Today, Explained - He’s running

Episode Date: April 25, 2023

The oldest president in the history of the United States wants a second term. Vox’s Andrew Prokop and Dylan Matthews explain why Joe Biden doesn’t have any competition. This episode was produced by Haleema Shah and Siona Peterous, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Matt Collette and Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That's why I'm running for re-election. He's running. Again. When I ran for president four years ago, I said we're in a battle for the soul of America. And we still are. He dropped a heavily produced video today to prove it. The question we're facing is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer. I know what I want the answer to be and I think you do too.

This is not a time to be complacent. But he's already the oldest president in the history of the United States. And if he wins, he'll be 86 years old by the end of his second term. Most Americans do not want Joe Biden to run for office again, but he's doing it anyway. Coming up on today explained why he doesn't have any real competition from his fellow Democrats. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. Andrew Prokop Vox, it is official. Joe Biden is running to be the even older, oldest president of the United States ever.

Is anyone surprised? I don't think anyone is surprised necessarily. He's certainly been signaling that he would likely run again for some time. No, an answer is yes. My plan is to run for re-election. That's my expectation. Our intention is to run again. That's been our intention. Will you get to run again, sir?

I mean, how many times does he have to say it until you believe it? Help a brother out. Make some news for me. I plan on running now, but we're not prepared to announce it yet. All right. It seemed like everyone knew this was going to happen. He told Al Roker casually that he was running again a couple weeks ago. He told Ireland he was running again. Why did he not officially tell the country he was running again first? Well, he told that he intended on running again and he thought he would run again.

But, you know, there are legal considerations about exactly what happens when you make a campaign official involving fundraising, being an official candidate for office and all kinds of things. So there is a lot of hair splitting traditionally around when a campaign has officially been launched. But the other thing is that, you know, he is the oldest president ever, and any politician wants to signal that they're probably going to run again because the second they let it seem like they're not running again,

they would lose all political support. So one possibility some people might have thought about that maybe he was just trying to keep his options open. He wasn't really fully decided on running for a second term. How do people feel about this, Andrew? We don't talk a ton about polling on the show, but how do Americans feel about an even older President Joe Biden? They're not really thrilled about it. There was an NBC poll that just came out a few days ago that showed that 70% of Americans

would rather Joe Biden not run for president again. Wow. That includes 51% of Democrats. Wow. And let me show you even more of this poll. 53% of 2020 Biden voters say he shouldn't run. 64% of Democrats who voted for Sanders or Warren in the 2020 primaries think he shouldn't run. And 76% of voters under 35 think he shouldn't run.

And why is it that 70% of Americans might not be into this idea? Is it because simply Joe Biden is older than superglue? That is part of it, sure. But then there are other questions about his record in office and also about scandals that have been kind of simmering in the background and how important those will be. What are we talking about, like Hunter Biden or like the documents that were found in his various offices? I think both. The Hunter Biden investigation is still proceeding. It has not so far as we know been wrapped up. No charges have been filed. The investigation has been going on since 2018, and this stems from

Biden's business dealings, from Hunter Biden's business dealings in foreign countries like Ukraine while his father was serving as vice president. It is something that is hanging over all this. Now, as far as we know, that investigation just pertains to Hunter Biden's conduct, not Joe Biden's conduct. But it is a scandal that has advanced a bit further and could potentially drag him down if conservatives and Republicans argue that it brings the White House into disrepute. There's also the classified document scandal. We haven't had a lot of news on that lately. Classified government documents found inside one of President Biden's private offices. The records dating from Biden's time as vice president during the Obama administration.

Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to supervise the investigation into the classified documents that were found at Biden's residence and office that he had used before he was elected president. And yeah, we haven't heard much of that. But I think probably the bigger concerns are about his record since taking office, the kind of uneasy place the economy is in where we had some inflation and we're hoping that we're past it. But there are all these questions about whether the economy will really end up in a soft landing or whether we might have a recession this year and all the sorts of struggles with governance that have proceeded in this first couple of years. Okay. So we've got the age factor. We've got the various controversies. Why isn't there anyone else making a clear claim to challenge Joe Biden in 2024?

It's generally believed, and for good reason, I think, historically, that challenging the incumbent is extremely divisive and damaging to your party's chances of winning in the general election. The last time we really saw a serious challenge to an incumbent president was 1980 with Jimmy Carter, where Ted Kennedy ran against him and had a pretty vigorous campaign against him, which was viewed as damaging Carter pretty badly. I cannot understand what Mr. Carter is frightened about, why he's scared to defend his record. And it seems to me that the Democrats are going to be reluctant to nominate

a candidate for the presidency that is unwilling to defend his record. And, of course, he lost overwhelmingly to Ronald Reagan in the general election. Right now, only two Democrats who are even somewhat of note are in the race. That is Marianne Williamson. You may recall her from running in the 2020 primary. Friend of the show. Yes, yes.

I heard about Confederate flags in Maine. It's like, who's going to tell them, right? So clearly what had happened, I know, it's like... And also Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of RFK, anti-vaccine activist. He's also launched his campaign recently. Not a friend of the show. But there's no real credible Democrat who's running. The whole Democratic Party does seem to be holding its fire and kind of uniting around Joe Biden, despite open skepticism and opining even from elected Democrats that Biden maybe shouldn't run again. You know, should he run again? I think that I, you know, I think it's, it's, we'll take a look at it. Do you want to see Joe Biden?

I don't want to answer that question because we have not, that's not, yeah, I don't want to answer that question. But when he did, and Democrats did unusually well in the 2022 midterms, they lost the House, but they picked up a seat in the Senate. They didn't have the full red wave wipeout that many expected. That was viewed as kind of a sign of Biden's political strength and that he's not totally politically washed up. His approval rating right now is not great. It's in the low 40s. That's historically not great. But if the alternative is a Republican Party that's even less popular, then that's still a winning hand for Biden and Democrats.

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And Dylan, if I'm not mistaken, you recently wrote a piece for Vox.com titled, Joe Biden is pretty good at being president. He should run again. I think your dreams have come true, my friend. It does appear so. You know, there are things I wish for that I don't think are going to happen, like winning the lottery. And then there is the incumbent president running for re-election. And I thought that was a pretty attainable dream to have. But you you here differ from like the majority of Americans, it seems, in thinking that he should be running at 81 years of age. Tell us why. I think Joe Biden, like democracy,

is the worst option except for all the other ones. The Democratic Party is a loose coalition of thoroughgoing left-wingers, more moderate liberals like Joe, labor liberals, conservatives who just didn't like Donald Trump for whatever reason. And bringing those elements of the party together is an inherently challenging job. And I think compared to the field of people that you could imagine being the Democratic nominee, Biden does a quite good job of holding them all together, in part because he's been around forever and he knows all the factions of the party well and he knows them in a personalistic way that makes him better able to manage them than a Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris. But let's talk about the actual job he's been doing, because you write about his experience in the White House as a reason for wanting him to remain in the White House, right?

Right. I was surprised by how productive the first two years of the Biden administration were. I did a profile of Biden's policy agenda and policy team in the summer of 2020, and I came away thinking, like, these guys are mildly delusional. That he's surrounded himself with these old-timers who really think that it's the 70s and you can get a bunch of senators around a fire to smoke cigars and hash out deals. And that's just not the way Washington works anymore.

This guy's not going to get anything done. And he was able to get things done in exactly the way that he said he was going to by getting people around a table and hashing things out. He passed things like the CHIPS Act and the infrastructure bill, which were major pieces of spending legislation that accomplished goals like expanding funding for basic science and repairing bridges and improving rollout of semiconductor plants and things that had been goals of administrations for years. The bill I'm about to sign along is proof that despite the cynics,

Democrats and Republicans can come together and deliver results. We can do this. And he did it on a bipartisan basis, which I would not have necessarily anticipated given how sort of fractured and polarized Congress is at the moment. But he also got things done in a way that I sort of assumed he wouldn't try to, which is on narrow party lines by like fighting and scraping, which is how he got the American Rescue Plan through. People are waiting for relief. I got them $1.9 trillion relief so far. They're going to be getting checks in the mail that are consequential this week for child care. And how he got the Inflation Reduction Act through, which is the biggest piece of climate legislation the U.S. has ever had. President Biden made remarks before signing into law a bill aimed at lowering prescription drug costs and tackling climate change. I think you just shouted out like maybe multiple trillions of dollars that President Biden spent in his two, three-ish years in office so far. Of course, we'd be remiss to not mention the state of the economy right now because he's also presided over growing inflation

and fears of a recession. One, I'm perhaps of a minority view, which is I think the economy right now is honestly not that bad. Inflation is around 5%. That's too high, but it's not like calamitously high. Unemployment is at record lows. Wage growth is near record highs. People are working. People are getting raises. I infinitely prefer this economy to the one that prevailed the entirety of Barack Obama's time in office, that Obama went relatively small on economic stimulus, in part due to constraints put on him by Congress, but in part due to sort of his own timidity. And the result was a long, sluggish recovery where you didn't have any inflation, but you had elevated unemployment for a good decade or so.

Biden erred in the other direction of spending a ton of money all at once. And sure enough, when you err in that direction, you get some inflation. And the question is, do you want a little bit of inflation and the best labor market the United States has ever had in my lifetime? Or do you want no inflation, but seven%, 8% unemployment for years and an entire generation that's scarred and sees their entire career set back? You know, while we're on spending huge swaths of money, let's talk about the war in Ukraine because billions upon billions are being spent there. Do you think his management of that crisis, at least American involvement in that crisis, makes the argument for another four years of such management. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm not a foreign policy expert. And so add that asterisk to everything I say on Ukraine. I think America's goals going into this were to weaken Russia, to deter them from invading neighbor states again, to support Ukraine in repelling an invasion, all while avoiding an actual war between Russia and

NATO and committing U.S. ground troops and raising the probability of nuclear weapons being used. I think he's found a pretty workable middle path where Russia has been weakened dramatically. The odds of Ukraine maintaining something like territorial integrity at the end of this war seem much higher than they did before the war started, in large part due to commitments made by Biden and his administration, all while not having anything remotely like some of the close calls we've had on nukes in prior confrontations. While we're on war, let's talk about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was a year and a half ago, August 2021, when almost everyone looked at this video footage of

planes taking off and people desperately clinging to them and falling off of them and said, this could have been done better. Almost, you know, two years later, how was Biden's decision to withdraw being remembered, being evaluated? My short answer is we needed to get out of Afghanistan at some point. Like, there was no universe after 20 years in which we were setting up and leaving behind a stable regime that could withstand a sustained assault from the Taliban. And there's no way to withdraw from a regime that you know is faltering without risks of chaos and mass evacuations and huge humiliating losses. I'm not saying there's no way they could have done it better. There's

definitely ways they could have done it better. They could have accepted more refugees. They could have been more prepared for refugees. They could have been more expansive in protecting people who helped the allied coalition. That being said, Biden was president during the Afghan war for like about eight months of it. There were 20 years before that. And Afghanistan at the end of the day, is an example of a promise President Biden kept. Let's talk about a few that he didn't. Namely, let's say a permanent child tax credit, universal pre-K, free community college, and still yet to be realized student loan debt relief. Do you think the American people will be holding Joe Biden accountable potentially in 2024 for these unkept promises or as yet to be decided promises? Many of the things that Biden has promised that have not come to pass are things that he needed congressional authorization for and he didn't have it.

Some of the specific examples, I think, point to a difference between sort of the discourse and reality. Student debt relief was not wildly popular. Most Americans did not finish college. Most do not have student loan burdens. I don't think that's going to meaningfully affect his re-election chances at all. Those people are voting for Democrats if they're voting for anybody. On the child tax credit, like, look, I started writing about how we should have a fully refundable child tax credit in 2016. And I wrote about it for five years continuously, like, beating the drum that we needed this. And then we got it. And it did not take off the way I was

anticipating. And I still think it's a good idea. And I still think people should fight for it. But it was not wildly popular. Joe Manchin was not talking out of nowhere. Discussions over the social and climate package have soured between President Biden and Senator Joe Manchin. The Democrat from West Virginia now reportedly wants to eliminate an expansion of the child tax credit from the bill. He was, I think, accurately reflecting the views of his constituents as much as I disagree with those constituents. Is it sad? Yeah, I think it's a tragedy. They had a possibility of making sort of a generational dent in child poverty and the Senate blinked. But do I think it's a threat to Biden staying in office, especially when the alternative is Donald Trump? No, I don't.

Perhaps one of the most monumental political events during the Biden presidency, at least No, I don't. too. Despite having a warning that this was coming down the pike from a Supreme Court leak, President Biden seemed to be caught flat-footed when the Dobbs decision dropped. How has he handled it since, Dylan? So I think Biden's in a tricky position because his actual authority on it is rather limited. Biden can appoint people to the courts, and he's been breaking records in terms of how many lower court appointees he's added. He appointed Katonji Brown-Jackson, who is a solid supporter of abortion rights. But that's also where Richard Nixon was. He was president when Roe v. Wade was decided. He had appointed a bunch of the justices who voted for Roe v. Wade. He was opposed to it. And he had to deal with the

after effect of that. So that's a fairly normal position for presidents to be in. I'd also say that as much as it's a substantive defeat, it's become clear that making abortion a state voting issue and something that state legislatures and ballot initiatives and to some degree acts of congress speak to hasn't been all bad for democrats this started with you saying sort of biden was kind of flat-footed uh in his response to to dobs which i don't disagree with it's a major shift that's a political weight on everybody but i don't know that the weight is biggest on biden you know biden said back in 2019 2020 when he was for office, that he really wanted to stop the shouting and lower the temperature. And he has proven to certainly be a far cry from his predecessor.

He doesn't tweet nearly as much. fights to drag bands to more people than I can recall in modern history yelling at the president during his State of the Union, even if he seemed to enjoy it. Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I'm not saying it's the majority. How would you say he's doing on that key pillar of his presidency dylan i think i've i'm a mix of sort of kind of cynical and and did he really ever think that was going to work but also the temperature in the last couple years and the degree of bipartisan collaboration does feel meaningfully different. I don't think you could have gotten a bipartisan infrastructure bill under either Trump or Obama, and you did

under Biden. And I think some of that is racism. I think like some of the virulence with which sort of Obama was rejected and people didn't want to work with him can be chalked up to that. But I think some of it is that Biden is genuinely skilled at this and is committed to notching those victories and is not afraid of giving his opponents victories on things that they can share with him. Has that made America a utopian public sphere where everyone debates using only reason and fact, no. But has it made DC work a little bit better and a little more productive than I've seen it in a long time? I think it has, actually. Vox, read him and Andrew Prokop at Vox.com. Our show today was produced by Halima Shah and Siona Petros. We were edited by Amina Alsadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Patrick Boyd.

I'm Sean Ramos from The Presidential Election is 560 Days Away. We will try not to talk about it too much until it's closer on Today Explained. I wrote the bill on the environment.