The election won't be about Biden's record

It will be about who is emotionally and mentally prepared to run the country

Right now, the country is hard to understand. Donald Trump is under indictment and making almost daily pledges to undermine our democracy and embrace autocracy if he’s re-elected. Republicans in Congress have proven themselves to be completely and comically incompetent. The economy is growing, wages are increasing, unemployment is low, the labor market is strong, and inflation is in check. And Joe Biden is on the ropes.

Legislatively, Biden has been the most successful president since Lyndon Johnson. Several of his major accomplishments were achieved with the bipartisanship he promised. He passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, a measure that had eluded presidents since George W. Bush. He passed the first significant gun control bill in 30 years with a bipartisan majority. He passed the CHIPS Act to spur high-tech manufacturing with broad support from both parties. That’s the most significant bipartisan legislative agenda passed in at least 20 years.

Biden also met the demands of his base. He pushed through Inflation Reduction Act with just Democratic votes. The law made the largest investment in green power in history and began a transformation of our infrastructure to clean energy. In addition, the bill reduced the price of prescription drugs for seniors. It also beefed up the IRS, helping nab $560 billion from rich tax cheats. Biden reduced student debt, forgiving billions in student loans. He also capped the cost of insulin at $35 per month. He’s been stunningly successful.

Yet despite these accomplishments, Biden is on the defensive. His approval ratings are stuck below 40%. Polls indicate that if the election were held today, Donald Trump would win. So, what is going on?

Inflation is still haunting Biden. Even though it’s largely in check now, the increase in prices are still stuck in people’s memories. While inflation is a global problem and the U.S. tamed it faster and with less pain than almost any other country, Biden still gets the blame because he’s president. That comes with the territory.

The border is also a mess. Our immigration system has needed reform for decades, but Republicans have scuttled it four times in the past 20 years, most recently this week. Republicans successfully kept the issue in the headlines, in part, by sending immigrants to Democratic-run cities, putting pressure on them for housing and feeding the refugees. Again, as president, Biden gets the blame whether it’s his fault or not.

Weariness with conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have also taken a toll. On these issues, Biden is catching hell on all sides. The left blames him for the war in Gaza while Republicans insist he’s not doing enough to keep Iran in check. In reality, he’s strengthened NATO and regained the respect of foreign leaders that we lost under Trump. The actions of Congress threaten to hurt our reputation, making us look unreliable and unstable. The Polish prime minister blasted Republicans this week for their vote to kill aid to Ukraine, saying Reagan “must be turning in his grave.” Biden, though, still has strong standing around the world. Trump, in contrast, had lost the confidence of most of the world by the time he left office.

Finally, age is the biggest drag on Biden. The GOP has been claiming he’s mentally diminished since he took office. Reporters have continually covered his age and mental acuity. Despite skepticism, in interviews, Biden has looked mentally sharp throughout his presidency, even if he does look and sound old with an often weak voice and a shuffle when he walks.

Yesterday, the special counsel investigating Biden for holding classified information after he left the vice-presidency exonerated the president but damaged him politically with a description of a doddering old man with evidence of mental decline. The report said he was “forgetful” and cited times when Biden couldn’t remember which years he was vice-president. Biden immediately held a press conference that didn’t help his case when he mentioned Mexico when he meant Egypt.

Right now, Biden is in trouble because the election is focused on him, not Trump. In part, that’s a failing of the campaign, in part a function of the news cycle. For Biden to win, the election needs to be about Trump or, at the very least, a choice between him and Trump. It cannot be, as most re-elections campaigns are, a referendum on his presidency.

If the press is going to question Biden’s mental ability based on a report written by a Republican lawyer, Democrats and the Biden campaign need to demand that the media cover Trump’s mental foibles like confusing Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley or Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They need to put as much effort making the case that Trump’s mental state is no better than Biden’s as they do making the case that Biden’s not impaired. Much of the Republicans’ argument is that Biden is just as bad as Trump and the media has run with, or at least entertained, the false equivalency. While Trump and his mob blatantly tried to steal the 2020 election with multiple schemes, Republicans are still screaming that Democrats rig elections with early voting and mail-in ballots. The press might not believe the Republicans, but they still cover it. Democrats need to take note.

Democrats need to make the election about Trump’s erratic behavior, his abuse of power, the chaotic four years of his presidency, and, most importantly, his mental impairment. They need to attack the GOP Congress for killing border security. They need to highlight divisions within the Republican Party that make Congress dysfunctional. In short, they need to go on offense, demanding coverage of Trump and the GOP instead of arguing that Democrats are trying to govern and that Biden is mentally competent.

Biden has one more chance to make the case in front of the American people that he’s mentally up to the job. On March 7, he delivers the State of the Union. He needs to show that he’s mentally alert while calling out the GOP’s failure to pass any significant legislation because they’ve put politics before the people they’re elected to serve. He will have a captive audience and the SOTU will likely be the last time he speaks to the people before every event is seen as a political one. Biden needs to hit a home run.

Biden has been a remarkably successful president in a difficult time. However, the election is not going to be about his record. It’s going to be about ability to lead moving forward. Biden and the Democrats are either going to have to convince Americans that he’s fit to serve four more years or they are going to have to convince them that Trump is equally unfit to serve and his presidency will be more damaging to the country than Biden’s presidency. However, Democrats can’t try to make it a referendum on Biden’s success because that’s not what Americans are thinking about.