finally join President Biden in focusing on the real issues that American families actually care about,” Yang added.
Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland joined in, saying, "Their compulsive flailing about has not only proven, once more, that President Biden committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable crime, but has paradoxically vindicated Biden’s essential honor and decency."
Thus it appears that the ridiculous, monthslong probe into the supposed “Biden crime family” limps to a close. Not to worry, Comer has already found his next goose chases: going after Harris over the border and her running mate, Tim Walz, “a longstanding and cozy relationship with China.”
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer of Kentucky launched a probe against Vice President Kamala Harris last week, requesting that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection turn over all correspondence with her office—despite that she never oversaw the border.
Comer says the goal of the probe is to “understand [Harris’] role” in policy about migration through the U.S.-Mexico border. The very conveniently timed probe follows Comer having to abandon his dream of impeaching President Joe Biden, due to that investigation’s total lack of evidence.
But Comer is so in the habit of baselessly investigating his rivals that he just can’t give it up. And to say the least, his latest probe is as purely political and as meritless as his Biden probe.
Comer’s probe appears to stem from the widespread GOP fiction that Harris has been Biden’s “border czar,” with Comer saying in a Sunday interview on Fox News that Harris was “in charge” of the border and that she “failed miserably.”
However, her role in the administration’s immigration policy was not focused on the border but instead on diplomacy with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, with a goal of figuring out how the U.S. can help those nations stem migration to the U.S.
Furthermore, Customs and Border Protection is overseen by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whom House Republicans impeached on partisan grounds earlier this year. And given Harris’ diplomatic role, she likely has very little, if anything, to do with border patrol.
In fact, in his letter to Customs and Border Protection, Comer blows up his own party’s “border czar” lie by admitting that Harris’s work wasn’t concerned with the border itself.
“Instead of focusing on the southwest border … Vice President Harris focused on the purported ‘root causes of irregular migration’ from Central America,” he writes.
In his Fox News interview, Comer attempted to further justify his probe by citing the cost of the Biden administration’s border policy.
“You know, this has had a huge impact on Medicaid because many of these people when they cross the border, they get free health care,” he said. “That’s what Medicaid is, is free health care. They get transported all over the United States.”
Oh yes, the cushy, pampered life of the Central American refugee.
Florida Rep. Jared Moskowitz, one of the best trolls of Comer in the Democratic conference, is treating this new probe with the seriousness it deserves.
Republicans have lit on what they think will be their most effective policy issue against Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and—surprise, surprise—it’s immigration. Specifically, Republicans are falsely saying that the vice president has been in charge of President Joe Biden’s immigration policy, that she’s his “border czar.” And it’s a lie designed to benefit Donald Trump’s favorite topic: fear-mongering about immigration.
The lie is coming from the top, of course. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters, "Harris was appointed 'border czar' in March of 2021, and since that time, millions and millions of illegal aliens have invaded our country and countless Americans have been killed by migrant crime because of her willful demolition of American borders and laws.”
It was a regular theme of last week’s Republican National Convention, even before Biden ended his reelection campaign on Sunday and endorsed Harris. At least seven speakers at the convention, including failed GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley, Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida attacked Harris as being in charge of Biden’s border policy.
And on Tuesday, the odious Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York introduced a resolution “condemning Kamala Harris’ role as Joe Biden’s ‘Border czar’ which has led to the most catastrophic open border crisis in history.” In the real world, however, border crossings today are at their lowest point since Biden’s first full month in office.
The House GOP is so committed to this lie about Harris, they scrapped passing a government funding bill and are spending Thursday—their last day in session until after Labor Day—voting on this nonbinding ridiculousness.
Let’s set the record straight: In a meeting with Harris in March 2021, Biden tapped her to lead U.S. diplomatic efforts with officials in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to stem migration to the U.S. In that meeting, Biden said that when he was vice president, he "got a similar assignment" and that the Obama administration secured $700 million to help countries in Central America.
"One of the ways we learned is that if you deal with the problems in country, it benefits everyone. It benefits us, it benefits the people, and it grows the economies there," Biden said in that meeting.
Harris was tasked with working diplomatically with Central America leaders to work on the region’s root causes of mass migration—corruption, crime, hunger, poverty—all the stuff the GOP, and in particular Trump, is incapable of understanding, much less addressing. If there were such a thing as a border czar under Biden—and there isn’t—it would be Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. ( House Republicans have also attacked him over the border, but that’s a different story.)
She also led the Root Causes Strategy, which has mobilized more than $5 billion in private-sector investments in Central America, investments that have helped to create over 250,000 jobs in the region and “provided funding for small businesses, and supported the economic inclusion of women,” according to Immigration Hub, an organization that pushes for immigration reform.
Answering the larger and tougher challenges of migration is what Harris and the Democrats have been trying to accomplish. The job is going to get only more complicated as climate change drives more migration.
The GOP’s reductive response to the entire issue is solely about the politics of fear and never about policy. They don’t want to solve the crisis; they want to keep running on it.
Even though President Joe Biden won't be on the ballot this November, voters still will be weighing his legacy.
As Vice President Kamala Harris moves to take his place as the Democratic standard-bearer, Biden’s accomplishments remain very much at risk should Republican Donald Trump prevail.
How Biden’s single term and his decision to step aside are remembered will be intertwined with Harris’ electoral success in November, particularly as the vice president runs tightly on the achievements of the Biden administration.
Biden will have an opportunity to make a case for his legacy—sweeping domestic legislation, renewal of alliances abroad, defense of democracy—on Wednesday night when he delivers an Oval Office address about his decision to bow out of the race and “what lies ahead.”
And no matter how frustrated Biden is at being pushed aside by his party — and he’s plenty upset — he has too much at stake simply to wash his hands of this election.
Biden endorsed Harris shortly after he announced Sunday that he would end his candidacy, effectively giving her a head start over would-be challengers and helping to jumpstart a candidacy focused largely on continuing his own agenda.
“If she wins, then it will be confirmation that he did the right thing to fight against the threat that is Trump, and he will be seen as a legend on behalf of democracy,” said presidential historian Lindsay Chervinsky, executive director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. “If she loses, I think there will be questions about, did he step down too late? Would the Democratic Party have been more effective if he had said he was not going to run?”
The last vice president to run for the top job was Democrat Al Gore, who sought to distance himself from President Bill Clinton during the 2000 campaign after the president's affair with a White House intern and subsequent impeachment.
Harris, in contrast, has spent the better part of the last three years praising Biden’s doings—meaning any attempt to now distance herself would be difficult to explain. And she has to rely on the Biden political operation she inherited to win the election with just over 100 days to go before polls close.
Speaking to campaign staff on Monday, Harris said Biden's legacy of accomplishment "just over the last three and a half years is unmatched in modern history.”
Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden in 2021
Trump and his allies, for their part, were eager to tie Harris to Biden’s record even before the president left the race—and not in a good way.
One campaign email to supporters declared “KAMALA HARRIS IS BIDEN 2.0 – Kamala Harris owns Joe Biden’s terrible record because it is her record as well,” calling out high inflation and border policies, among other things.
Biden this week promised the staffers of his former campaign that he was still “going to be on the road” as he handed off the reins of the organization to Harris, adding, “I’m not going anywhere.”
His advisers say he intends to hold campaign events and fundraisers benefiting Harris, albeit at a far slower pace than had he remained on the ballot himself.
Harris advisers will ultimately have to decide how to deploy the president, whose popularity sagged as voters on both sides of the aisle questioned his fitness for office.
The president’s allies insist that no matter what, Biden’s place in the history books is intact.
Biden's win in 2020 "was that election that protected us from a Donald Trump presidency,” said Rep. Steven Horsford, chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus. “Yes, we have to do it again this November. But had Donald Trump been in office another four years, the damage, the destruction, the decay of our democracy would’ve gone even further.”
Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left think tank Third Way, predicted there will be a difference between short-term recollections of Biden and his legacy if Democrats lose in November.
“It is true that if we lose, that will cloud things for him in the near-term” because Democrats will have to confront Trump, Bennett said. “In the long term, when history judges Biden, they’ll look at him on his own terms. They will judge him for what he did or did not do as president, and they will judge him very favorably.”
Biden’s decision to end his candidacy buoyed the spirits of congressional Democrats who had been fretting that the incumbent president would drag down their prospects of retaining the Senate and retaking the House. An all-Republican Washington would threaten to do even more damage to Biden’s legacy.
Already, congressional Republicans have tried to unravel pieces of the Inflation Reduction Act, a central Biden achievement that was passed on party lines in 2022. And they could succeed next year, with a President Trump waiting to sign a repeal into law.
GOP lawmakers could also vote to reverse key federal regulations that arrived later in the Biden administration.
“If the Republicans get dual majorities, they’re going to claw back as much as they can, they’re going to undo as much as they can and not only will that be a disaster for America and the world, it’ll be really bad for the Biden legacy," Bennett said.
Biden aides point to the thus-far seamless nature of Harris’ takeover of his political apparatus as evidenced that the president has set up his vice president to successfully run on their shared record. But the ultimate test of that organization will come in November.
No one will be cheering her on more than the president.
Despite continuing calls for him to step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee, President Joe Biden says he’s not going anywhere. A significant contingent of Democratic leaders disagrees with that decision.
So where do things stand now?
This year’s presidential race was already neck-and-neck heading into a June 27 debate that Biden requested, using rules he established. The result was not great, as I wrote at the time. “President Joe Biden had one job Thursday, one job only—prove to America that he still has what’s needed to be president, despite rampant questions about his age. He didn’t do that. Instead, he validated the worst criticisms.”
Three weeks later, the debate rages on inside the Democratic Party: Should Biden stay or should he go?
The problem is, there is no real mechanism to force him out. Some have said that delegates can take it upon themselves to ditch Biden, given the party rule stating that “Delegates elected to the national convention pledged to a presidential candidate shall in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them.” That sounds good on paper, except that it’s not as simple as that.
There are 3,979 pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention. To oust Biden, 1,990 would have to not just abandon Biden, but do so for a single other candidate. This means there would have to be an actual campaign, with all the trappings that would entail—public appeals for support, clearing the field, and managing the inherent divisiveness of such a move. (Disclosure: I’m a California delegate to the convention.)
In other words, forcing Biden out of the race against his will would require an organized rebellion and unity in purpose that is well beyond the Democratic Party’s ability. You can see it even in the statements of those demanding that Biden quit—few are clearly advocating for the obvious alternative, Vice President Kamala Harris. They all talk about some truncated primary process because the second an actual Biden alternative is named, it generates opposition from supporters of other potential replacement candidates.
That’s why on Wednesday, California Rep. Adam Schiff called for Biden to “pass the torch” without explaining how and to whom. The second he named a name, people would disagree with that alternative, starting a debate that does nothing to help us win in November.
Timing is important here, as there are several deadlines approaching. One is the party’s decision to nominate Biden in a virtual roll call, first agreed on to avoid the filing deadline in Ohio. Like Alabama, Ohio’s deadline has since been moved to after the convention, so efforts to continue with the virtual roll call appear to be motivated by the desire to shut down Biden’s intra-party detractors and lock in Biden’s nomination ahead of the late-August Democratic convention.
That doesn’t mean that Biden, even after being nominated, couldn’t drop out and release his delegates by the convention’s start. The bigger timing issue is simple: We’re less than four months away from Election Day, and every single day that the focus isn’t on Donald Trump is a day that he has effectively won the news cycle.
Elections are usually a referendum on the incumbent. This year, we effectively have two incumbents—a sitting and a former president. So in order to win, we have to make this election about Trump and ask voters whether they want to return to the chaos, incompetence, and fascist tendencies of the Trump administration … but supercharged.
538’s polling average has shown a roughly 2-point drop for Biden post debate, a relatively small effect given his disastrous performance and the media’s near-constant coverage of it. But the explanation is simple: It’s about the narrative.
Before the debate, Democrats said Trump was a dangerous liar, and Republicans said Biden was cognitively addled and old. Then the debate happened, and what did voters see? They saw that Trump was a dangerous liar, and Biden was old and suffering from cognitive decline. The narrative had been set, and the debate confirmed it. Biden missed a golden opportunity to reset that narrative, but it wasn’t to be.
Ultimately, voters saw nothing in the debate that they didn’t already assume was true.
And because of that, some Democrats’ efforts to push Biden out of the race have largely proven self-destructive. The news cycle is speeding past at a dizzying pace. An assassination attempt on Trump four days ago is now old news. Had Democrats shrugged off Biden’s performance and quickly moved on, the whole debacle would now be ancient, mostly forgotten news. Instead, Democrats have insisted on replaying the ordeal in the news every single day.
I get it—we have a lot more at stake than Republicans do. Democrats recognize that our rights and our very democracy are on the line. As for Republicans: What do they have to fear from Biden? Just look at Trump’s nickname for Biden—”Sleepy Joe.” We are fearful of losing our rights, they are fearful of what—a president that falls asleep?
We even have data on this. A March AP poll found that around 70% of Democrats were fearful of another Trump presidency, while a significantly fewer 56% of Republicans said the same about a Biden presidency. He’s just not that scary.
That’s why conservative memes often portray Biden as a puppet being manipulated by George Soros or Bernie Sanders (the Jews!), or Barack Obama or Harris (the scary Blacks!). Or maybe all of the above.
Trump and his MAGA ilk really don’t know how to run against an old white man, someone who looks just like the Republican base. They prefer to run against the “other.” That’s always been the case, and that’s why Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on July 25, 2019, to try to manufacture a fake investigation against Hunter Biden. That was the same phone call that led to Trump’s first impeachment.
At that time, Biden was polling in the high 20s or low 30s in the Democratic primary. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were polling high, and had they united the left wing of the party, could’ve posed a serious threat. But Trump wasn’t worried about them: He was worried about Biden, and actively working to kneecap his candidacy early. Turns out, Trump had every reason to fear Biden the most.
For his part, Biden is through listening to his party’s critics. He wanted to run for president in 2016, but party leaders pushed him aside in favor of Hillary Clinton. When he geared up to run in 2019, the same voices claimed he was too old and archaic to defeat Trump. Heck, I was saying those things. Yet Biden proved his critics wrong, and did something that has only been done five times since 1912—he defeated an incumbent president.
Biden is done listening to critics.
So the critics in the Democratic Party are saying he should step aside, and he’s thinking, “They were wrong in 2016, they were wrong again in 2020, and they’re wrong again today.”
Of course, the Biden of four years ago is a different one than today’s Biden. Heck, he even seems different from the Biden who nailed the State of the Union address back on March 7. So yeah, people have reason to be freaked out, but the fundamentals of the race haven’t changed. Swapping out a candidate won’t reset the race for the Democrats; it’ll just create strife and ill feelings at a time when we need to be focused on Trump and his Project 2025 agenda. And much of what I wrote pre-debate about why Biden is not looking as bad as the polls indicate? It still holds up today.
Democrats have been overperforming polling since 2020. That includes 2022, when everyone declared that a red wave was inevitably going to sweep Democrats out of power in Congress, state houses, and state legislatures across the country. That certainly didn’t happen. And in regular and special elections, Democrats continue to overperform. Meanwhile, Trump underperformed his polling during the contested part of the Republican primary season.
Even globally, the far right has underperformed polling and expectations in India, Poland, and most recently, in France. (The right was swept out of office in the United Kingdom, but that was well predicted by the polling.) We’re consistently seeing that when facing right-wing authoritarian fascism, voters turn out in greater numbers than predicted, no matter what the polls say.
None of that means Biden is a shoo-in, but we’re not facing a calamitous situation. Indeed, Biden’s chances of winning in 538’s election model have inched up in recent days, to 54%. That’s a coin flip, within the margin of engagement. That was true before the debate, it’s true after the debate, and it will be true after the Republican convention and even the Democratic one.
The winner of the 2024 presidential election will come down to which side out-hustles the other one on the ground, turning out their vote in just a handful of battleground states. There isn’t a single potential candidate (pie-in-the-sky nominee Michelle Obama doesn’t count) that would significantly change the dynamics of this race. The country is locked into hyperpartisanship so strong that few people’s minds will be changed by anything—not even the attempted assassination of one of the candidates. (It’s true: Trump got zero bump.)
With Biden fully committed to his reelection campaign, it serves little purpose for senior Democrats to continue undermining the sitting president. You don’t have to like it (most don’t), you can think it sucks (and you might be right!), but Biden is holding all the cards. We either get back to focusing on Trump and Project 2025, or we give Trump a big assist in his bid to reoccupy the Oval Office.
