For ten years, Donald Trump has haunted the dreams of Democrats. They couldn't beat him in 2016, and in 2020, they had to weaponize a pandemic and invent scandals to defeat him.
But in 2024, the strategy of making Donald Trump the primary issue of the campaign has backfired. The Biden "basement campaign" of 2020 can't be duplicated because there's no current pandemic to keep the president hidden from public view. And putting Biden out in the open where his infirmities are on full display has proven to be a disaster.
So Democrats are running around with their hair on fire looking for a winning strategy. They've spent so long making Donald Trump the issue that any other avenue of attack escapes them.
Joe Biden's stubborn refusal to see the writing on the wall and leave the race compounds the problem. And for good reasons. While momentum to replace him appears to be growing, oddsmakers are sticking with Biden. According to Newsweek, "InteractivePolls on X, formerly Twitter, shared data from polymarket.com showing betting odds to be named the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024. The data shows that as of July 7, Biden has a 65 percent chance to be named the Democratic nominee."
The reason for the odds in Biden's favor is that trying to remove a president from his reelection race requires something close to an act of God. It's painfully obvious that Biden is in a desperate state of denial about the polls and his chances in November. Only Jill Biden would be able to break through the wall of resistance and lead her husband to the painful reality that his options have expired.
“The focus has to shift back to Trump and what rights we lose if he’s president,” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, California moonbat. “The last three elections have shown us if you’re the focus, you lose.”
Here's hoping that 2024 is just like 2020 and 2016, right? The problem is that 2024 has shown itself to be a whole new ballgame, and Democrats haven't a clue how to formulate a winning strategy.
The Biden campaign's efforts to make Trump the primary issue of the race have fallen flat.
That’s why Mr. Biden kicked off this year with a blistering speech about Mr. Trump’s attempt to overthrow the last election, why his allies spent millions to block the No Labels effort and why the president has tried to highlight the anniversaries of news regarding abortion rights.
And it is why Mr. Biden’s top aides thought it was a good idea to move the first debate from September to June — to give voters the one-on-one look at Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump that the president’s team thought would recalibrate the race, lift Mr. Biden’s sagging poll numbers and remind voters what would change if Mr. Trump takes office again in January.
A pre-debate memo from Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s campaign chair, mentioned Mr. Trump 18 times and Mr. Biden just five. Of Mr. Trump’s record, Ms. O’Malley Dillon wrote that the president “will hold Donald Trump accountable for all of it on the debate stage — and he’s raring to go.”
“There is a very thoughtful discussion going on among the Democratic Party about the best way forward, but this isn’t where we expected to be, so you should expect us to take some time to figure it out,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.). Rep. Moulton called on Biden to resign last week. “We want to make sure we can unify quickly behind a new candidate and ensure that new candidate is our best shot at beating Donald Trump.”
The biggest problem with Moulton's analysis is that there is no time to "figure it out." If they are going to replace Biden they better do it before the GOP convention. When people's minds are attuned to politics, it would be silly to have Biden deliver a major speech on the opening day of the convention only to be gone by the end of the event.
The Democrats' options going forward are not palatable.
The party finds itself gaming out what many Democrats view as three subpar options: To prop up Biden at the top of the ticket, and hope that he doesn’t have another faltering appearance in public; to publicly push Biden to step aside and all coalesce around Harris as the new nominee; or to attempt to bypass Harris — a historic Black and Indian American female vice president — in favor of a different Democrat still untested on the national stage.
This slow-motion end to the Biden campaign is killing the Democrats. They should cauterize the wound and move on with Kamala Harris. It's really the only viable solution when all things are considered, including the ability of Harris to use Biden's campaign donations, state offices, and campaign infrastructure with very little modification.
Biden might not have a choice of staying or going if enough donors refuse to give the campaign cash as long as Biden is at the top of the ticket. That's less of a long shot than you might think, given that the party's biggest donors are desperately looking for a way to get the president off the ticket.
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