The dam breaks, and key Dems run away from Biden ’24 Byron York
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-dam-breaks-and-key-dems-run-away-from-biden-24
You’ve seen the polls showing that large majorities of Democratic voters want the party to pick a new nominee for president in 2024, bypassing incumbent President Joe Biden. Now we’re seeing the living embodiment of those polls as some important Democratic lawmakers distance themselves from, or outright oppose, a reelection run by the nearly 80-year-old president.
It’s not that senior Democrats are eager to disparage a president of their own party. They’re not. Instead, they’re being forced into it by the process of the 2022 campaign, in which they are trying to assure their own reelections. They’re campaigning, doing interviews, and taking part in debates, and the question comes up.
Start with Reps. Dean Phillips (D-MN) and Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN). Last week, Phillips appeared on radio station WCCO, where host Chad Hartman asked him outright: “Do you want Joe Biden to run in 2024? Because the number of Democrats who don’t is staggeringly high.”
Phillips began with obligatory praise of the president — any Democrat who wants Biden to leave has to say how many excellent qualities Biden has. “I have respect for Joe Biden,” Phillips said. “I think he has — despite some mistakes and some missteps, despite his age, I think he’s a man of decency, of good principle, of compassion, of empathy, and of strength.” And then: “But to answer your question directly, which I know is quite rare, uh no, I don’t. I think the country would be well served by a new generation of compelling, well-prepared, dynamic Democrats to step up.”
Put Phillips down as a no. Then there was Craig. At an event in rural southwestern Minnesota, the publication MinnPost asked Craig about Phillips’s remarks on Biden. Craig appeared to want to broaden her answer to include Congress as well as the president. “I’m talking about Congress, and I’m talking about up and down the ballot,” she said. “I think Dean Phillips and I are in lockstep and alignment with that, and I’m going to do everything in my power as a member of Congress to make sure that we have a new generation of leadership.” A moment later, MinnPost pressed: Would Craig support Biden if he did run in 2024? “I would say we need new leaders in Washington up and down the ballot in the Democratic Party,” she answered.
Craig, 50, and Phillips, 53, are not the young generation in Washington, but they are a generation younger than Biden, who will turn 80 this November, and the House Democratic leadership of Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), and James Clyburn (D-SC), who are already in their 80s.
Now, there are signs that even some in the older generation of Democrats are ready for Biden to move on. Due to the complexities of redistricting, longtime New York Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney have found themselves running for the same seat from Manhattan. At a debate this week, both Nadler, 75, and Maloney, 76, declined to support Biden’s reelection.
“It’s too early to say,” Nadler answered when asked if wants Biden in 2024. Maloney made news when she answered simply, “I don’t believe he’s running for reelection.”
Interestingly, as the New York Post noted in this account, the third candidate in the debate, 38-year-old Suraj Patel, said he would support Biden. But Patel made a point of saying that both Nadler and Maloney, while a little younger than Biden, are too old to serve in Congress. Nadler, the New York Post noted, “seemed to prove Patel’s point” by bumbling through his opening statement and much of the debate afterward. At one point, Nadler proclaimed, “I impeached Bush twice,” when he obviously meant former President Donald Trump. In conclusion, Patel said, “It’s 2022. It’s time to turn the page on 1992.” That could apply to Congress as much as the White House.
So: Phillips, Craig, Maloney, Nadler. One, two, three, four House Democrats, the latter two chairs of powerful committees — Maloney heads the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Nadler the House Judiciary Committee. For their part, Phillips and Craig were “the most prominent federally elected Democrats to say they do not want President Biden to run for a second term,” according to Axios. They broke the dam holding back anti-Biden statements, although many other Democrats have undoubtedly whispered similar things to each other.
Why has the dam broken? Look at the polls. Last month, a New York Times/Siena College survey found that 64% of Democratic voters want a different nominee, while just 26% want the party to renominate Biden. And then a CNN poll showed that 75% — 75%! — of Democrats want a different nominee. Those are very big numbers.
So no one should be surprised that Democratic officeholders are now coming out and saying Biden should go. That’s what many of their Democratic voters believe, not to mention independents and Republicans. Maloney and Nadler can even express doubt on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. There is no longer any risk in wanting Biden to retire. More and more Democrats will say so in the future.
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