With Biden Out, Democrats Lose Advantage Of Incumbency

WASHINGTON ― The big blue airplane, the Marine Corps band, having the White House switchboard place your calls ― there are good reasons why most incumbents who have run for reelection in modern times have won.

Yet the grand imagery of the presidency combined with the reluctance of many voters to switch horses midstream was not enough to buoy President Joe Biden, so with barely over three months to go, Democrats will head into the November election having ceded the power of incumbency.

“He had no choice. With 86% of American voters thinking the incumbent is too old to serve effectively in another term, incumbency is not an advantage,” said Republican pollster Whit Ayres.

In post-World War II America, seven incumbent presidents seeking a second four-year term have won it, while only Democrat Jimmy Carter, Republicans George H.W. Bush and Donald Trump have lost. Republican Gerald Ford, who became first vice president and then president thanks to resignations, and who then lost to Carter in 1976, is a unique case, never having run a race outside of a Michigan congressional district.

Having the pageantry of the military attend to one’s travel aboard the Air Force 1 Boeing 747 and the Marine 1 helicopter, the ability to place calls with the introduction: “Please hold for the president,” and generally commanding the bully pulpit offer tremendous benefits to a reelection campaign.

Political consultants and pollsters of both parties as well as independent analysts, though, said that in the case of Biden, those advantages simply were not enough.

“The polling kept coming back to his age,” said Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant who worked with the Unite the Country superPAC that backed Biden, and which on Sunday afternoon