In the nation’s capital and under the Capitol dome in Harrisburg last week two seemingly unrelated events provide a window into both the public and behind-the-scenes maneuvering to become this year’s Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
At first glance it would appear incumbent President Joe Biden has sewed up his party’s nomination. But his frail and gaffe-prone appearances have made party power brokers nervous. The report released last week by Robert K. Hur, the special prosecutor investigating Biden’s retention of classified documents at his Washington office and Delaware garage, triggered a nervous breakdown.
The good news for Biden is that Hur declined to file charges. But then the wheels came off the president’s wagon. The New York Times, not noted for right-wing leanings, blared the sub-headline: “The inquiry found that the president had willfully retained material after finishing his term as vice president and had shared sensitive information with a ghostwriter.”
That would normally presage an indictment. The decision to not prosecute rested on Hur’s conclusion that he could not get a conviction because “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Hur went on to detail how the president was unable to recall key dates including the years in which he served as vice president.
Biden himself added fuel to the fire by holding a rare prime-time White House news conference in which he angrily denounced the report and then committed another gaffe confusing the presidents of Egypt and Mexico. He again appeared frail and confused while trying to convince the nation that he is not frail and confused.
Polling shows a large majority of Americans – 78% in the most recent Reuters poll – say that he is too old to serve a second term, and 71% of Democrats agreed. Biden’s age and ongoing very public mental and physical decline was a major problem for Democrats prior to Hur’s report. The issue has now taken center stage casting some doubt on the inevitability of his re-nomination.
If not Biden, who?
Vice President Kamala Harris has even higher negative ratings that Biden and has no signature accomplishments during her three years in office. The one major portfolio delegated to her was to address the border crisis, a task at which she has utterly failed. Add in her own proclivity for word salads and odd laughing out-bursts she does not present herself as a viable option.
With Biden running for re-election the Democrats have been unable to develop much of a bench. Overt maneuvering for the nomination is unseemly. California Governor Gavin Newsome, frequently mentioned as a stand-in for Biden, has appeared overly ambitious and harmed his chances in the process.
The more subtle campaigns are being waged by several of the nation’s governors. Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer pops up on most lists of alternatives. But two relatively new governors are quietly posturing: Maryland Governor Wes Moore and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
Which connects the dots to what happened in Harrisburg last week. Governor Shapiro delivered his annual budget address to a joint session of the General Assembly. His budget plan was peppered with spending proposals designed to appeal to each segment of his party’s Left-wing base.
In recent years state Senate Republicans have successfully built a substantial “rainy day fund” to insulate taxpayers against future tax increases. Shapiro and House Democrats eye that fund like a hungry dog who sees an unattended ham sandwich on the kitchen counter. They want to pour more money into everything from the state’s underperforming K-12 education system to inefficient mass transit systems.
Generally gubernatorial budget addresses are more about messaging than actual budgeting. Former Governor Tom Wolf in his first budget address proposed more new spending than all his forty-nine counterpart governors combined. That of course never happened, but each year he continued to advocate for higher spending. Shapiro was not as unrealistic as was Wolf, but his $48.3 billion proposal would result in an 8.4% increase in state spending – higher than even the high rate of national inflation itself triggered by profligate deficit spending.
Shapiro’s budget was dead on arrival in the legislature. State Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward described it as filled with “rainbows and unicorns.” Most of that proposed spending will not happen, but Shapiro will get credit for trying – and that is his goal.
Pundits expect Shapiro to run for president in 2028, but he is cleverly positioning himself for a spot on the national ticket this year if Biden is forced to step aside. However subtle, the race to succeed Joe Biden as the Democratic standard bearer is now underway.
(Lowman S. Henry is Chairman & CEO of the Lincoln Institute and host of the weekly American Radio Journal and Lincoln Radio Journal. His e-mail address is [email protected].)
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