Biden's age is not the problem in this election. Donald Trump is.

Ezra Klein's foolish proposal for Biden to drop out of the race would likely hand Trump the victory

In an election that could decide whether democracy survives in America, the New York Times tells us once again that voters perceive Joe Biden as too old and feeble to be a two-term president, raising the specter of the collapse of the American experiment.

This time, the warning comes from Ezra Klein in a 25-minute podcast, part of a seemingly endless stream of Times stories and editorials questioning whether Biden should retire for the good of the Democratic Party and the country. Klein followed up days later with a surreal and unpersuasive 62-minute podcast dissecting the mechanics of what would happen if Biden dropped out.

The argument rests on the belief that there’s another Democrat more likely to prevail in 2024, maybe even any other Democrat.

Klein concedes that Biden can still do the job and even do it well. But that, he says, doesn’t matter. After talking to those who work closely with the president, Klein said:

I am convinced, watching him, listening to the testimony of those who meet with him — not all people who like him — I am convinced he is able to do the job of the presidency. He is sharp in meetings; he makes sound judgments. I cannot point you to a moment where Biden faltered in his presidency because his age had slowed him.

But here’s the thing. I can now point you to moments when he is faltering in his presidential campaign because his age is slowing him.

Unfortunately, we live in a time where presidents are judged less by whether they reduce rates of childhood poverty, create new jobs, or rebuild roads and bridges and more by whether they momentarily flub a line, saying that Abdel Fattah El-Sisi runs Mexico instead of Egypt. Or whether they declined the traditional Super Bowl interview, leading pundits to ponder whether they weren’t up to the task. What counts most today is perception, the performative nature of the job while in front of a camera.

Biden, frankly, has never been a charismatic leader nor a polished speaker. He’s prone to gaffes and missteps. He dropped out of the 1988 Democratic primaries in the wake of a plagiarism scandal. His 2008 campaign led to an early exit after bombing in the Iowa caucus. However, Obama resurrected Biden's presidential aspirations by selecting him as vice president, so much so that he became the consensus choice in 2020 as the only Democrat who could defeat Donald Trump.

Yet despite that past, Klein’s proposal is for Biden to bow out this time and let someone else take over the nomination. This dangerous, even reckless, strategy could hand Donald Trump the victory. It’s deliberately throwing the election into chaos while the odds are in the Democrat’s favor. Let’s look at why Klein’s proposal is such a disastrous idea.

Historically, incumbents have an overwhelming advantage. Since 1948, they have won 75% of the time. In that period, three of seven Republican presidents were defeated: Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and Donald Trump. However, for Democrats, Jimmy Carter was the only president out of five to lose the White House.

Carter suffered a landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan in 1980. However, his election was doomed by extraordinary events, including the Iranian hostage crisis and an inflation rate of 12.5%. Another critical factor in Carter’s defeat was division within the party caused by competition from Sen. Ted Kennedy, who initially seemed destined to win and only begrudgingly endorsed Carter at the convention. Rarely are incumbents challenged this way.

The advantages of running for president while you’re president are apparent. People already know whether you can do the job. You’re the safe choice.

Imagine if the Republican Party had dumped Abraham Lincoln in 1864 because his re-election chances looked shaky. Or Democrats had given up on a seemingly hopeless Harry Truman in 1948. Barack Obama had low approval ratings as president by the latter half of 2011, making him vulnerable. Yet, these presidents, buoyed by their office, captured a second term.

One Democrat did throw the election into chaos. During a nationally televised address on March 31, 1968, Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek nor accept the nomination for re-election. The nation was deeply divided over an unpopular war in Vietnam. LBJ’s approval rating was just 36% in the Gallup poll, and he faced anti-war challengers such as Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. Four weeks after Johnson pulled out, Vice President Hubert Humphrey decided to seek the nomination and was ultimately successful. But while the popular vote was close, Humphrey was obliterated in the general election by Richard Nixon, despite white supremacist third-party candidate George Wallace winning five Southern states.

History does not support the assumption that a challenger would do better than an incumbent. Furthermore, the romantic notion that a field of emerging talent would reinvigorate the party has no basis in the past either.

Remember all the Democratic talent vying for the nomination in 2020? It seemed an embarrassment of riches. There were the popular progressives Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Then there was Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Corey Booker, among others. Michael Bloomberg provided a wild card. Compared to this field, Biden appeared bland and unexciting.

However, open fields are messy and unpredictable. Bernie Sanders had a solid core base. But all the other candidates failed to break out of the pack. Sanders won plurality victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, while Biden did miserably, coming in fourth and fifth place, respectively. But then came South Carolina, where Biden won an impressive victory, followed four days later by a string of victories on Super Tuesday. The math quickly changed, and all the Democratic challengers realized that the only hope of keeping the nomination away from a self-declared socialist – who they believed had the worst odds of defeating Trump in the general election - was to withdraw and throw their support behind Biden selflessly. It was a political miracle spurred by fears of a second Trump administration. In the end, Biden seemed to be the only Democrat who could both sail past Sanders’ populist campaign and defeat Trump.

The anybody-but-Biden theory has already been tested to a degree. Little-known Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota entered the race on just that notion. But his campaign has only been mocked.

The obvious alternative to Biden is Vice President Kamala Harris. While Klein contends she’s underrated and perfectly capable of being a good president, even he is skeptical that she can turn around an unfavourability rating weaker than Biden’s. “If Harris cannot convince delegates that she has the best shot at victory, she should not and probably would not be chosen,” Klein says. Once he admits that even Harris might not be acceptable, Klein loses his argument. At that point, he’s throwing the election into the hands of a group of untested and unvetted Democrats. Klein says:

There is a ton of talent in the Democratic Party right now: Gretchen Whitmer, Wes Moore, Jared Polis, Gavin Newsom, Raphael Warnock, Josh Shapiro, Cory Booker, Ro Khanna, Pete Buttigieg, Gina Raimondo, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Chris Murphy, Andy Beshear, J.B. Pritzker — the list goes on.

Klein wants to redo the 2020 election, but this time without Biden. That would have been a disaster. No other clear leader emerged then; this time, any replacement would have far less time to organize and campaign for the office.

Besides, while it’s far too early to make much of polls, Biden currently leads Trump in several key battleground states, according to RealClear Politics, which has Biden up 2.3 points in top battleground states. Biden leads Trump in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.

But the polls don’t yet factor in a possible criminal conviction before the general election. Nor do they account for the unique nature of this election, where one candidate has pledged to become a dictator. Republicans have performed disastrously in every election since 2020, in large part because of the hugely unpopular Dobbs decision overturning Roe and the sense that the GOP has become a radical cult. That was underscored recently by the GOP’s willingness to scotch a bipartisan deal to secure the border and by its support for Trump’s mind-blowing statement that he would invite Putin to invade NATO allies over a minor financial quibble.

Biden has had some of his best moments in the past year. At the 2023 State of the Union address, Biden outsmarted Republicans and got them to agree during the speech to save Medicare and Social Security. He negotiated a budget ceiling increase and a continuing resolution so skillfully that it cost Kevin McCarthy the speakership. And he delivered a scathing takedown of Trump in what may have been the most compelling speech of his presidency. “The legal path just took Trump back to the truth: That I had won the election and he was a loser.”

If Klein is so concerned about Trump winning, he could focus on the real issue in this election. Biden is running against someone who historians have ranked as the worst president in American history. Trump is a fascist, a rapist, a cheat, a liar and an insurrectionist. He’s called for terminating the constitution to secure power. He’s promised to dissolve NATO, create prison camps for immigrants, replace professional government workers with cronies, and ban abortion nationwide. He’s coy about whether he would ever allow another election, thus ending American democracy.

The problem is Trump, not Biden’s age.