Who (or what) comes after Biden?

Those are words I didn’t expect to write this year. 

As readers of Swamp Notes will know, I’ve been a huge fan of this president, and to be honest, I still am. When the histories are written, Joe Biden’s stewardship of America over the past three years will go down as one of the big political success stories of our time. He took a country that could have plunged into a deep recession — or even depression — and orchestrated the most successful post-Covid recovery in the world. He was old enough and wise enough to know how to bring Democrats back together, and move them from a focus on “woke” to “work”. He was even able to pass landmark legislation amid the most polarised political environment in modern history.

Bidenomics, while not perfect, will be remembered as the first big shift in the US political economy since the Reagan-Thatcher revolution. His administration, which is made up in large part of unbelievably talented people who work 24-7 and have given up private sector riches because they believe in this man and his importance at this time, is the most competent I’ve seen in the 33 years I’ve been in journalism. 

And yet, as New York Times columnist Ezra Klein wisely put it in his recent column calling for Democrats to put forward a new candidate, being president is different than being a presidential candidate. I don’t actually doubt Biden’s ability to do the job of commander-in-chief. For starters, I think it’s possible to have a few issues with remembering names or dates and still be a hugely competent and compelling leader. I think it’s entirely normal that a president should have a team of younger, more energetic people to prop him up in all sorts of ways, leaving him to do the listening, keep the ship on course, and take the tough decisions. I know many successful older CEOs or financiers who do just that. 

But winning elections is as much about visuals as it is about wisdom. This has been a truism since the Nixon era at least. George Washington probably wouldn’t have been elected if he’d had to run for office. But Biden has to, and in the age of high-speed media to boot. And so, given the broad worries among Democratic leadership that the age issue will keep coming up, I think it is reasonable to start thinking about what comes next, and what opportunities could be opened up if Biden did step down. 

For starters, the party could get rid of Kamala Harris, and get not only a new presidential candidate but a new vice-presidential candidate too. I have never seen Harris as a net positive, and I still don’t really understand what she’s about. She’s a good prosecutor, but a poor politician for our moment. A centrist in a suit, even if she’s a woman of colour, is not what the country craves. 

What does America crave? A true story about where we are — in a rich but quite vulnerable society in which only a third of people can afford the things that make us middle class and one in which both political and economic power have become far too concentrated. But also a plan for how to rebalance things, and someone with a record of having done so. That argues for some Midwestern populist who has won elections in a swing state rather than a coastal progressive or some middle-of-the-road business type. I don’t think it is the message that’s the problem at the moment — it’s the messenger (for more on that, and in particular what international election watchers should make it of it, see my Monday column).

Peter, I know you said last week that it would be impossible for Democrats to pick a different candidate. That may be right, and I’m not even sure they should. February is early — election seasons are long, and a lot can change. But let’s just do a thought experiment for a moment. If Democrats could start with a clean slate, which presidential and vice-presidential candidates would be best placed to beat Donald Trump? And would the policy platform of a winning Democratic ticket be fundamentally different from the administration that came before?

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• Want to understand how people survive and thrive in the Swamp? Read this 6,800 word New York Times Magazine profile of Mark Meadows, the former Trump chief of staff who might bring Donald down. Absolutely worth reading to the end, and kudos to journalist Robert Draper, who must surely be writing a book on the topic.

The FT’s Lauren Fedor and Alec Russell join this week’s Swamp Notes podcast to discuss Donald Trump’s aggressive attitude towards Nato and how it resonates with American voters. Listen here.

Peter Spiegel responds

Rana, I still think Biden will be the Democratic nominee, but you’re right: it’s worth playing this thought experiment because the Democrats actually have a rather deep bench of “presidential timber” that could easily step into his shoes and lead the party. And the reason I think that’s worth emphasising is because it is so clearly not the case among Republicans. As we’ve seen during the truncated primary season, nobody has been able to shake the party from its cult-like adherence to Trump.

Let’s start with two prejudices I have that used to be truisms when I arrived in Washington in the 1990s, but have since fallen out of fashion. The first is that governors are better presidential candidates than cabinet secretaries or members of congress. Particularly at a time when anger at Washington is at an all-time high, picking a senator or a current member of the administration (including Harris) would be a mistake, I think. 

This 1990s conventional wisdom has been undermined by two former senators recently moving to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue (Biden and Barack Obama). But I still think it should be a guiding principle of our little game here, because I think Democrats would need to look outside of Washington after three terms of Obama-Biden.

My second prejudice is that Democrats do best in national races when they pick a candidate from the party’s centrist or conservative wing. In the postwar era, this has mostly meant Southerners. Texan Lyndon Johnson (1964) still holds the record for the highest percentage of the popular vote of any candidate since the turn of the 20th century, and his two Democratic successors, Georgian Jimmy Carter (1976) and Arkansan Bill Clinton (1992, 1996), were both Southern governors. There are plenty of counterfactuals here (not only Biden and Obama, but also John F Kennedy and Harry Truman). But as you argued Rana, I still think Democrats’ biggest vulnerability in the current environment is that they are viewed as elitist and out of touch with average Americans. A southern accent goes a long way to countering those perceptions.

With all those caveats, there are two Southern governors that have won re-election in pretty solid red states who I think would do well as Democratic presidential candidates: Andy Beshear, who won a second term in Kentucky rather handily last year over a rising Maga star, and Roy Cooper, who is finishing his second term in North Carolina. 

Outside the south, there are two other governors who get more attention than Beshear or Cooper who are viable alternatives: Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and California’s Gavin Newsom. Whitmer has masterfully navigated a swing state with a strong Maga streak, so I’d put her near the top of my list alongside Cooper and Beshear. But Newsom, despite his debating skills and movie-star looks, is just too California for a divided nation, I fear.

None of them will be the 2024 Democratic nominee. But the party has little to worry about once Biden steps off the stage.

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