What a Second Biden Term Might Actually Look Like
Enter President Harris
by ROSS BARKAN
A friend and I were talking on the phone yesterday. I had canceled a trip to Washington, where he lives. We were going to watch the Nationals but rain was forecasted to pound the area and I didn’t want to risk a cancelled game. After the usual digressions and joke-making, we turned to a more serious topic: the future of the country. And we both agreed, if Joe Biden wins this November, the odds of him finishing a second term are longer than most in politics and the media imagine.
Biden’s age is a tiring topic, but it’s real. No amount of spin, no amount of fundraising, and no amount of media browbeating can wish it away. Biden is 81 and will turn 82 in November. He is not as robust as he once was. Running for president while serving as president has drained men 30 or 40 years younger. Donald Trump is 77 and thrice indicted, but he does not seem so elderly, so frail. He is every bit the unhinged WWE-style showman. He looks and sounds exactly as he did in 2016.
Though the polling looks bleak for Biden, I do believe he can still win because Trump remains alienating to large segments of the electorate. The fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which was Trump’s doing, has only boosted Democrats, as moderates and progressive alike unite around safeguarding abortion rights. Biden has no obvious argument for a second term beyond stopping Trump—James Carville, rightly, has argued this is the rare presidential election that is not about any great promise for the future—and it’s increasingly clear, no matter what happens, the policy victories of 2022 and 2023 will not be repeated. Republicans are heavy favorites to retake the Senate. The Republican-run Congress happily roadblocked Barack Obama for the entirety of his second term. They’ll do the same to Biden.
What if President Biden, at age 82 or 83 or 84, decides he’s had enough? That he’s not looking to die in the White House? If Trump winning, for most pundits, remains the most plausible outcome, consider another that is no longer remote: Bidens wins and, at some point in his second term, steps aside. It might represent something of a win-win for an aging, headstrong president. Biden chose, despite a historically strong Democratic bench, to seek a second term. If he wins it, he will have proven to his critics he’s no Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush. He will have significant policy victories to tout, like the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He will have, come 2026 or so, little to gain by hanging around.
He can be the president who makes history: allowing a woman to lead the United States of America.
It should be noted that Biden’s decision to run again was a reflection of the dim view Biden’s aides, and many Democratic operatives, take of Kamala Harris’ talent. If Gretchen Whitmer or Raphael Warnock were the vice president, it’s possible Biden faces an intense shadow campaign, sometime in 2023, to not run again. Harris has never won a tough election outside of a deep-blue state and she’s not, like Obama, a generational political star. She joined the Biden ticket after her own presidential bid flamed out. Once Biden promised, at the height of the social justice era, to make a Black woman his running mate, Harris was the obvious selection.
Making Harris president for one or two years offers little downside for Biden himself, though it might displease his most loyal aides. Given how Harris was iced out of so much White House decision-making, it’s not hard to imagine she decides, once becoming the nation’s first female president, to assemble her own team of aides and political allies, kicking at least some of Team Biden to the curb. Since Harris, unlike recent vice presidents, has not handled a consistent policy portfolio, it’s unclear what kind of president she would be. My only guess, as of now, is that she would be less hawkish on Israel than Biden. That’s mostly due to Israel’s rightward shift, the disastrous war in Gaza, and the evolution of party mandarins like Chuck Schumer. Harris, unlike Biden, has no historical commitment to Israel, no reason to defend their right-wing government at all costs.
Beyond Biden aides, there’s another Democratic constituency that would secretly hate the anointment of Harris: ambitious presidential candidates. If President Harris decides to seek a full term in 2028, she will be able to box out her primary challengers. Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford for the nomination in 1976, but Reagan was already the star of an ascendant conservative movement within the party. As popular as Whitmer might be in Michigan—or how badly Gavin Newsom wants to be president—there’s no current Democrat who could threaten to topple a sitting president in a primary. Perhaps President Harris, in this scenario, would be scandal-scarred and invite challengers. But any Democrat who wants to run for president in 2028 should hope Biden serves out a full term or Trump wins again. Otherwise, a full 12 years might pass between open Democratic primaries. That’s an eternity for a hungry, impatient political class. The young stars of the party won’t be so young. Even Pete Buttigieg, 2020’s wunderkind, will be 50. In that sense, Biden may hold a unique amount of power to decide just what his party looks like after he’s gone.