Biden's Gamble: The High-Stakes Decision to Stay in the Race

The President is staying the course despite all of the warning signs

Speculation reached a fever pitch about President Biden’s future as the Democratic nominee over the last ten days. But something got lost in the conversation. Despite public calls from a few Democrats and private pleas delivered anonymously through the media by countless other elected officials, staying in the race was always Joe Biden’s choice and his choice alone.

The Democratic Party cannot force him from the ballot. The President won the nomination fair and square. The delegates are pledged to him and must vote for him on the first ballot. Some Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and Jim Clyburn, could march down to the White House and ask the President to step aside. However, the power dynamics between a President who controls the party machinery make such a scenario unlikely.

If Biden were going to step aside, it would be of his own accord after making an honest assessment of his ability to win, his capacity to be an effective candidate, and the cost of defeat on the country and his legacy.

Polls show that 3/4s of the country think he is too old to be an effective President and nearly half of his own voters want a different nominee. Despite this, President Biden, his family, and his inner circle reportedly never seriously considered stepping aside.

The President reaffirmed that decision on Monday morning in a letter to Congress, writing:

Despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump. 

Biden then called Morning Joe for a pugnacious and energetic interview. The letter and the interview were cleverly designed to get ahead of congressional Democrats calling on Biden to cede the nomination.

For long-time Biden watchers, his decision to stay was unsurprising, but it represents an amazingly risky gamble with the fate of democracy on the line.

Where the Race Stands

If you take what Biden said in his ABC interview at face value, he clearly does not believe the polls and has a different — and possibly delusional — view about where the race against Trump stands. It’s important to level set about where the race is right now. Everyone must understand what is before us over the next 120 or so  days.

There is still time, and a lot can happen, but Biden is currently on track to lose the election. He is a historically unpopular incumbent running during high prices and a global wave of anti-incumbent sentiment. Trump is more popular and acceptable than at any point in the past nine years. His favorability is higher than Biden’s.

While positive polls exist for Biden, like the Bloomberg/Morning According to FiveThirtyEight, Trump is ahead nationally by 2.2 points and in most (if not all) of the battleground. Trump has a higher favorability rating. Internal polling from OpenLabs, a Democratic polling outfit associated with the premier pro-Biden Super PAC, reports Biden down in every single battleground state and either behind or tied in the previously safe states of New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota, and New Mexico.

Trump’s presidency is viewed as more successful than Biden’s and his coalition is more united.

Scariest of all, according to data from AdImpact (LINK), Biden is behind despite massively outspending Trump on the air over the last several months.

Over this period, which also includes Biden’s successful State of the Union and Trump’s trial and conviction, Biden made no real gains in the race nor did his approval rating improve or concerns about his age abate. Not gaining ground while spending millions to communicate with voters and your opponents is a red flag. That spending advantage is set to come to an end very soon — a pro-Trump Super PAC just booked more than $60 million in ads to start running during the Olympics.