As Joe Biden was preparing to announce he will seek a second term as president, a new poll showed that an astonishing 70 percent of his fellow citizens wished he wouldn't.
An NBC survey reported that even a majority of Democrats (51 percent) want Biden to leave the White House after completing his first four years. Of those who felt that way, 48 percent cited his advanced age (he would be 86 at the end of a prospective second term) as a "major" reason.
Since none of the president's handlers have yet devised a magical means for the aging chief to present himself as more youthful and vigorous in the months ahead, their boss remains acutely exposed to a potential challenger, even within his own party. In fact, the first "big name" Democrat to announce his own competing candidacy for the nomination already draws meaningful support from voters who say they cast ballots for Biden in 2020, but don't plan to do so again next year.
According to a USA Today/Suffolk University Poll released on April 19, 14 percent of those who previously backed Biden now intend to shift their support to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmental and anti-vaccine activist who, in announcing his candidacy, ripped Biden for his "corrupt merger of state and corporate power." The fourth member of his immediate family to seek the White House (after Uncle Jack in 1960, father Bobby in 1968, and Uncle Ted in 1980), Robert Jr. launched his campaign with a rambling, intermittently coherent, and oddly endearing address that lasted an hour and 48 minutes and thrilled an adoring crowd in Boston.
Inevitably, Kennedy festooned his speech with nostalgic recollections of his father's last campaign, which he had experienced as a lad of 14. He invoked the thrilling and audacious challenge of taking on a seemingly invincible incumbent within his own party, implying that Biden would turn out to be even more vulnerable than Lyndon Johnson was in 1968. But for those in the crowd who recalled that ancient battle with any specificity, the irony of the new campaign is that RFK Jr., in his best-case scenario, might most plausibly play the role not of his fallen father, but of RFK Sr.'s fellow senator and eventual primary season rival, Eugene McCarthy.
At a time when major figures in the national party (most notably RFK) refused to contest Johnson's renomination in any sense, Senator McCarthy agreed to run as an anti-war candidate and concentrated on the first-in-the nation New Hampshire primary. On March 12, in the wake of the Communist Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the upstart stunned the incumbent president with 42 percent of the vote (Johnson won 49 percent), encouraging Bobby Kennedy to declare his own candidacy four days later.
Even with a similarly vulnerable incumbent, however, this new Kennedy campaign stands scant chance of displacing Biden for its quirky candidate—RFK Jr. is best known for his long association with the dubious conviction that vaccines cause autism, he's been arrested on heroin charges in the past, and his marital troubles are the stuff of tabloids. Moreover, he has suffered for more than a decade from spasmodic dysphonia, a condition which causes his voice to quaver and strain, making public speaking an effortful chore—rendering his nearly two-hour announcement speech even more peculiar and ill-advised.
But given his performance in recent polls (drawing more than 10 percent of self-identified Democrats) he could easily win enough support to earn a place in debates that should test Biden and, very possibly, encourage better-known, more mainstream candidates to join the fray and to spark a spirited, unpredictable contest for the Democratic nomination—the same way Eugene McCarthy drew RFK Sr. into the 1968 campaign, ultimately leading LBJ to withdraw.
If the figures from NBC and other polls are correct, the overwhelming majority of Americans want Biden out of the race—offering a tempting opportunity for one of the Democratic governors with bursting war chests and swelling ambitions to offer the electorate a fresh choice. Gavin Newsom of California, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, Jared Polis of Colorado, or J.B. Pritzker of Illinois could provide the dramatic change in Democratic direction that RFK Jr. tried to describe at excruciating length while promising a choice more intriguing than the tedium of another round of Trump vs. Biden.
And even if the new Bobby Kennedy manages to assemble 14 or even 20 percent of the Democratic electorate (as some polls suggest he might), that still leaves plenty of the party (the majority want Biden not to run, remember) that would still prefer a more dynamic and refreshing choice than the octogenarian incumbent.
It's understandable that even younger voters with no recollection of the melodramatic, impassioned, altogether unpredictable and ultimately tragic electoral marathon of 55 years ago should listen closely for some of the evocative echoes of '68. When so many of our partisan arguments feel inconsequential, tawdry and trivial (who cares, ultimately, about Hunter's laptop or Stormy's hush money?) it may come as a relief to harken back to a time when the issues and personalities both looked larger than they are today.
Michael Medved hosts a daily radio talk show and is author, most recently, of God's Hand On America: Divine Providence in the Modern Era. Follow him on Twitter: @MedvedSHOW.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
