Joe Biden’s chances of running in 2024, getting reelected, and serving until 20 January 2029 are slim-to-none, Pat Buchanan, a veteran paleo-conservative commentator, ex-presidential candidate and former advisor to presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, believes.
Firstly, Buchanan wrote in his column in The American Conservative, Biden would have to survive the beating he’s expected to take during the upcoming November midterms with his reputation intact as markets tank and inflation eats away at Americans’ ability to buy basic necessities, like groceries and gasoline.
“And the worst seems yet to come,” the columnist predicted, pointing to the Federal Reserve’s slow, steady push to raise interest rates to try to get inflation under control.
“What lies ahead may remind people who were around then of Jimmy Carter’s ‘stagflation’, where interest rates hit 21 percent to kill an inflation that reached 13 percent,” Buchanan wrote.
Other issues thumping Biden include the crisis at the border with Mexico, spiking crime and a Covid comeback, according to the commentator.
“And the latest national polls suggest the country is holding Biden responsible,” Buchanan wrote, pointing to the recent Morning Consult survey showing that the president’s approval rating has slipped to 39 percent.
“Biden might find consolation from how his predecessors overcame midterm defeats. Clinton in 1994 last 54 House seats and won reelection easily in 1996. Obama lost 63 House seats in 2010 to come back and win handily over Mitt Romney in 2012. Why cannot Biden ride out the anticipated storm in this year’s midterms and come back to win election in 2024, as did Clinton? Age has something to do with it,” Buchanan wrote.
Getting Old Sucks
The columnist pointed out that Clinton and Obama were 50 and 51 at the time of their reelection, while Biden would be almost 82, and is already the oldest president in US history.
“Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers wrote of ‘energy in the executive’ as being an indispensable attribute of good government. Does Biden, with his shuffling gait, regular gaffes and physical and cognitive decline manifest that attribute of which Hamilton wrote?” Buchanan pondered.
The commentator is betting on the Democrats suffering a “crushing defeat” in November, and believes that the party will rush to blame Biden, rather than rally around him, following the loss. If one or two ambitious politicians begin openly calling for him to renounce plans to run again, he would repeat the fates of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson, Buchanan suggested.
“By early 2023, Biden will have adopted the line that dealing with the challenge of China and Russia and, at the same time, coping with recession and inflation require his full attention. And these preclude a national political campaign for reelection. And then President Joe Biden announces he will not run again,” Buchanan predicted.
In an article Saturday citing nearly 50 Democrats including party leaders, federal lawmakers and local officials, the New York Times indicated that the party sees Mr. Biden as a liability and “anchor” who could sink their chances in 2024.
“To say our country was on the right track would flagrantly depart from reality,” Democratic National Committee member Steve Simeonidis told the newspaper. The official encouraged Biden to “announce his intent not to seek re-election in ’24 right after the midterms.”