Jonathan Martin reports for POLITICO Magazine “Newsom Told the White House He Won’t Challenge Biden.” After several paragraphs of the California governor repeating such assurances, we get to the larger story:
[W]alking through Sacramento back toward the mansion it was hard not to think of the difference between him and the last two California governors who chose to live in the three-story Victorian.
In 1976, Ronald Reagan challenged a sitting president, Gerald Ford, and four years later Jerry Brown did the same against Jimmy Carter. Both incumbents would lose the general election, as would George H.W. Bush in 1992, the last year a president would face a remotely serious primary.
This fear of wounding your own president and only ensuring his defeat in the fall is partly the reason why primaries against incumbents have faded, and it’s certainly top of mind for younger challengers who don’t want to hurt their future prospects within the party.
Yet there’s something else at work now that was lacking when Reagan and Brown mounted their challenges. Today’s intense polarization and the contempt the two parties have for one another has fostered an internal cohesion within the two coalitions that, far more than ideological unity, acts as a retardant against insurgencies.
Put another way, there’s a perceived penalty for confronting one’s own leaders because to weaken them would risk the unthinkable — helping the opposition.
Understandably, then, the only forcing mechanism that can alter this dynamic is if remaining loyal to a leader poses the greater risk of aiding and abetting the other party. That’s why some Republicans believe (or at least hope strongly) that their mediocre midterm performance may finally free them from the grip of Donald Trump — because while GOP voters are willing to tolerate a great deal from Trump they can’t abide him ensuring Democratic success.
It’s also Trump who explains why a Democratic Party that spans lapsed Bush Republicans to devout social democrats is now operationally closer to the House of Windsor than the pirate ship it once resembled. Look no further than the orderly succession by which, in a period of mere hours and with barely a whisper of dissent, they effectively swapped in three new House Democratic leaders to replace three Octogenarians — 50 years and a world away from George McGovern giving his acceptance speech in the middle of the nightafter the unraveling of the party’s 1972 convention.
Stopping Trump’s comeback is priority one for the party and anything else is a dangerous distraction, including any open discussion, at least for now, about whether it’s in the best interest of Democrats to renominate the oldest president in American history. (Trump is no spring chicken, either, one can already hear party activists yelling at their screen, as they read this.)
I fully expect that, if he remains healthy, Biden will run again. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, he’s already running.
Partly, that’s because he’s an ambitious politician who has spent his whole adult life wanting to be President. Nobody willingly gives that up after a single term if they think there’s any chance at all of winning re-election. Partly, it’s because he thinks he’s the Democratic Party’s best chance of keeping the White House away from Trump or a Trump-like figure.
But, yes, while I’m old enough to have vague memories of Reagan’s attempt to primary Ford (who, it must be remembered, was never elected President to begin with) and Kennedy’s attempt to replace Carter—and more clear memories of Buchanan’s run against Bush the Elder—the last of those was three decades ago. I just don’t see it happening in our current political climate.
