President Biden before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)Listen4 minShareComment on this storyCommentAdd to your saved storiesSave
In retrospect, it’s remarkable that an 81-year-old president with lousy job approval ratings, and who many expected would serve only one term, ended up being challenged only by a self-help author, Marianne Williamson, and a little-known Democratic representative from Minnesota, Dean Phillips. (That’s the guy who apparently couldn’t get anyone to come to a recent event in Manchester, N.H. Holding an outdoor event in 22-degree weather is always a tough sell, Congressman.)
WpGet the full experience.Choose your planArrowRightOne of the most quietly consequential political decisions of 2023 was the Democratic National Committee’s shuffling of the party’s presidential primary schedule, moving South Carolina to first, Nevada to second and Michigan to third.
Yes, New Hampshire insists that it’s holding the first Democratic primary on Tuesday, but the DNC calls the primary “meaningless” and says it won’t allocate any delegates based on the results. Iowa, the traditional first contest, got pushed back to Super Tuesday, March 5 — partially as punishment for the state party’s inability to count the votes quickly in 2020, and partially because Democrats deemed it an insufficiently diverse state.
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Pretend you’re some popular Democratic governor with presidential ambitions and many years until you reach age 80. If you chose to run a primary challenge against Biden this cycle, your first effort would be to attempt to beat Biden in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, one of his strongest states, and where he finished almost 30 percentage points ahead of Bernie Sanders in the last cycle.
Then it would be on to Nevada, where maybe you would have a shot, as Biden finished second, behind Sanders, with about 20 percent of the vote last time. But remember, at that point in 2020, the vote was still splintered among a handful of candidates, including Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.
Any popular Democratic governor in 2024 would face a steep climb to win against an incumbent in a race that is effectively one-on-one. Sure, Biden’s job approval in the most recent Emerson poll of Nevadans is a lousy 36 percent. But 78 percent of self-identified Democrats told Emerson they planned to vote for Biden against Phillips and Williamson this year.
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And then it would be on to Michigan, where Biden beat Sanders solidly in 2020, 53 percent to 36 percent. Are Biden’s numbers in Michigan worrisome right now? Sure. Are they worrisome enough that Biden could lose a primary? Unlikely.
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For any upstart challenger who wanted to climb to a win through retail campaigning and shaking hands in diners and hosting town halls, those are a rough first few states.
Then comes Super Tuesday, where you would need the resources to compete against an incumbent president in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
It all adds up to Mission: Impossible. A successful primary challenger would have to be a gifted campaigner, have a top-tier fundraising network or be strong in the new early primary states — or, preferably, have all those traits. (If you had all those traits, you would probably be president already.) There are a lot of Democrats who want to be president someday, but almost none could talk themselves into believing they had a shot at seizing the nomination from Biden, even with his current weaknesses.
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And if you run a primary challenge against an incumbent president, all the outcomes short of total victory in the general election are bad.
If you run, lose in the primary, and the incumbent wins the general election, almost everyone else in the party will argue that you unnecessarily sapped the incumbent’s resources and diminished his victory in the general election. If you lose the primary and the incumbent loses the general election, you’ll get even more of the blame for that outcome. And if you win the primary and lose the general election, almost everyone else in the party will hate you. The whole prospect is high risk, low reward.
Early in 2023, the DNC challenger-proofed the Democrats’ presidential primary process. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson are learning that the hard way.
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In retrospect, it’s remarkable that an 81-year-old president with lousy job approval ratings, and who many expected would serve only one term, ended up being challenged only by a self-help author, Marianne Williamson, and a little-known Democratic representative from Minnesota, Dean Phillips. (That’s the guy who apparently couldn’t get anyone to come to a recent event in Manchester, N.H. Holding an outdoor event in 22-degree weather is always a tough sell, Congressman.)
One of the most quietly consequential political decisions of 2023 was the Democratic National Committee’s shuffling of the party’s presidential primary schedule, moving South Carolina to first, Nevada to second and Michigan to third.
Yes, New Hampshire insists that it’s holding the first Democratic primary on Tuesday, but the DNC calls the primary “meaningless” and says it won’t allocate any delegates based on the results. Iowa, the traditional first contest, got pushed back to Super Tuesday, March 5 — partially as punishment for the state party’s inability to count the votes quickly in 2020, and partially because Democrats deemed it an insufficiently diverse state.
Pretend you’re some popular Democratic governor with presidential ambitions and many years until you reach age 80. If you chose to run a primary challenge against Biden this cycle, your first effort would be to attempt to beat Biden in South Carolina’s Democratic primary, one of his strongest states, and where he finished almost 30 percentage points ahead of Bernie Sanders in the last cycle.
Then it would be on to Nevada, where maybe you would have a shot, as Biden finished second, behind Sanders, with about 20 percent of the vote last time. But remember, at that point in 2020, the vote was still splintered among a handful of candidates, including Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.
Any popular Democratic governor in 2024 would face a steep climb to win against an incumbent in a race that is effectively one-on-one. Sure, Biden’s job approval in the most recent Emerson poll of Nevadans is a lousy 36 percent. But 78 percent of self-identified Democrats told Emerson they planned to vote for Biden against Phillips and Williamson this year.
And then it would be on to Michigan, where Biden beat Sanders solidly in 2020, 53 percent to 36 percent. Are Biden’s numbers in Michigan worrisome right now? Sure. Are they worrisome enough that Biden could lose a primary? Unlikely.
For any upstart challenger who wanted to climb to a win through retail campaigning and shaking hands in diners and hosting town halls, those are a rough first few states.
Then comes Super Tuesday, where you would need the resources to compete against an incumbent president in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
It all adds up to Mission: Impossible. A successful primary challenger would have to be a gifted campaigner, have a top-tier fundraising network or be strong in the new early primary states — or, preferably, have all those traits. (If you had all those traits, you would probably be president already.) There are a lot of Democrats who want to be president someday, but almost none could talk themselves into believing they had a shot at seizing the nomination from Biden, even with his current weaknesses.
And if you run a primary challenge against an incumbent president, all the outcomes short of total victory in the general election are bad.
If you run, lose in the primary, and the incumbent wins the general election, almost everyone else in the party will argue that you unnecessarily sapped the incumbent’s resources and diminished his victory in the general election. If you lose the primary and the incumbent loses the general election, you’ll get even more of the blame for that outcome. And if you win the primary and lose the general election, almost everyone else in the party will hate you. The whole prospect is high risk, low reward.
Early in 2023, the DNC challenger-proofed the Democrats’ presidential primary process. Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson are learning that the hard way.
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