And so – way, way too late – Joe Biden has finally decided not, after all, to run for re-election.  

It has been clear ever since the Presidential debate that his campaign could not survive.  I have no great insights into the extent of his intellectual decline, but it was self-evident that he could not go on – maybe because he wasn’t able to string a coherent sentence together – but much more because he was clearly incapable of moving the conversation on.   Whether Biden performed well or badly, all that any media was willing to talk about after every appearance was whether he was still mentally capable.  There was no way to put the discussion to bed.  And Trump got a free pass.

So, Biden should have gone then and, indeed, if his decline in private is as it has appeared in public, he should have stepped back in January 2023 to allow time for serious consideration of a successor.  

We are where we are.  Can Trump still be beaten?  

What is interesting is that, despite a perfect four weeks, even now there is very little momentum behind Trump’s campaign.  His lead has edged up maybe 2-3%, despite the debate, the Democratic circular firing squad, the assassination attempt, Trump’s VP pick, Biden’s COVID…  A perfect storm of disaster (for the Democrats) has barely moved the dial.

What does this tell us?  For months, we have been told that one reason Biden had to stay on was because no one (i.e. Kamala Harris) could do better.  And yet compare Harris’ match-up poll ratings with Biden’s and there is nothing to choose.  

This is because, more than anything, the next election is not about whom the Democrats put up; it is solely about the man they face.  And the vast majority of the electorate has already made up their minds about him, one way or another.   

The tiny number of people who remain open to persuasion are: former Democrats who have been persuaded that Trump was not that bad after all; the handful of the nearly fifty percent of Americans who don’t vote at all, who might just be coaxed back to the ballot box; and Kennedy backers who reject the binary choice being put to them.

Let’s take each group in turn:

The former Democrats are few and far between but the fact that they are in play is because they have been unimpressed by Biden’s record and forgotten Trump’s.  If Biden wasn’t able to bring them home, then it is hard to imagine what Harris could offer.  Her record is his record, and anyone who is even vaguely attracted by Trump is unlikely to be won back over by a black, liberal woman.

Then there are the non-voters.  Does Harris get more non-voters to the polls than Biden?  The short answer is no.  She is not a change candidate – she is part of this administration – and to alter the dynamic of the current election, something needs dramatically to change.  In identity terms, there is little evidence that she has more appeal that Biden to BAME voters and, while she has done a good job for her party around reproductive rights, those for whom this is a primary issue are already voting Democrat.  It is hard to see whom new she gets to the polls.

In contrast, there are still likely to be defectors from the third group.   Third party candidates are always squeezed in the final run into an election.  Where might, say, half of Kennedy’s current 8-10% of the vote go, a percentage that – were it to break decisively for one candidate or another – could make a difference in some swing states)?  Logically, if these are “a plague on both your houses” voters, then if the Democrats change “their house”, they may give themselves the chance to change minds in this small but significant group of the electorate.  A chance but nothing more and still Harris doesn’t look like change.

The bottom-line is that, despite all the upheaval of the past month, none of the fundamentals of this campaign have changed.  Regardless of the Democratic candidate, the campaign remains tilted – although not yet decisively – towards the Trumpian Republicans.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But at least the Democrats now get the chance to talk about something else.

 “CC BY-SA 2.0: Gage Skidmore”. (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/)