The Democrats' Biden blunder

 Rich Lowry:

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Democrats consider Biden the safe choice in 2024, since he’s the incumbent and surrounded by flawed alternatives, yet he is actually an enormous risk.

Nominating him again would be extremely reckless, both for the party and for the country.

First, the partisan considerations. It may well be that Biden, even in his enfeebled state, is the best matchup against Donald Trump. He beat him once before, after all, and used him as an effective foil during the midterms. It is to Biden’s advantage that it has proven difficult for anyone to work up a passionate hatred of him, rather than a low-intensity sense of pity or contempt. (That so many had hated Hillary Clinton for so long was her ultimate undoing in 2016.) Biden still has a relatively moderate affect and profile — there are limits to how woke an 80-something, silver-haired creature of the Democratic establishment can appear, no matter how far left his policies are.

But there’s no guarantee that Biden will get Trump as his opponent. The former president has as good a chance as anybody of winning the Republican nomination, but he’s less of a prohibitive favorite than he was a month ago.

If Biden doesn’t get Trump, then he’ll be denied the dynamic of one old guy whose record is terrible running against another old guy who frightens people. Trump would try to make age an issue against Biden, but he is nearly as old. Age wouldn’t be much of a consideration in a Biden–Trump race, except for people wondering how we got locked into running such old, deeply flawed candidates — not once, but twice.

If Trump can’t secure the GOP nomination, though, everything changes. Ron DeSantis is 44 years old. Ted Cruz is 51. Mike Pompeo is 58. Tim Scott is 47.

Basically, any Republican nominee besides Trump would instantly be bequeathed a powerful past-vs.-future theme (age aside, Trump will unavoidably and perhaps explicitly be running a campaign of restoration). Whatever edge Democrats imagine Biden would have against Trump disappears against, say, Ron DeSantis, a candidate nearly half Biden’s age who hasn’t repelled the middle of the country and isn’t obsessed with the 2020 election.

There’s another risk for Democrats as well — namely, that Biden will experience some age-related meltdown in public during a general-election campaign that will make his struggles undeniable even to well-wishers determined to look the other way.
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Biden is already an old fool whose staff has to keep backtracking many of his remarks.  His 2022 campaign was the success of a demagogue.  He used broad insults of Trump supporters to motivate particularly the pro-abortion mob.   

All one needs to do is look at the record of the Trump administration against that of Biden to see that Trump was a much better president in both domestic politics and foreign policy. 

 Biden's left-wing energy policy has been a disaster for the country and the world. That combined with his Afghan bug-out prompted Putin to think he could get away with invading Ukraine and thousands have died as a result.  His reckless spending has left Americans dealing with the highest inflation in decades.  

While the media hates Trump and tries to ignore the success he had and from time to time played into their narrative with unnecessary comments that bother independent voters.  If he runs again he will have to clean that up if he is going to be successful at the ballot box.  BTW, his criticism of Biden is spot on.

As for the other potential candidates, they can expect the same mistreatment from the media Trump gets. The media is not going to be fair to any of the Republicans named but they may be better at rebutting the media and Democrats' abuse.  

See, also:

National Border Patrol President Slams Biden For 'Lying' About Border Crisis