Democrats Have a Joe Biden Problem. Again. |
Democrats Have a Joe Biden Problem. Again.
The former president is reentering politics at the worst possible time.
When was the last time you thought about Joe Biden? If the answer is “recently,” that’s probably a sign that you should consider taking up a hobby or joining a club—anything, really, that doesn’t involve politics.
An irrelevancy from the moment he belatedly ended his campaign in July 2024, the former president has kept a low profile since leaving the White House. And for good reason. His arrogant insistence on running for reelection rather than making a dignified exit from office doomed his party and the country. Perhaps no single decision played a larger role in Donald Trump’s return to power.
But Biden could never resist the limelight, and now he’s back to haunt the Democrats. Last week, he waded into two primaries, endorsing candidates who had worked for his 2024 campaign and who asked for his support this year. As Semafor’s David Weigel has observed, Biden nostalgia is also creeping into other races, particularly California’s cramped gubernatorial primary, where the ascendent Xavier Becerra regularly touts his service as Biden’s secretary of health and human services.
Biden, battered by post-pandemic inflation and hounded by concerns about his age and health, left office with an abysmal approval rating in the high 30s. To the extent that he’s seen a postpresidency bump, it’s mostly thanks to comparisons with his disastrous successor: 51 percent of voters told a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll that Trump was doing a worse job than his predecessor, compared to 49 percent who said he was doing better. Still, there isn’t exactly a mass reconsideration of Biden’s presidency underway: A Newsweek poll this month found just 44 percent of voters viewed him favorably.
Biden is unpopular—so what? Trump is the president now. Even if there were something to gain from relitigating 2024, the focus now is on the horrors the current administration........