Write-in victory

Biden’s write-in victory shows he’s passing the test

Getting a primary challenger is usually the harbinger of doom for a president. Often, that challenge has roots in an ideological critique. Not so for Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips. His challenge to President Joe Biden is rooted in chronology, not policy.

Jamal Simmons

President Jimmy Carter faced a challenge from the left by Senator Edward Kennedy in 1980. Kennedy was a liberal icon. Carter won the nomination but suffered a devastating loss in the general election against Republican Ronald Reagan that year.

President George H.W. Bush was challenged by conservative columnist and ideological pitchfork holder Pat Buchanan in 1992. Democratic nominee Bill Clinton and third-party candidate Ross Perot exploited that division in the Republican Party against Bush in the fall. Bush lost that campaign.

Biden’s main intraparty challenger, however, isn’t attacking him for being out of touch with the party or the country. His main line of attack is that the president is too old.

That’s not insignificant. Voters care. It comes up in just about every survey. But agism isn’t an alternative vision for the future. It’s process. If most Democrats agree that Biden’s strengths are more important than his advanced years, the president should be okay. Time will tell.

More worrying would be an anti-war candidate running on Biden’s embrace of Israel in the war against Hamas after its brutal October 7 attack on Israel. There’s real ideological sand out there that could help a challenger get traction. Young people and many people of color reject Biden’s Israel policy. It was Eugene McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam campaign that undid President Lyndon Johnson in 1968.

Marianne Williamson is running that campaign in the Democratic primary but with no success. In an alternate universe, more prominent progressives such as US Sen. Bernie Sanders or Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal might. Not this year.

Instead, Democrats are wrestling with whether an 81-year-old Biden is up to the job. Tuesday night in New Hampshire we had the first answer to that question, and it appears Biden is passing the test.