Lucas: Biden should bow out of 2024 election today

President Biden should announce that he will not seek re-election.

And he should do it sooner rather than later. The job is too much for him and the world knows it.

He will not resign and turn the country over to Vice President Kamala Harris.

And he will not be impeached even when, as expected, the Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate in the 2022 Congressional election.

But an early announcement that he would not seek a second term is probably the best way to make repairs to what is left of his spectacularly failing administration. And there are three years to go.

Not that he could or would change anything, like reopen the Keystone XL pipeline, or restore law and order at the southern border, complete the wall, do over his humiliating and deadly Afghanistan retreat, or even call off labeling angry parents at school committee meeting domestic terrorists.

It is too late for that. He is too far gone.

Biden was not elected, or taken seriously, to do any of those things. He was elected because he was not former President Donald Trump. It was not Trump’s policies that led to Biden’s victory; it was Trump’s often obnoxious personality.

Had Biden upon assuming office left well enough alone he would not be plummeting in the public opinion polls. But the temptation to wreck everything that Trump accomplished — and which was working — was too great.

He went woke. And now he is being waked — politically speaking, that is.

How else does one account for shutting down the Keystone XL pipeline on day one and throwing thousands of Americans out of work, and then creating thousands of more jobs for Russians by greenlighting Vladimir Putin’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline into Germany?

That not only surprised Vladimir Putin, it also would have shocked Vladimir Lenin.

Trump left Biden a country that for the first time in decades was energy independent and turned it into a country that is importing oil from Russia and begging OPEC to increase its oil production.

Is it any wonder that gasoline and food prices have skyrocketed?

Meanwhile, Biden’s woke-infested, trillion-dollar Build Back Better proposal is a shambles, while his stand-alone infrastructure bill just narrowly passed.

He has presided over the split in the Democrat Party between the progressives and the moderates. One day he is whipped by U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and the woke mob and the next day he is overruled by moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W. Va..

A president with any heft would have knocked a couple of heads together and prevailed. But not Biden.

Joe Biden has dug himself a deep hole and has dragged the Democrat Party into it as well.

And the outlook is dim. If Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory over Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who Biden campaigned for, in the Virginia governor’s race, and the strong showing of Republican Jack Cattarelli against New Jersey Democrat Phil Murphy in the undecided race for governor (Cattarelli is contesting Murphy’s narrow victory), are any indicators — and they are — the Democrat Party is in deep trouble.

You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing, nor do you have to be a president to know that the public has turned against you, big time. You just have to admit it.

One way for Biden to redeem himself and his presidency is to graciously announce that he would not seek a second term. He would be 82 if he did run.

President Lyndon B. Johnson declined to run for re-election in 1968 when he was beaten down by the Vietnam War.

The move would suddenly reshape American politics, shake up the 2022 Congressional campaign and spark early jockeying among potential 2024 Democrat presidential hopefuls.

It would give Biden a chance to restart his presidency.

It would also allow Democrats running for Congress the chance to campaign without the albatross of Joe Biden hanging around their neck. Not only does Biden have no coattails, he has no coat.

One of those 2024 presidential hopefuls, of course, would be Vice President Harris who prophetically said while campaigning for McAuliffe: “What happens in Virginia will in large part determines what happens in 2022, 2024 and on.”

She added, “Tuesday is a critical day that will determine whether we (Democrats) turn back the clock or move forward.”

Actually, it did neither. The Democrats ended up in a ditch.

Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3oa3bGi