Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a presidential candidate in 2015, Democrats have underestimated his political appeal and relished facing him as an electoral opponent.
President Joe Biden reportedly sees himself as the reincarnation of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But Kamala Harris is no Harry Truman — or Lyndon Johnson for that matter, the other vice president and former senator who took power in modern times when the president died in office.
Ever since Donald Trump emerged as a presidential candidate in 2015, Democrats have underestimated his political appeal and relished facing him as an electoral opponent. Hillary Clinton made those mistakes herself, squandering the election victory she and virtually all the experts predicted was assured her in 2016.
Democrats spent the next three and a half years vilifying Trump and his policies. They lambasted even his administration’s transformative approach to China that confronted Beijing’s comprehensive assault on Western values and interests. Biden’s dovish national security team comprising former Clinton and Obama administration officials eventually saw the merit in Trump’s China policies and largely adopted them.
Trump spent his time spewing a narrative of rigged elections, political persecution and judicial bias, predictably energizing his MAGA base. The Democrats played into his hand with a series of legal prosecutions and two impeachments, viewed skeptically even by experts.
The circumstances and unprecedented legal basis of the first of these cases — the New York prosecution for false accounting practices — struck many as strained and conjured. It tainted the legitimacy of the indictments that followed, including the more credible and important charges related to mishandling of classified documents. Biden’s own record of wrongfully taking classified materials as a senator and vice president escaped prosecution after the special counsel’s assessment of his impaired mental state. That development takes on added significance in light of his halting debate performance.
At the time, however, Democrats seemed to be successful at achieving two political objectives: first, riling up Trump’s MAGA base and ensuring his Republican nomination, and second, damaging him with the broader electorate for the November election.
The lawfare strategy ran parallel to Democratic tactics that were successful in the 2022 midterm elections, either by intervening in open GOP primaries to ensure Trump’s victories or failing to intervene to support his opponents. The tactic was explicitly declared in the pivotal state of South Carolina where Nikki Haley made her last stand against the former president’s momentum.
Many voters had not bothered to participate in the earlier Democratic primary since Democrats had arranged the system so Biden faced no significant opposition. That meant they were free to cast ballots for or against Trump in the subsequent GOP primary. It was effectively the last chance to block Trump’s seemingly inevitable path to the Republican nomination. But the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party adamantly refused the opportunity, saying “We are not going to bail you out” from Trump. Haley dropped out after losing her home state to Trump; Democrats now had their much-desired opponent.
The strategy of strengthening the MAGA movement, while disgusting or terrifying to everyone else, played out with congressional Democrats as well. When all it took was one Democratic abstention to prevent the MAGA wing from extracting the power to oust the Speaker, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries ensured that every Democrat voted with Trump’s radical allies, giving the Biden campaign yet another arrow for its quiver against GOP unacceptability.
Now, most Democrats are rallying around the beleaguered Biden, who polls increasingly show cannot defeat the man they accuse of ushering in the end of American democracy Polls show Vice President Kamala Harris faring no better against Trump than Biden, but a Biden resignation would enable her to run as an incumbent.
Republicans can preempt a Democratic strategy to bolster Harris as a Biden replacement by replacing Trump at their convention this month. Or, he could voluntarily withdraw, since he said in the debate he would not be running if Biden were not the Democratic candidate. A clean contest without Biden and Trump would give Americans a welcome fresh start at a critical moment in history.
If neither steps down, the country will need to brace itself for four more tumultuous Trump years, for which the Democrats and their pseudo-Machiavellian tactics will deserve a fair share of blame.
Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He is a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Corean-American Studies and a member of the advisory board of the Global Taiwan Institute.
