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Shumita Basu, Narrating: This is "In Conversation" from Apple News. I'm Shumita Basu. Today, the soul searching in the Democratic Party as the midterms and then 2024 approach.
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Basu, Narrating: On the 2020 campaign trail, about a week after several surprising victories on Super Tuesday, Joe Biden gave a speech in Detroit. And in that speech, he said …
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President Joe Biden: Look, I view myself as a bridge. Not as anything else.
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Basu, Narrating: Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer were there campaigning for Biden. And he pointed to them and said …
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President Joe Biden: There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country.
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Basu, Narrating: Biden had made similar comments in the past. But many people understood his words that day to mean one specific thing: that Biden planned to be a one-term president.
Gabriel Debenedetti: A lot of people interpreted that as him saying, "All I'm here to do is just get rid of this guy who's president and then we'll talk about what comes next." But he, unbeknownst to a lot of real people, has hated the idea of only running for one term.
Basu, Narrating: That's Gabriel Debenedetti. He's the national correspondent at "New York Magazine." Gabe says, no matter how many times Biden says he's gonna run again, that interpretation of a one-term pledge has stuck. A recent "Wall Street Journal" poll found that only three in 10 Americans think that Biden will seek a second term.
And given Biden's age — he'll turn 80 this year, the oldest president ever — and his current approval rating — around 40%, about the same as Trump's at the same time in his presidency — at least some Democrats are now asking, "What is the backup plan?"
Basu: There is a backup plan, right?
Debenedetti: There's this big question of what comes next. And it's totally unclear.
Basu, Narrating: Now, with January 6th committee hearings underway in the House, it's a reality check for many people. A reminder of what's at stake in 2024 with Donald Trump almost certain to be on the ballot again.
Gabe has been talking to lots of Washington insiders$% elected officials, White House aides, political operatives, to take the temperature of the Democratic Party right now. How is the party preparing for the next generation of leadership? Who's got what it takes to win a presidential election? In our conversation, he breaks down the calculations and the soul searching going on behind the scenes as Democrats try to make a plan for the future.
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Debenedetti: To make a long story short, Joe Biden has always said, I'm running for reelection. Not only am I running because this is what presidents do, I'm running because I - and this is the way that he sees it - am the only thing standing between the country and the threat of Trump, the return of Trump, the possibility. But within Washington, there's this weird undercurrent where people are talking constantly about, well, what happens if he can't run? Not because they don't expect him to, but because they think it's irresponsible not to have a plan just in case he doesn't. But where we are is essentially this bizarre situation where people are really talking past each other. Because within the White House, it's not even a question. Of course he's running for reelection. But if you ask a random Democrat, there's always a, "but what if," kind of question out there. And it's born of a fear that Donald Trump might come back or someone like him.
Basu: You seemed pretty amused by the reactions you were getting to your questions when you were speaking to folks in Washington. It seemed like you were getting sort of two very different responses.
Debenedetti: Yeah.
Basu: Can you talk about that?
Debenedetti: Sure. "Amusing" is probably the right way to say it, but I wanna be clear that it's amusement underscored by sort of existential dread. Because it was a bizarre scenario where you had people who ostensibly were very close to each other, working towards the same ends, just viewing the world vastly differently. And sometimes that's okay, but in this situation it just felt strange. So, I'll give you one example. I was talking to someone high up in the administration one night, and I posed the question of what was gonna happen in 2024, if Biden was gonna run again, what the Democrats were thinking. And this person looked at me as if I had three heads and said, "Is that a real question?" As if to say, "Of course, he's running again. What are you talking about?" And then the next morning, I had breakfast with someone who is very close with that person, also high up in the administration. And they said, "That's a great question." And they went deep on what they thought could happen in 2024. So, part of this is spin, obviously. A lot of people who are close to Biden simply don't think it's a good idea to be having this conversation right now. And I completely understand that. On the other hand, there is a big concern that … So, Biden is someone who is known for taking a lot of time with his big decisions, particularly when it comes to running for president. When he ran for president in 1988, it took him months and months and months to decide to actually run. Same thing happened in 2015 and '16, same thing happened in 2018 and '19. So, what there is some concern with people that even though he says he's going to run again, maybe he'll decide not to, and that maybe that will happen late in the game next year. Now, that would be a pretty big reversal, because again, I can't underscore this enough, he says he's running. But if we do get into a world where he decides not to late next year, that really throws the Democratic Party into a very strange situation. Because we do have a list of about a dozen or so people who are not gonna run right now but putting themselves in a position where were Biden not to run, they could. It takes a lotta time to stand up a proper national campaign. And they wouldn't have time to do that in that situation. And it's totally unclear what would happen then.
Basu: Yeah. Yeah. There are really, as I see it at least, two big reasons why a lot of people don't believe that Biden will seek reelection. And we've alluded to these a little bit, but maybe we can spend some time with each of them. And one is his age. Another is his sinking approval ratings. So, help put both of those into context.
Debenedetti: Sure. I think the important thing that we should step back and say at this point is that there's no precedent for a situation like this. Part of it is age, part of it is approval rating. But the very simple fact, before we dive into those two subjects, is no one asked these questions of Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, even of Jimmy Carter. So, I'm just looking at Democratic presidents here.
Basu: The second term question.
Debenedetti: The second term question, I should be clear. Yeah. Carter was going to get a challenge, but no one doubted that he was gonna run again. And part of this is that Biden's so much older. He would be turning 82 right after he won reelection. He's already the oldest president we've ever had. So, there's no precedent on that basic front. So, there are questions about this. He has always said, it's a legitimate question because of course he can't hide the fact that he's old. But what he has always said consistently is, just watch me, and you tell me if you think that there's something to worry about. Now, one thing the White House has dealt with is that there's quite a lot of bad faith attacks, particularly from the right wing, on this question. The truth of the matter is that Biden walks more slowly and more stiffly. His physician has said this. And it appears that he speaks more slowly. But the idea that he has gone through some sort of mental decline, which is something that a lot of Republicans have accused him of, is simply not backed up by anyone who deals with him on a day-to-day basis. And I talked to a lot of people who deal with him on a day-to-day basis. And these aren't just partisans who want to send the message that everything's doing okay. These are critics of his, too.
Debenedetti: The approval rating question is a little bit thornier. He hates this. He hates that he is basically at Trumpian levels, and he, and a lot of people around him, do subscribe to the idea that it's structural at this point. There's essentially nothing that we can do. As one person who I talked to for this story said, we're in a world where 100% percent of the other party's gonna hate you no matter what. There's nothing you can do to win them over. And 85% of your party is pretty okay with you. That certainly describes Biden. But there's that small part of your own party that wants you to do more on X, Y or Z, or is disappointed with the way that you've handled something. There's no doubt that that's true for Biden, too. And that lands you in the low 40% approval ratings or high-30s. And that's historically a terrible place to be, but over the last decade or two, a pretty common place for presidents to be.
Basu: I wanna talk more about the forward-looking plans for 2024. But first, why do Biden's backers, from the folks that you spoke to, think that it would be the right call for him to pursue a second term?
Debenedetti: In some ways, there are two different answers to this. One is they think he's actually not bad at this job, and they think he has underrated and under-appreciated strengths as a politician that could be especially powerful in a campaign against Trump again. Partially, this is about his empathy, which is a public image of his that really helped in 2020, and partially it's because he has the image of someone who has beaten Donald Trump before, which is a very significant thing. He also simply does have better approval ratings than many national Democrats with voters who are important in campaigns. And part of this is voters of color, but it's also some, only some, but an influential group in national politics: white working-class men in particular in Midwestern states, and also increasingly white working-class women in Midwestern states. All of this, though, is very speculative this far out.
Debenedetti: The other part of why they think he should do this again, is they think, what are we talking about? Presidents run for reelection. Only one in the modern era, shall we say, hasn't. And that was Lyndon Johnson. I don't know if we would even call that the modern era. That was 1968 in the middle of Vietnam. And he had been president for more than four years. So, the idea that this is a normal conversation really frustrates them. And when you talk to some people who are close to Biden, they get pretty exasperated. Biden himself has been asked over and over in interviews, "Are you running for reelection?" And at the beginning he said, yes, yes. That's fair, I am. And now he's like, yes, what are you talking about? Of course, I am.
Basu: Yeah. He seems pretty tired of getting that question.
Debenedetti: Exactly. Exactly. And you already have, for example, the reason that this is such a pressing issue, for example, is the fact that many people expect Donald Trump to announce that he's running for president again any day now. And that's the thing that really animates Biden. But it's also the thing that unites Democrats. The idea that Trump's return is this sort of doomsday scenario. And that's why there is this grand agita where people want to figure out how to beat him somehow. Many people think Biden's the only one that can do it. Biden, by the way, that's what he thinks. Many other people are skeptical of that and simply think it's irresponsible to assume that that's true.
Basu: Does that feel true at this moment to you?
Debenedetti: I don't know. I talk to a lot of people who think it's undoubtedly true and a lot of people who think it's insane. So, it's very difficult to tell.
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Basu, Narrating: This brings us to the question many Democrats are asking: If, for some reason, Biden doesn't seek reelection, what's the backup plan? Gabe says, to some Washington insiders, that question has an obvious answer.
Debenedetti: There is a backup plan, and it's the vice president. And many people close to her say, this is insane. Of course, there's a backup plan. That's what vice presidents are for.
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Debenedetti: It's also very clear that when Biden chose her in 2020, chose Kamala Harris, he chose her because he viewed her as the future of the party. He thought of her politics extremely highly. And he thought that being vice president would be a wonderful experience before presumably - and he never said this explicitly, but it was very clear - before she became president down the line. That is still very possible. She has not done anything that suggests that she doesn't think Biden's running again. She has not been even talking to people that worked for her in 2020. But early polling, which again is very speculative and we should be very careful about it, there has been a lot of polling of the potential field of Democrats without Biden in it, and Kamala Harris has led every single one of those polls with the exception of the ones that Michelle Obama has led. But as I wrote in the story, she's probably less likely to run than Barack Obama, who's not allowed to run.
Basu: Sure. She's been pretty clear about that.
Debenedetti: Yes. So, let's just say Kamala Harris would obviously be the frontrunner here. All of that said, what I've been picking up from people in Washington is that the prospect of her running in 2024 is not enough to stop other people from trying. Other people in the party. Even people who like her. So, you do have other people out there who are - again, no one will say it out loud and no one is actively thinking about 2024 - but you do have a lot of people who are just putting themselves in position where if that's the way that the cards fall, they'll be ready to launch a campaign if they need to.
Basu: I wanna talk about those candidates in a moment, but first let's stay with Kamala Harris. If Biden seeks reelection, it sounds like you're saying that odds that he will stick with Vice President Kamala Harris are pretty high. What's the precedent for changing that decision?
Debenedetti: This is a question that I get sometimes. I understand that the political conversation sometimes feels like it was reset entirely in 2016. Joe Biden doesn't feel that way. Joe Biden has a long memory, and no one remembers better than Joe Biden, 2011 and 2010, when this question was asked of Barack Obama. When people tried to get Barack Obama to replace Joe Biden on the ticket with Hillary Clinton. It was never a very serious effort, but this was a thing that was talked about in Washington, in particular in the op-ed pages. And Joe Biden hated that conversation. So, the idea that Joe Biden, of all people, is going to replace his vice president is mad. Also, there is some indication that she's actually very helpful for him politically. Certainly in 2020. She helped him raise a lot of money. She was a very exciting factor for a lot of voters. And that may be the case again. We don't know what the shape of 2024 will look like, but if we do get into a world where there's a lot of outdoor public campaigning again, which wasn't really true for much of 2020 because of the pandemic, it will be very useful for him to have someone who is probably able to travel a bit more simply because of her age and political skills and ability to win over groups of voters that are very important for Biden.
Basu: Well, to stay with Harris for a moment, she's been criticized heavily, and we talked about the president's approval ratings a little while ago. The vice president's approval ratings have been very low as well.
Debenedetti: Worse.
Basu: Worse. There's been a lot of tumult in her office among her staff. What are some of the main criticisms of Harris' performance so far? And do you think those criticisms are fair?
Debenedetti: I think she's in a very difficult position. A lot of people, including Biden it seemed, expected her to play a very similar role to the one that he played for Barack Obama. But she didn't come into the office with decades of international experience, decades of senatorial experience. She simply had a different set of skills. Now, Biden obviously knew that, and he knew about her different experience, but he did go searching for, as he used to say to people, "I'm looking for my Biden," is what Joe Biden used to say when he was looking for his vice president. They do get along, but they simply don't talk that much. They were supposed to have weekly lunches and then that got changed to biweekly. And they've only had lunch three times this year. But the biggest issue to many people within Washington is that she chose these issues early on to be her focuses. The voting rights was a major issue that she wanted, and Biden asked her to take on the roots of the Central American migrant crisis. Both of those were politically intractable issues; there was no obvious answer to them. As you said, she has changed a lot of her staff in the last few months. And I think a lot of that has been a recalculation about what her role is going to look like, particularly after the news leaked that the Supreme Court was likely to overturn Roe v. Wade. She started to get out in front on that issue. And I think you're likely to see more of that moving forward. She's probably going to be a little bit more forward on that and on labor issues. So, she has sort of had a little bit of a soft reset. But it is true that her standing is simply nowhere near where it once was, and it's lower than Biden's.
Basu: So, in the scenario where Biden does not run again, let's talk about who is at the top of the list of the backup options aside from … now I feel like we've covered Kamala Harris pretty closely. Who else is out there?
Debenedetti: There's a whole lot of people who might be out there. And I wanna be careful about how we talk about this. Because all of these people have said over and over - and I know I keep saying this, but it is an important dynamic - they keep saying, "We're supporting Joe Biden. This is ridiculous. But …" And the "but" is the interesting part. So, there's this group of governors who get paid a lot of attention. Roy Cooper, who's the governor of North Carolina, who is a moderate guy who has won the state twice when Donald Trump won it, which makes him a very interesting figure, politically speaking. There's someone like Gretchen Whitmer, who's the governor of Michigan who Joe Biden likes a lot and who's a young, interesting face for the future of the party. There's Gavin Newsom, who's the governor of California, J.B. Pritzker, who's the governor of Illinois, Phil Murphy, who's the recently reelected governor of New Jersey. I could go on and on with governors, Jared Polis, who's the governor of Colorado. Not a lot of these people are big national names, and that spooks a lot of people in the Democratic Party.
Debenedetti: Bernie Sanders' former campaign manager put out a memo saying, you know, if 2024 comes around and it's an open primary, don't rule Bernie out. That was a big surprise to a lot of people. Because of course Bernie Sanders has run twice. And by the way, he's older than Joe Biden is. But he wants to be part of the conversation. There are other senators, too. There's Cory Booker. Elizabeth Warren has gotten a lot of attention recently. Amy Klobuchar. It's unclear if they would wanna run against their former colleague, Kamala Harris, and it's unclear if any of these people would, but they're certainly doing things in terms of investments, in terms of keeping in touch with politically important people that would put them in that conversation. And then I don't wanna forget the person who would probably get the most attention out of all these, which is Pete Buttigieg.
Debenedetti: The only way that all these people would jump into a race is if we really get into a free-for-all situation late in 2023. But Biden certainly doesn't think that's happening, and it remains to be seen how strong a candidacy Kamala Harris would have, which might also prevent that from happening.
Basu: Let's talk about what all of this says to you about the state of the Democratic Party.
Debenedetti: Sure.
Basu: The White House, narrowly Congress, Democrats do have control, but what are they able to run on, in the lead-up to the midterms, as having accomplished?
Debenedetti: Sure, sure. I think one thing is, Biden would say, for one thing, the massive COVID relief bill that he passed very early on was very important. Although people don't remember that and the political effects of it have been negligible this far down the line. Two, the massive infrastructure package that he passed on a bipartisan basis was fairly significant. But again, people don't think about that as a political win. And the difficulty for him is that insofar as that will have tangible effects for people, it's probably not gonna be for a few years because when you pass a trillion dollars in infrastructure spending, that will build a lot of bridges, but bridges don't get built overnight. What he would say is, I installed a new Supreme Court justice, I'm trying to make sure that the war in Ukraine doesn't turn into World War III, everyone has a vaccine if they want to, and he's still trying to pass other things. But the reality of the fact of the matter on it is that they're struggling a lot economically. Jobs are not a problem, but inflation is a massive problem. And people, just generally speaking, don't seem to be positive about the future of the country.
Debenedetti: And a lot of that, when I talk to rank-and-file Democrats but also real people, voters, is many people who like Biden and who voted for him, voted for him because they thought that he was, implicitly at least, promising they wouldn't have to think about politics anymore. They wouldn't have to think about the president, certainly. He never said that outright, but the idea that we would be able to return to some sort of normal where there wasn't an everyday democratic threat, it's not based on reality. It's not based on the current politics that we have. And so, I think a lot of people feel that there's this existential moment right now. And that's one reason that you do simply see Democrats arguing out there on the midterms and the stump: yes, we passed these things, but the real reason you have to keep us in power - and I'm speaking as generic Democrat X here - is we are trying to protect your rights. We're trying to stop Republicans from no longer having fair elections. We're trying to protect abortion rights. We're trying to crack down on guns. And it's all a big "what if," and it remains to be seen how much it works. But that is the playbook right now.
Basu: Sure. And I think the big frustration that I'm seeing voters express, in this moment at least, when they're hearing from Democrats, "Well, that's why you have to go and vote," is, well, we did vote. Right? To your point. You're out there, you hold the majority in the Senate, you hold the majority in the House. We elected a Democrat to the White House. Do your jobs. Right? That's really what I'm hearing. The frustration. So, how are they able to make their case to people feeling that way?
Debenedetti: It's extremely difficult. And I think we're gonna see many different attempts to try and do that over the next few months. Biden's gonna get out there more and try and talk to people, do speeches, and more events with real people. Surely, there will be big advertising campaigns. Surely, you'll see Harris out there as well. The problem is that people don't tend to be very sympathetic to the argument, which is true, by the way, that structurally Washington is not built … this version of Washington is not built for big systemic change, which a lot of people thought that they voted for. It's true that Democrats control the Senate. And in some ways, it's actually to their detriment that that's how people think about it because they only have 50 votes. And by the way, Republicans have 50 votes, too. So, because of Kamala Harris, Democrats effectively have 51. But when you have two senators, and sometimes more than that, who seem pretty clearly not on board with Biden's agenda, you don't really have a majority. Voters see that as an excuse, rather than as the structural reality.
Basu: It's kinda become a cliche to say that Democrats have a messaging problem. Right? That they're unable to connect to voters with a clear message. Do you see it as a messaging problem, or do you see it as an issue of a really splintered party?
Debenedetti: I think both of those things are definitely true. But I think that the much bigger issue that Democrats are dealing with right now is that it's asymmetric warfare. You have a Republican Party that is led by people who rely on disinformation and misinformation, who are lying about the facts of the last election, who are lying about the current president, and that Democrats don't seem to have an answer to that or a simple way to respond to this stuff. And the problem is that we live in a country that has completely different information ecosystems at this point. So, if you are a Republican voter or a conservative voter, in many cases, you're simply not hearing about these things that the Democrats have done. And if you're a Democratic voter, in many cases, you may know about the Republican threat, but you're not hearing their arguments. Now I'm not in any way drawing an equivalence there because there does seem to be a very big gulf in the fact that a lot of liberal voters, and certainly centrists voters, are getting news that's news, that's facts. And a lot of people on the right are hearing Trump's version of things, which are very often lies. It's very difficult for Democrats to compete in a world where there's this imbalance.
Basu: I thought it was interesting, this little anecdote you had in this piece, about how some folks, some Democratic donors, have been calling up former Obama aides to try and get the skinny on where Obama's thinking. And sort of if he has a plan, right? What's his plan for 2024? I'm curious, what kind of pull do you see Obama still having in Washington and in the party?
Debenedetti: He's still the most popular Democrat. He's still the person that many people think of as being the leader of the party, even though he hates that idea, and Joe Biden isn't too thrilled with that idea as the current president. But Obama's very happy to be semi-retired and not focusing all that much on this stuff. You'll see him campaigning for Democrats in the midterms, but the idea that he's going to play some sort of role in defining who the nominee is in 2024 … may come to that, but he really doesn't want it to.
Basu: How did we get to a point where there isn't a clear, natural next leader within the Democratic Party?
Debenedetti: I think that's been the case for the last decade or so. I think the party itself has really struggled to build its own infrastructure below the presidential level. And part of that was that during the Obama years, as he himself admitted as he left office in 2016 or early-2017, he didn't focus that much on building Democratic infrastructure up and down the country 'cause he was focused on being president. Democrats lost a lot of positions in state Houses, governorships and the like. The thing about all this is that it sounds very grim from a Democratic perspective for obvious reasons. And I should be clear that the upcoming midterms are likely to be grim for Democrats for pretty basic structural reasons. This is what always happens in a president's first midterms. At the same time, Democrats do control Washington right now. It's not as if Democrats are some sort of party adrift. They have the presidency, they have the House, and by the narrowest possible margin, and you could question this, but they do currently have the Senate. So, the idea that Democrats are some sort of party without a future is completely divorced from reality. And I'm not suggesting that that's what you were saying, but it is certainly a fear that a lot of people in the party have for six months from now, a year from now. And how did we get to this point? Basically because no one at the top of the party was thinking about this long-term future in these terms.
Basu: There has been a lot of criticism, though, of other leaders in the party. I'm thinking specifically of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. People who have been criticized for maybe not doing enough to step aside and make room for young leadership.
Debenedetti: No doubt about that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to, in any way, excuse the idea. It's very clear that Washington is run on both sides right now by a gerontocracy because even though it's true that Republican leaders in the House are a little bit younger, Mitch McConnell is an older American and Donald Trump is as well. Donald Trump would also be the oldest president other than Biden if he were to win again. This is an ongoing discussion. And I think one case that you've heard Pelosi make a lot is, I would step aside, but I'm good at this, and look at how existential this moment is. You really want someone who hasn't done this before? No one has accused her, by the way, of losing effectiveness as she has aged. She is someone who is very clearly at the height of her political powers, even if not everyone in her own caucus loves her all the time. But it is absolutely a problem. I suspect that after 2024, certainly there's going to be some sort of age revolution simply because you cannot run a party when you're in your mid-80s as a matter of fact.
Basu: So, in all of your conversations with aides, with party insiders, what is your takeaway in this moment about the state of leadership within the party right now?
Debenedetti: It's completely unclear at this point. There was a massive debate over the future of the Democratic Party that broke out the second Hillary Clinton lost. It was brewing during the Democratic primary in 2015 and '16, but it really became the front and center issue for the parties when Donald Trump took office. And it's totally unclear whether the energy in the party is on the left, whether it's with someone like Bernie Sanders, or some people around him want Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run for president despite her young age, or if the energy of the party is still with someone more in the Biden-mold of politics. Someone like Pete Buttigieg, for example, is pretty Biden-y politically speaking, even if their personal appeals are very different.
Debenedetti: So, what Biden would say is, when I promised to be a bridge, I wasn't promising one term, but what I was promising to do was to cultivate the next generation of young leaders. And there's no better way to do that than to empower them in the Senate, empower them in the House, empower them in their governor's mansions, but also in the cabinet.
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Basu: Gabe, thank you so much for your time.
Debenedetti: Thank you.
Basu, Narrating: You can read Gabriel Debenedetti's article for "New York Magazine" on Apple News. You can find a link on our show notes page.
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