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I\u2019ll bet they are<\/em>. The problem for Democrats, however, won\u2019t just revolve around their deeply unpopular Demagogue in Chief and the albatross he\u2019s hung around their necks. After the smoke from the midterm referendum on Joe Biden clears, the party will have the same problem they had in 2020, 2016, and every midterm in the past dozen years except 2018.<\/p>\n Keep that in mind when reading The Hill\u2019s report on \u201ccontingency plans\u201d<\/a> already being considered even before the election results come in:<\/p>\n Democrats behind the scenes are already talking about and making contingency plans for 2024 in case President Biden decides not to seek a second term, moves expected to intensify immediately after Election Day. \u2026<\/p>\n At age 79, Biden has called himself \u201ca bridge\u201d between generations of Democratic politicians. Top leaders like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 82, and Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), 71, are in his age range, and administration officials often swat off questions about whether he\u2019ll run again, with public and private statements indicating his intent.<\/p>\n But taken in tandem with the uncertainty of the midterms, the age factor leaves the door open for Democrats to start laying some groundwork, and several have already shown signs that make their aspirations fodder for speculation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Just how much has this reopened the debate over the \u201cage factor\u201d? You wouldn\u2019t know it from the examples used by The Hill in this analysis. For instance, the strategy in Wisconsin for Mandela Barnes is to promote Bernie Sanders, who\u2019s even older than Biden. But that instinct shows what the\u00a0real<\/em> problem is:<\/p>\n In Wisconsin, Democratic Senate nominee Mandela Barnes, the lieutenant governor, is hoping to get recognizable figures like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the battleground state, according to a report in Politico.<\/p>\n A trip by Sanders, 81, would likely be seen as a controversial calculation in the home stretch, but could also raise questions about the senator\u2019s own possible political preparations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The Hill then goes on to analyze Sanders\u2019 prospects for 2024, even though he\u2019d be 83 years old in that general election cycle, following an aphasiac 81-year-old incumbent.<\/p>\n The real issue, though, is the progressive grip on Democrats. The party\u2019s biggest issue is not Biden\u2019s age or necessarily Biden himself, although that\u2019s a big problem for them too. It\u2019s that Biden, who won as a centrist, swung sharply to the Left after taking office and the party continues to push farther Left from that. In fact, that\u2019s also what they want to do with anyone who comes up in their \u201ccontingencies\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to be the Bernie effect,\u201d said McKenzie Wilson, who serves as communications director at the polling outfit Data for Progress.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can get J. B. Pritzker to run, who\u2019s been very pushed to the left by progressives in Illinois very successfully, is that a win?\u201d she asked about the billionaire Biden ally who has been talked about as a future candidate.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just Democrats making contingency plans for themselves. Progressives are eyeing other possible presidential hopefuls to try to figure out on what issues they could be moved leftward.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n That certainly makes sense for progressives, but it would be an absolute disaster for Democrats as a party. Their disconnects from the mainstream electorate keep multiplying both in number and distance, and in some areas appear to be accelerating on the latter<\/a>. The failure of Democratic messaging on abortion in this cycle alone demonstrates just how disconnected they are from voters, and perhaps just how blinkered they are about their predicament. Midterm polling shows Democrats losing independents in droves, which is what happens when major political parties abandon the center to focus on the base and policy purity.<\/p>\n Had Biden campaigned honestly on the basis of the \u201ccontingency\u201d plans that The Hill reports, he\u2019d have gotten trounced. Don\u2019t forget that House Democrats, who\u00a0did<\/em> campaign on progressive themes, actually\u00a0lost seats<\/em> in the last election, the first time in long memory where a party elected a new President and yet lost House seats in the same election. Running under their Emerging Progressive Majority myth in moderately blue Virginia last year, they lost every statewide race.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the\u00a0real<\/em> problem. There is no Emerging Progressive Majority, and Democrats\u2019 belief in it is a\u00a0reductio ad absurdum<\/em> of Leftist Utopianism. And as long as they continue to cling to that mythology, the more those disconnects will grow in both number and distance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
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