I take no pleasure in reporting that I have been anxious since Donald Trump came down that gold escalator in June 2015. For the next year-plus, people told me to stop being a Cassandra. My husband pointed out how The New York Times gave Hillary Clinton an 85% chance of winning. “Stop being neurotic,” he said. But I remember vividly when Clinton’s Electoral College chances plummeted as the Times’ prediction needle dropped to the 50s, then to the 20s—and then, shockingly, the election was over. After leaving a party at a friend’s loft in SoHo, I walked down Houston Street and tried to figure out how I was going to tell my children what had just happened.
Democrats were especially gobsmacked by Clinton’s loss, opening the door to a lot of hand-wringing and soul-searching. Did Democrats nominate the wrong person? Had she just run her campaign wrong? Would Bernie Sanders have won? It’s almost eight years later, and looking at the 2016 Electoral College map (306 to 232) still makes me feel kind of sick.
The aftershocks of that tumultuous race carried over into the 2020 Democratic primary, as voters just wanted someone who could win. The Atlantic called it “the electability primary.” Democrats became obsessed with the Goldilocks candidate, someone who wasn’t too far to the left or right, or too female, or too diverse. After weak showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, members of the pundit class, like me, wrote off Biden’s electability, only to see his fortunes change dramatically in South Carolina. The media’s dismissal of Biden that election cycle was perhaps best displayed in the New York Times editorial board’s endorsement of two of his rivals, while the paper’s elevator operator joyfully took a selfie with the former vice president. The chattering class might not have loved Biden, but as he racked up primary wins and endorsements from former rivals, the perception grew that perhaps the only person equipped to take out one old white guy was another. In the end, Biden flipped the last election on its head, handily beating Trump in the Electoral College, with a result of 306 to 232.
We’ve now entered the anxiety election. The prospect of Trump, with his four criminal indictments and authoritarian fantasies, returning to the White House is, of course, a terrifying scenario. And those fears were heightened last week amid the flood of coverage and hand-wringing that followed a 388-page report from Robert Hur, the special counsel selected to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents. Hur, whom Trump appointed as a US attorney, might as well have been auditioning for attorney general in a future Trump administration. Despite finding there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge Biden—unlike in, say, Trump’s case—Hur used the report to muse about the president’s memory.
Speaking of 2016 flashbacks, this release transported me back to James Comey’s damaging letter to Congress about Clinton’s use of a private email server, which the news media feasted on during the final week of the presidential race. As Popular Information’s Judd Legum found, “just three major papers—The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal—collectively published 81 articles about Hur’s assessment of Biden’s memory in the four days following the release of Hur’s report,” while “incidents that raised questions about former president Trump’s mental state received far less coverage by the same outlets.” At the Times alone, he noted, “the story was covered by 24 reporters (some of whom filed multiple stories), four opinion columnists, and the New York Times editorial board.” (Axios reported Tuesday how House Republicans intend to keep Biden’s mental faculties “in the spotlight,” a plan that could be aided by the media’s glare.)
Many Democrats, meanwhile, responded to the Hur report by completely losing their minds. What if this was like 2016 again? What if Democrats didn’t pick the right candidate to beat Trump? It was like everyone forgot how electable Biden was in 2020. It was like everyone forgot that Democrats have overperformed in every election since the very Trumpy Supreme Court overturned Roe.
While Democrats freaked out, Trump and some of his advisers, according to The Washington Post, “were taken aback at how negative it was, wondering if there was some ulterior motive.” Republicans tossed out some wild theories, like that Democrats wanted to swap out Biden for someone else. Vivek Ramaswamy suggested on Fox News that the Democrats were now closer to installing Michelle Obama as their nominee. This theory has been around, as Ted Cruz told Sean Hannity a few months ago how the “odds are very significant” that the Democratic Party “will jettison Joe Biden and will throw him off the ticket, and they will parachute in, instead, Michelle Obama to be their candidate.” Never mind that the former first lady has said she absolutely does not want to run for president.
The fantasy that Democrats will simply swap out Biden is based on the notion that voters don’t control the party, that there’s some secret cabal that pulls the strings. But as Biden noted earlier this month, upon winning the 2024 South Carolina primary with more than 95% of the vote: “In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the presidency.” Yes, voters picked Biden.
Now, I understand why everyone’s so anxious; another Trump presidency could be the end of American democracy. But there’s also a reason why Republicans are so obsessed with trying to get Biden to drop out. It’s not because they are concerned about Biden’s mental acuity; it’s because they know that incumbency is a huge advantage and the economy is picking up. (Meanwhile, Trump is trying to look like an incumbent president—while taking credit, somehow, for the stock market’s rise.)
Of course, it’s fair to say that Biden is an “elderly man”—he’s said so himself—and at 81, he’s the oldest person to run for reelection. Though it’s not like Trump is young: He’ll be 78 on Inauguration Day 2025, the same age Biden was when he was sworn into office. And Trump has had his share of verbal flubs too. Not to mention, some considered Ronald Reagan, at 73, too old to run for reelection; he won 525 electoral votes.
The media’s decision to seize on bad polls, especially around Biden’s age, has ratcheted up Democrats’ nerves for months. Yet polls have been wrong before. Remember the red wave of 2022? Never happened. Biden may not be sexy, but he’s sturdy and he’s running against someone who has confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi. Biden will need to prove to voters that he’s up to the job, but as for the pundit class, he owes us nothing.