The Democrats Are Having a False Reckoning Over Joe Biden

[Celerity]

Party elites are considerably more responsible for their woeful state of affairs than the former president.

https://newrepublic.com/article/195379/biden-democrats-elite-failure-2028

https://archive.ph/Hgjji



If it’s caught early, before it’s had the chance to spread to other parts of the body, 99 percent of patients with cancer of the prostate go on to live at least another five years. Once it’s metastasized, the five-year survival rate drops substantially;⁠ down to 32 percent. Even with an intensive treatment regimen⁠—lowering testosterone, radiation, chemotherapy⁠—it’s likelier than not that they will pass before long.

All this is being said here not to elicit sympathy for Joe Biden but to underscore a simple point: Undiscovered or left unaddressed, the things that ail us—people, systems, or institutions—will work their way to bone. And when they do, there are no straightforward treatments. There are no easy cures. The Democratic Party is sick. Most Americans disapprove of it. Only 35 percent of Democrats are optimistic about the future of the party. In November, the Republican Party won its first presidential popular vote victory in 20 years. For the second time in the last decade, the GOP now has full control of the federal government. Its agenda is fascism.

There is faith among elected Democrats that the backlash to Trumpian misrule alone could deliver them at least the House in the midterms. That may well happen. But the Senate map will be difficult in 2026. It will be difficult in 2028. It will be difficult in 2030. It will be difficult, in fact, for the foreseeable future because Democrats are no longer competitive in conservative-leaning states, which the Senate is skewed to overrepresent, a problem that will only grow with population shifts over time. This is among the reasons why, beyond Washington, the Republican Party now fully controls government in 23 states to the Democratic Party’s 15.

Since 2016 especially, there have been many deep and depressing conversations, covered and carried in this magazine, about how Democrats got here. The forces and factors weakening the party have been debated. Chins have been stroked red and raw over the constituencies the party has lost and how it might win them back. Historians, political scientists, political professionals, and journalists have all chimed in about how the party might be fixed, about what ought to be done and why. But within the last week, the political press seems to have settled easily upon the issue that evidently ought to be at front of mind for us all: The first and most significant problem facing the Democratic Party today, it seems, is that Joe Biden ran for reelection.

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