Joe Biden’s Biggest Mistake

Were it not for the biggest, most fateful mistake of his long political career, Joe Biden would just this week be wrapping up his second presidential term and basking in the appreciation of most of his fellow citizens.

Considering Biden’s advanced age and unmistakably diminished capacities, along with the widespread disapproval of his White House performance expressed by every gauge of public opinion, how could such a dramatic turnaround possibly have occurred?

The answer, which the beleaguered president still refuses to recognize, involves the poor timing of his bids for the nation’s highest office. By delaying his challenge to Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans from 2016 to 2020 the incumbent Vice President spoiled his most obvious and natural chance for a for a two-term presidency.

The most obvious problem with Biden’s course of action involved his total disregard of the age factor. Anyone who doubts the significance of such considerations should compare video tape of his last full year as Vice President (2016) to his more recent appearances in his last year as President (2024). Yes, Biden has always been a prodigious source of gaffes and clumsy utterances, but the vigor and energy that characterized his two VP debate outings (against Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan) had disappeared almost entirely by the time he finally faced the boisterous and bullying Donald Trump in both 2020 and last year.

The contrast in those performances highlighted the inevitable changes that any candidate might experience between the ages of 74 and 82. No one would have claimed that Biden registered as too old for the job had he challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination and then taken on Trump in 2016. Eight years later questions about his capacities became ubiquitous and inevitable.

No such concerns clouded his horizons during his last years as Barack Obama’s Vice President, but the long illness of his son Beau, suffering from a brain tumor and multiple complications, made it impossible for Joe Biden to concentrate on political plans. In April of 2015, both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders announced their candidacies for the Democratic presidential nomination, but even after Beau’s death in May, at age 46, Biden hesitated, amid public expectations that he too would eventually enter the race. On October 21, he finally ended the speculation when he announced his decision: “While I will not be a candidate, I will not be silent.”

Silent or not, he almost certainly could have bested both Clinton and Sanders had he made a different decision—the right decision—in terms of satisfying his long-standing hunger for the presidency. He beat Bernie Sanders convincingly in 2020 by mobilizing overwhelming support from black Democrats and blue-collar union members, and there’s every reason to assume that he could have succeeded with the same strategy four years earlier. After all, as a Senator and Vice President, Biden had long presented himself as “lunch bucket Joe,” a working-class, ordinary guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

That connection to the Key Stone State also could have helped beat Trump in the 2016 battle in which Hillary Clinton, the actual nominee, just barely failed. She lost Pennsylvania (and its then 20 Electoral Votes) by a stunningly close margin of less than 1%—44,292 votes overall. Four years later, Biden nearly doubled that advantage, winning Pennsylvania with an edge of 80,555. He also showed more strength in Michigan (winning by 154,188) and Wisconsin which, if added to the Pennsylvania flip, would have given Biden a 278 Electoral vote majority that closely resembled his actual triumph in 2020.

Though he never got another chance to battle Trump again in 2024 as the official Democratic nominee, the same reasons Biden outperformed the MAGA Man in 2020 also could have applied in 2016, avoiding some of the factors that ultimately cost Hillary the presidency.

Yes, she won the popular vote convincingly, besting Trump by nearly 3 million, while Biden topped him in 2020 by 7 million. In his third race, the perennial GOP nominee beat Kamala Harris by barely 2 million votes—giving him a less significant margin than either Hillary or Biden had enjoyed running against him.

But Hillary in 2016 suffered from the taint of scandal, particularly concerning her unauthorized use of her private e-mail to transmit privileged State Department documents. This drew heavily publicized formal condemnation twice from FBI Director James Comey. Polling indicated that his October announcement of a re-opened investigation just days before the election, proved especially devastating to her campaign, raising another advantage Biden would have enjoyed had he been the Democratic standard bearer in that contest.

Eight years ago, in 2016, with right-leaning media obsessed with Hillary’s notorious e-mails, Biden’s boy Hunter had not yet exposed himself to the public as a drug-addicted, self-destructive loser and the object of his father’s special and highly dubious solicitude. Though Hunter may have cost papa some significant votes in 2020, and certainly would have done so had Biden stayed in the race in 2024, in 2016, when Biden should have first stood up to Trump, the Bidens of the younger generation stayed mostly and safely in the shadows.

The deeper question about the departing president’s ill-considered decision to avoid making the race eight years ago involves the long-term impact of that choice on the sweep of history. Had Biden run and, very likely won, in both 2016 and 2020, on this January 20^th he’d be facing the conclusion of his Constitutionally limited second term. Most significantly, Trump would almost certainly not be appearing in any capacity anywhere on the inaugural platform. Had the Master of Mar-a-Lago fallen short of victory of any sort in his first campaign for the presidency, it’s unlikely that his GOP colleagues would have come clamoring for him to take another shot, or that Trump ever would have become the one-man power base that today dominates the Republican Party. If nothing else, had the GOP faced Biden eight years ago, instead of Hillary Clinton, we’d need to seek out a different name for the era in which, for better or else, we all now live. No, the Age of Trump is hardly ready to disappear at this point, but had Joe Biden made a wiser decision in 2016 it might never have come into existence in the first place.