With Biden’s plunging polls and public trust exacerbated by U.S. House impeachment inquiries into his family foreign influence peddling and special counsel Robert Hur’s report documenting obvious senility, replacing Joe with a 2024 candidate other than his current vice president will nevertheless be an open admission of his administration’s disasters.
Recall, for example, when "Border Czar" Kamala Harris was put in charge of solving what has become a top voting issue, an open southern border crisis.
Since witnessed is the scene of a true invasion by more than 10 million unvetted people including sex traffickers, about 1,300 individuals on terrorist watch lists, and an estimated 1.8 million unknown background "gotaways," many of whom have transported deadly narcotics such as fentanyl.
Then also consider the ugly prospect facing another four years of someone comparably inept with the lowest approval rating of any vice president since Dan Quale in 1990.
Findings of a FiveThirtyEight blog survey showed that Harris’ approval rating fell from 41.7% in December 2023 to 36.3% in early January.
Similarly, a December Los Angeles Times poll revealed that only 39% of registered voters had a positive view of Kamala’s performance — 55% unfavorable — a deficit of 16 points.
This tally closely correlates with a Biden Times poll rating of 41% favorable, 56% unfavorable — a 15% approval deficit on a rapidly downward trending trajectory.
A December Monmouth University survey showed Biden with just a 34% approval rating - 61% disapproval - down 20 percentage points from a 54% peak in April 2021. Harris fared about the same as her boss, recently showing 35% approval, 57% disapproval.
Of special concern to Democrats, Biden received a mere 24% approval among independents, down 14 points since July, with a March 2023 Monmouth poll showing that he and Harris each only received positive rankings from about one in three of this category.
Nevertheless, don’t begin to expect Kamala to be peacefully preempted from her appointment to the vice presidency as Biden’s presumed entitlement successor.
Like, for example, attempting a Democratic Convention primary switcheroo nominating Michelle Obama who has the same preferential check-the-race-gender-box matrix credentials.
Any leapfrog attempt to replace Kamala with Michelle would pretty much obviate any Democratic pretense that Joe Biden's removal from the ticket has anything to do with age or health excuses.
Instead, it would highlight public recognition of Biden-Harris administration disasters — the Afghanistan debacle; COVID-19 and resultant social, religious, business, and school shutdowns.
And don't forget to add in: raging inflation and terrible southern border invasion optics.
Then there’s also that politically delicate racial matter during Barack’s Illinois Senate term when Michelle headed the patient dumping program at Chicago’s South Side Health Collaborative featuring a gang of "counselors" who advised unprofitable low-income Black patients they would be better off at other hospitals and clinics, even providing rides on a shuttle bus to other centers.
Plus, with another Obama term, a fourth especially considering Barack’s White House holdovers, would any observant person wonder who was really calling the shots?
Whereas former President Obama candidly told CBC interviewer Matt Galloway that he missed his time in office and idealized the possibility of directing policy decisions from his basement in sweatpants, he apparently accomplished much of that dream through surrogates who followed him into the Biden administration.
Think, for example, the Obama administration’s recently departing Biden Domestic Policy Director Susan Rice who former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell described as the real "shadow president."
Then there’s Obama’s National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan who had initiated talks with Iranian officials leading to the dangerously failed nuclear deal.
He was assisted on this by former Obama Deputy National Security Adviser, now U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
Besides, you also have to wonder why either Barack or Michelle would want to trade their multiple mansion laps of luxury celebrity lifestyles for a return to public scrutiny and accountability for domestic and foreign policy disasters that ensued during their previous White House residency and recommencing under Biden's.
And what other ready-made rock star name recognition candidates do the Democrats have?
Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif.?
Good luck with that given the wrecking ball economic and criminal carnage he has presided over in California.
Dean Phillips, D-Minn. who is officially challenging Biden?
Not a chance since few even know who he is.
You can bet the DNC is working with the Biden White House to keep it that way.
Hillary is certainly well known and enormously willing . . . too much so on both accounts to win hearts and minds of most voters.
As Democrats continue to lose public support on almost every issue that people care most about, they can’t avoid the reality that all these conditions became far better when a Trump administration succeeded Obama’s and preceded Biden’s.
Meanwhile, voters from both parties are coming to recognize that every ballot cast for Joe is also one to elect a President Harris with the likelihood that seeming feebleness and alleged improprieties remove him long before the end of another term.
Nevertheless, whether Biden’s exodus from the Oval Office results by means of impeachment, the 25th Amendment, or party pressure, Democrats have a big problem.
Thankfully, Republicans offer voters a very much needed and great solution.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.