Even though Democrats officially lost the 2024 election last month, replace Herndon shows they actually lost it early last year, “when they rallied around the re-election of Joe Biden, back when there was a lot of evidence the country didn’t want that.”
Herndon, one New York Times National political reporter and landlord belong to The run up podcast, recall the latest episode of Inside the beehive Biden’s unpopularity has been clear for years if you look outside the DC bubble, and the 2020 coalition that brought him to power was “always quite fragile.”
“One of the things that stunned me is I recall the discussion about Biden’s age, even at the time,” Herndon said. “I remember talking to voters who were concerned that he was too old to serve a second term, and I remember the efforts the Biden campaign made to suggest that maybe that was something they could resolved in the future. And that, for many, is an effective message. They simply said, ‘Hey, four years from now we’ll deal with that, but right now it’s a matter of stopping. Donald Trump.‘”
While Biden can count significant legislative achievements in his first two years in office, the events considered “victories” by Democrats and reported as such in the media through politics, many Americans did not feel the impact. And yet, Biden, now in his 80s, running for re-election with the party behind him. “I think the Democrats have been stuck believing their own hype more than I thought in working on the premise that a lot of Americans started with, which is that Joe Biden is there to remove Donald Trump. And what happens next?”
Although Biden never explicitly ruled out running for a second term, the 2020 vows Many people see it this way to become a “bridge” for “an entire generation” of Democratic Party leaders. “In some ways, Kamala Harris running in 2024 is exactly what many expected would happen in 2020,” Herndon noted. “What has changed is that Joe Biden and the Democrats have abandoned that implication and robbed the primary of its opportunity.” Herndon said that if Biden had considered Harris his successor in the 2024 race early on, he “could have acknowledged that from the beginning and helped her succeed” or “if it wasn’t the person he If he wanted, he could have chosen someone else whom he wanted to help achieve success.”
“I think there are a lot of different options that could happen,” he added. “I just think they chose the worst. Then they put that person aside and argue that it can only be him, then have to move on to the person in crisis with three months left.”
Herndon, a National Magazine Award finalist for his work profile 2023 of Harris, saying he “thinks Joe Biden’s age is an undeniable political crisis. No problem.” For Herndon “it’s just a matter of when and how they’re going to deal with Kamala Harris because she’s going to be the obvious one.” So “even if he wins,” he added, “there will be a crisis of democracy in 2025.”
