Joe Biden’s worst strategic decision: Running for reelection in the first place

The 2024 race for the White House did not have to be an unpopular national embarrassment. For that, you can blame President Biden.

His worst strategic decision was running for reelection. Yes, he had his reasons — three of them, by my reckoning — but the data and polls confirm Biden’s consequential blunder. His likely defeat will consequently be the three I’s: infirmity, inflation and immigration.

According to the RealClearPolitics poll averages, with “no toss-up states,” former President Donald Trump would win 312 Electoral College votes to Biden’s 226 if the election were held today. In 2020, Biden won 306 to Trump’s 232.

On June 21, 2020, Biden led Trump by 9.8 percentage points. At the same point in the election cycle precisely four years later, the race is virtually tied. To illustrate how much worse off Biden is this time, Trump led Biden in only two outlier national polls out of hundreds taken throughout the 2020 cycle. This time, he leads in most polls.

More critically, in the seven battleground states that will decide the election, Trump leads by an average margin of 3.3 points. That is a significant achievement considering that in 2020, Biden won Michigan by 2.78 points, Pennsylvania by 1.17 points and Wisconsin by 0.63 points.

In Arizona, where Biden won by only 0.3 points in 2020, Trump dominates, with an average lead of 4.6 percent. The same is true in Georgia, where Trump’s lead averages 4.8 points, dwarfing Biden’s 0.23-point margin of victory.

More reliable than polls are the incumbent president’s job approval rating. Yesterday, Biden averaged 40.4 percent, an encouraging trend since he rarely breaks 40. How does his job approval compare to the fate of the last three incumbents on June 20 during their fourth year in office? Donald Trump’s was 42.6 percent, and he was defeated. Barack Obama earned 47.4 percent and George W. Bush rated 48.2 percent. Both were reelected.

Given Biden’s consistently underwhelming job approval rating, his 2020 victory points to the cause of his likely downfall. In November 2024, Biden will turn 82. Everyone knew this in 2020, and practically no one expected him to run a second time. He could have played the “I want to spend time with my family” card at the appropriate time, eliciting sighs of relief with zero political backlash.

Announcing against reelection, Biden might have proudly invoked Cincinnatus, the Roman statesman who relinquished power for the good of the republic. He could have quoted John F. Kennedy about “passing the torch to a new generation.” Biden could have, might have, should have.

But he did not.

Now, half of American voters fear that the other half will elect a convicted felon. The first half believes Trump is unfit for office, but he is favored to win. Next week’s debate could shift the race toward Biden in the battleground states. But since that is highly improbable, the question remains why Biden made his worst strategic decision.

First, President Biden feared the consequences of being a lame-duck for half his term. The timetable for startup presidential campaigns dictated that Biden needed to announce his one-term decision shortly after the 2022 midterm elections.

Biden understood that two years as a lame-duck president could have dangerous ramifications in an increasingly volatile world. For example, in February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Biden is credited with successfully rallying and expanding NATO to help thwart Putin’s ambitious attempt to reunite the former Soviet empire. Had Biden been a lame duck commencing in November 2022, his stature and effectiveness among NATO allies could have been diminished.

In December 2019, an intriguing Politico headline read, “Biden signals to aides that he would serve only a single term.” The report quoted a “well-known Democratic strategist” who said what Biden instinctively believed: “If you begin your first day as president as a lame duck, it changes everything. Every Cabinet secretary, every subcommittee chairman treats you differently. I wouldn’t advise it, just from a governing perspective as well as political.”  

That “truth” also applies to half a presidential term. But now, Biden’s frail appearance and Trump’s campaign momentum raise the question, “Did Biden break a ‘one term’ pledge?” The answer is no, since immediate lame-duck status meant a weak, dead-duck president.

If Democrats had been trounced during the 2022 midterms, Biden might well have bowed out in 2024. Instead, he perceived the unexpectedly positive midterm results as a green light for his own reelection. A week later, on Nov. 15, 2022, Trump announced his presidential campaign, unable to resist a rematch against the man who accused him of trying to steal the 2020 election.  

Second, and contributing to Biden’s worst strategic decision of running for reelection, is a hangover from his second-worst decision, which was to choose Kamala Harris as his running mate. Mirroring Biden, her job approval rating usually dances between 38 and 39 percent. Harris is seen as dragging down Biden’s already-weak presidency and harming his chances of reelection.

Harris left Biden with no good options. Imagine if Biden had announced in November 2022 that he was not seeking a second term. Immediately, he would have embraced lame-duck status by upping Harris’s profile within his administration. At the same time, she was likely to announce her presidential plans. Still, awaiting the vice president would be a tough primary fight with the next generation of Democratic governors eager to take on Donald Trump with incumbency as her only advantage.

Based on Harris’s fast-flopped 2020 presidential campaign, a fizzled 2024 attempt would have further weakened and embarrassed Biden’s lame-duck presidency.

Conversely, running for reelection, Biden could not risk replacing a woman of color as his running-mate, since he feared alienating core constituencies within the Democratic Party. Worse still, how does one fire the incumbent vice president?

Biden will turn 86 years old in 2028. That fact, combined with Harris’s unpopularity, unleashes death fears that “a vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris.” 

Finally, the prospect of Biden willingly leaving the office he first sought in June 1987 would have been an untenable blow to his psyche, even though a bevy of 2023 polls showed that as many as 70 percent of voters did not want him to run for a second term.

Ultimately, Biden made his worst strategic decision, potentially jeopardizing American democracy. This mistake seems to motivate voters to say, “You’re fired!” and to rehire the infamous man who popularized that quote.

Myra Adams served on the creative team of two GOP presidential campaigns, in 2004 and 2008.