Biden Should Expect the Unexpected
Jack Hughes thinks who is going to challenge Biden???
The idea that Joe Biden has not ruled out running for re-election should surprise no one, and neither should someone running against him for the nomination. But exactly who Jack Hughes thinks might challenge Biden for the Democratic Party nomination might shock you.
by Jack Hughes
During his first televised press conference as president, Joe Biden was asked (not surprisingly) whether he was intending to run again in 2024. His heavily-caveated response was what you’d expect from a seasoned politician and lawyer: “The answer is ‘yes.’ My plan is to run for reelection. That’s my expectation.” Far from an iron-clad guarantee, it raises a related question: If Biden runs again, will he be challenged?
Now, let’s acknowledge from the start that Biden had no other option than to say he intended to run again. If he’d said he didn’t intend to run it would have signalled the beginning of the end of his presidency. Virtually all his political authority would have evaporated along with any realistic chance of achieving his ambitious policy agenda. No, Biden answered the question the only way he could in the circumstances.
And yet, despite the consequences of leaving any doubt about his plans, Biden’s basic honesty still broke through. When a second reporter noted that he’d just made news by saying he was going to run again, Biden quickly corrected them: “I said that’s my expectation.” He then added that he was a “great respecter of fate” and “I’ve never been able to plan four and half, three and a half years ahead for certain.”
But let’s say fate smiles on Biden and he finds himself enjoying both the presidency and excellent health in three years’ time – how likely is it that he’d be challenged for the nomination? Well, history tells us there’s a damn good chance. Four of the last six Democratic incumbents, two-thirds then, were challenged by senior members of their own party when they tried to seek another term. Those are fairly decent odds.
There’s a damn good chance Biden will be challenged for the nomination.
Franklin Roosevelt was challenged by, among others, his own vice president – John Nance Garner – when he ran for a third term in 1940. FDR easily fended off the attempt, which was unlike that faced by his next three twentieth-century successors in that his challengers came from the conservative wing of the party who believed Roosevelt was too progressive. With the spectre of war looming, FDR was re-elected.
Harry Truman was then challenged in 1948 by two very different candidates, then-Democrat Governor Strom Thurmond – who ran on the new segregationist ‘Dixiecrat’ ticket – and FDR’s second vice president, Henry Wallace. Wallace was a socialist progressive who, like Thurmond, took his challenge straight through to election day running on a Progressive Party ticket. Still, Truman defied the odds and was elected.
Lyndon Johnson was challenged in 1968 by anti-Vietnam War Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota. Though McCarthy didn’t beat LBJ in the New Hampshire Primary, he had a sufficiently strong showing that an even higher-profile progressive, Senator Bobby Kennedy of New York, entered the fray. Faced with a fight, LBJ wowed the world by bowing out and not seeking or accepting re-election.
Jimmy Carter was the last and most recent incumbent Democrat to face a challenger for the 1980 presidential nomination. Carter, like Johnson and Truman before, was attacked from the left by ‘Liberal Lion’ Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts. The fight between Carter and Kennedy became fiercely personal, and Kennedy won a few primaries, but, ultimately, Carter won the nomination before losing the election.
Biden might take comfort in the fact that neither Barack Obama nor Bill Clinton was challenged for the Democratic presidential nomination for their second terms – there were mild grumblings in late 1995, but no challenger to Clinton ever came forward. Moreover, no incumbent Democrat president has been denied the nomination since Andrew Johnson in 1868 (Lyndon Johnson wasn’t denied it in 1968, he declined it.)
And yet, Biden would be foolish to assume he’ll be given a free pass. Not only will he be 81 years old at the time of the next election, but his left flank could be exposed to an assault from progressives. This, then, opens the door for us to engage in that fun exercise of frenzied speculation. If Biden runs again, who’s the most likely to fight him for the nomination and, what’s more, who’d offer the strongest challenge?
Biden would be foolish to assume he’ll be given a free pass.
FDR and Truman were challenged by sitting or former vice presidents – so a good place to start may be Vice President Kamala Harris. (I doubt former Vice Presidents Walter Mondale or Al Gore are threats.) Harris ran against Biden for the nomination in 2020 and still has presidential ambitions. Asked if she’d be his running mate in 2024, Biden said: “I would fully expect that to be the case.” That word again – expect.
If not a vexed vice president, what about a sitting senator? Most challengers have come from the Senate – Ted and Bobby Kennedy, McCarthy. (Senator Estes Kefauver technically challenged Harry Truman in 1952, even besting him in the New Hampshire Primary, though Truman insists in his memoirs that he’d long-before decided against running.) Are there any senators who’d take a run at Biden?
Fortunately for the president, given the family tradition, the only Senator Kennedy in office is a Republican from Louisiana. That said, both Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren are progressives who fought Biden for the nomination in 2020. If Biden alienates them, it’s not impossible that one or both of them might have another go at him – despite them then being 83 and 75 years old, respectively.
Again, not impossible but improbable. That opens the door to a future progressive challenger from the Senate. If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were to successfully pocket Chuck Schumer’s New York Senate seat in 2022, she could line up a shot to run against Biden in 2024. It’s a tough combination to sink but that’s almost how Bobby Kennedy did it – winning his New York Senate seat in 1964, before running in 1968.
Today, though, there’s a single sitting senator with the temperament and temerity to mount a serious challenge – Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema. The sunbelt state’s senior senator has made quite the name for herself in the past two months standing up to her party leadership, most notably when the gave an ‘Arizona salute’ – being a John McCain-esque thumbs down – to a Democrat-led attempt to increase minimum wage.
The fact Sinema seems unfazed suggests she’s got something else in her sights.
To borrow a pun, this is the golden age of Sinema. The even split in the Senate means that she has the awesome power of the deciding vote, which she can use to scuttle or support Biden’s signature initiatives as she sees fit. Sinema has a peculiar political pedigree; she’s a former Green Party/Ralph Nader voter who staked out progressive positions on the Iraq War, the environment, immigration, as well as LGBTQ rights.
Lately, though, she’s been called everything from rogue to realist, centrist to sell-out, Blue Dog to bomb thrower. Sinema’s term is up in 2024, and it seems likely that she’ll be challenged for Arizona’s Democratic senate nomination. In the interim, her powerful position could change as dramatically as her hair color (she’s sported pink and purple wigs on the Senate floor) if Democrats gain seats in the 2022 mid-terms.
The fact Sinema seems unfazed by such risks suggests she’s got something else in her sights. She’s proven herself to be a shrewd strategist who shrugs off attempts to stick her in any one spot along the political spectrum. She could swing back to her progressive roots, or not, meaning she could mount a challenge for the presidential nomination from the right or the left. Sinema, then, is the most daring and dangerous.
All this to say, if Joe Biden actually expects to seek a second term in 2024, if he’s actually planning to run for re-election, he must assess his potential opponents. At the press conference, Biden was asked there’d be a rematch between him and Donald Trump. Biden laughed it off: “I have no idea if there will be a Republican Party!” The line hints at the history: Before he fights Republicans, he has to face Democrats.
Jack Hughes is a communications consultant based in Canada. His previous contributions to The Experiment include “Same of Thrones,” “Tippecanoe and Agnew Anew,” “Harris / Shuri 2020,” “Bidenfeld,” “Firth and Firthiness,” “The Ballot of Bill McKay,” and “The World Wants ‘The West Wing,’” among others. His inexplicably extensive writings on Dan Quayle are “The Unusual Suspect,” “The Unusual Suspect II,” “The GOPfather” and “Porqua, CoQau?” His most recent contribution was “The Conscience of a Conservator.” Connect with him on LinkedIn here.
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