Trainwreck Election

And with five months to go, Biden's looking toasty

Remind me again: How did we get to this place…?

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As a presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump is a comprehensive catastrophe. He’s unpopular with a solid majority of the American people. He has a habit of saying crazy things. He’s currently in a New York courtroom being tried on multiple felony counts—bogus they may be, but felony counts nonetheless. He’s facing three more criminal trials. The baggage that weighs him down would clog an entire airport carousel. And if the 2024 election were held right now, he’d beat Joe Biden.

How can this be?

Among the President’s hardcore supporters, many explanations are floated. The President and his minions are faulted on messaging: Gosh darn it, everybody needs to get out there and sell the American people on Joe’s awesomeness! Or the American people are just too clueless to grasp that awesomeness. Or the American people are a bunch of ingrates who refuse to give Biden the credit he deserves. Or half of the American people are fascists anyway. Or the media aren’t doing their job, which is to flack for the Biden campaign while reviling the Ogre Trump.

But let’s think a bit. Could not the explanation be simpler? Could it be that Joe Biden is just a lousy president?

Over at National Review Online, Rich Lowry makes that case. He runs the numbers, of which Biden’s 40/60 job approval rating is the killer stat. When sixty percent of the American people disapprove of the job a president is doing, the bottom is out of the tub. The Biden presidency has been weighed in the balance of public opinion and judged a failure. Added to this is a widely held belief that Joe Biden personally is simply too old, too infirm, too befuddled to carry on. Throw in the fact that the President, his people, and his hardcore supporters are deep in denial of the grim realities, and you have the makings of a second Trump term.

It’s Politics 101: An election with an incumbent president on the ticket boils down to a referendum on his performance in office thus far. Team Biden, however, thought that in view of Trump’s toxicity, that script could be flipped. And it might have worked, too—except that right from the beginning, the President screwed everything up.

Domestically, there was his first-year spending spree; internationally, there was the Afghanistan debacle. The former gave us runaway inflation and high interest rates; the latter exposed Biden as weak and indecisive, unable to provide leadership at a moment of crisis. Along the way, he managed to create a border crisis, allowing millions of “migrants” from here, there, and everywhere to flood into the country.  

The many issues that cut against Team Biden are well known: high prices at the supermarket, high rents and housing costs, high interest rates, uncontrolled illegal immigration, crime, chaos and disorder at home and around the world. True, foreign policy doesn’t usually cut much ice with voters, but this year a far-off war has become a domestic political issue. The conflict in Gaza caused the smoldering antisemitism and anti-Americanism of the American Left to blaze up in the streets of our cities and especially on university campuses. And the Biden Administration’s reaction to this vile and disgraceful carnival of hate?

Crickets—and another proposal to cancel student loan debt. Right, that’ll pacify the campus jihadists.

Biden’s handling of the Gaza conflict is, among other things, a prize example of political malpractice. Leave aside the geopolitical and moral issues involved. Look at it purely as a problem of politics. From that point of view what outcome would best have served the President’s interests? The answer is obvious: a swift end to the war, with Hamas smashed and Israel victorious. Biden really needed a win, and here was an opportunity to chalk one up.

In the immediate aftermath of October 7, it did seem that the Biden Administration understood this. The President talked tough. He had Israel’s back. But then he and his people panicked over the criticism he was getting from Muslim Americans and the anti-Zionist Left. The Administration’s “rock solid” support for Israel evaporated. It put pressure on Israel to agree to a “humanitarian pause” in the fighting. It pressed for a ceasefire deal. It fumed and fulminated over the Israeli government’s alleged intransigence. It demanded that Israel prioritize the safety of the civilian population of Gaza over defeating Hamas.

And the result? A prolongation of the war, which has now blown up into a major political problem for Biden and the Democrats. Cosmic justice is on the job.

With five months to go before Election Day, there’s probably nothing that Team Biden can do to turn things around. People have made up their minds that the President’s performance in office has been sub-par. Only one thing can save Biden now, and it’s certainly a possibility: Donald Trump self-destructs. But despite the former president’s mercurial temperament and habit of saying outrageous and vile things, he shows no sign of doing so. Trump will always be Trump, but he seems a bit more circumspect these days. And why should he need to fall back on crazy talk when Biden’s sorry record provides him with so many plausible talking points?

Then too, the Democrats’ lawfare campaign could trip Trump up. But their efforts to kneecap him in court are blatantly partisan, thus short on credibility. And those ninety-plus felony counts haven’t done much to help Biden so far, have they?

One thing’s for sure: This is going to be a trainwreck of an election. But which candidate will survive the smashup is anybody’s guess.