Basic point. After the 2022 midterms President Biden should have announced that he was not going to seek a second term. When he did not do this party insiders and allies in the public realm should have strongly pressured him to do so. If this did not work prominent contenders should have challenged him in the primary.
Is this because Biden is bad? No, not particularly. In many respects he has been better than the last two Democratic presidents and his administration has moved in a post-neoliberal direction on a lot of economic issues, while also being reasonably pro-labor, both symbolically and in substance. These are good things. He is unequivocally better than Trump.
He is also incredibly unpopular. Ever since his popularity went south during the summer of 2021 he has been underwater in polls. His approval rating numbers are terrible and he polls badly against Trump in head to head contests. In the best polls he tends to be tied with Trump, both nationally and in key swing states. In the rest he trails, both nationally and in key swing states, and on average he is behind.
The reason he has a chance to win is because Trump is also incredibly unpopular. Consider these YouGov polls from April 28-30: Biden is 42% favorable and 58% unfavorable in one of them and an insane 39% favorable and 58% unfavorable in the second poll. By comparison Trump’s numbers, though bad, look relatively mild: 45% favorable, 54% unfavorable in one, 44% favorable and 55% unfavorable in another. According to 538, as of May 3rd Trump has less than a 1% lead nationally (it’s about .7%).
That’s not a big lead and plenty can change in the run-up to an election. But as 2016 demonstrated, when two unpopular candidates run against each other anything can happen. The electoral college is up for grabs and the outcome hinges on the decisions of a tiny number of voters in swing states. That’s pretty risky. (It was hard enough just to win the electoral college in 2020 when Biden was genuinely popular).
Also, consider the fact that overwhelming numbers of voters, nationally and in swing states, in both parties and among independents, consider Biden too old to seek another term. In general, around 75% of voters say that he is too old for another term. That is a devastatingly bad number. The only reason he has any chance is because Trump is also deeply disliked.
So, Biden should have stepped aside, endorsed no one, and let the many eager candidates duke it out in the 2024 primary. Since this did not happen, and indeed none of the things I mentioned in the first paragraph happened, we are left with no good options.
But running someone, anyone, whose approval ratings aren’t in the 30s seems like the best option at this point. Figuring out the logistics is the hard part.