Let the 2024 Campaign Handicapping Begin

Walter Shapiro explains why the only thing worse than Biden running is Biden being challenged in the primaries.

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Two months ago, I wrote about Joe Biden’s classified documents drama for The New York Times. In retrospect,  I overestimated how much this problem — though much less serious than Donald Trump’s — would scuff up his reputation. But I stand by my plea that Biden should go out on top and not run for reelection. As the 2024 campaign gets underway (it will, per tradition, be going full blast by summer), I wanted to talk to someone who has covered politics even longer than I have.

Walter Shapiro and I met through Washington Monthly, the great little magazine where he worked in the mid-1970s (fresh off an unsuccessful campaign for Congress from Michigan) and I toiled in the early 1980s. After serving as a speechwriter for President Carter, Walter went to Newsweek, where he made me laugh every day from the office next door and we became good friends. I stayed there for nearly 30 years, while Walter went to TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, USA Today, Salon, and Roll Call as a columnist since 2016 and now The New Republic, where his pieces continue to be first-rate.  He’s the author of the best book about campaigning in the all-important year before the election year, One-Car Caravan: On the Road with the 2004 Democrats Before America Tunes In and a delightful yarn about his con-man great uncle, Hustling Hitler: How a Jewish Vaudevillian Fooled the Fuhrer. Walter teaches political science at Yale and continues to do occasional stand-up comedy.  I sat down with him at a corner bistro (he bought me soup for my head cold) and we talked shop about the upcoming campaign. 

JONATHAN ALTER: 

You think that despite very low enthusiasm inside the Democratic Party for Biden seeking reelection, nobody should run against him. Why?

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

There are so few ironclad laws in politics that actually stand up. One that has been set in stone since we’ve had contested primaries is this: If a president is challenged for the nomination, he is going to lose reelection. 

You had that with Lyndon Johnson and the Democratic Party imploding over Vietnam in ’68, when Gene McCarthy’s surprisingly strong showing in New Hampshire drove LBJ out of the race. You had it when Ronald Reagan thought that Gerald Ford was weak and, on ideological grounds, challenged Ford for the ’76 nomination and took the fight to the convention. Ford then lost to Jimmy Carter. And as you know, Jon, in 1980 you had Ted Kennedy, for no discernible reason other than that he was Ted Kennedy, challenging Carter and not only taking the fight to the convention, but refusing to raise Carter’s hand on stage [for the traditional party unity shot]. And you had it with Pat Buchanan in 1992, when [the newspaper columnist] challenged incumbent President George Bush in the New Hampshire primary. He won roughly 40 percent of the vote, and, much more importantly, made Bush look weak. And then, in exchange for endorsing the ticket, Buchanan was given a speaking slot at the Houston convention, where he gave a thundering rightwing speech that the great humorist Molly Ivins said, “read better in the original German.” With Bush trying to [shift] to the center in ’92, [Buchanan] making Republicans out to be the party of anti-abortion conservatism was the worst thing that could’ve happened to Bush, who lost to Bill Clinton in the fall. And it was all because Buchanan had won 40 percent of the vote in the New Hampshire primary.

Walter Shapiro

JON: 

Something screwy could happen this time, too. Take Marianne Williamson, the wacky New Age writer who envisions herself as president. She’s a relatively smart person. She's sold millions of copies of her books. Is it that strange to think some New Hampshire voters, who loathe Joe Biden because he wrecked their tourism industry by de-throning their primary, would vote for her as a protest? Or Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? He’ll get some anti-Vaxxer votes.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Kennedy is 69 years old. His father has been dead for almost 55 years. And he is a nutso conspiracy theorist. This is the sad, sad denouement of the Kennedy dynasty.

These [fringe candidacies] are one of the reasons why what the Democrats did, and Biden did, and the White House did — mucking up the order of the primaries — is so stupid. New Hampshire will go rogue and hold a primary that's unrecognized by the DNC. That means Biden will not campaign in it and will not authorize expenditures in it, which means that it'll be open season for protests of all kinds. The press will note that Biden only got — I’m making up a number — 62 percent of the vote running against nobody in particular, and it will be seen as a bad day for Biden.

JON: 

No question about it.

 WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Had they just gotten rid of the Iowa caucuses and let New Hampshire go first, Biden could have campaigned in New Hampshire and would have gotten 85 percent of the vote. Nobody would have ever talked about any underperformance.

JON: 

Just to be clear: some people think Biden “replaced” New Hampshire with South Carolina. That’s not actually what happened. New Hampshire remains the first in the nation primary. It just won't have any delegates on the Democratic side.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Basically, the Democrats will not recognize it as a legal primary.

JON:

But it will come before South Carolina. And on the same day that Republicans hold their primary there.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

We don't know the exact date, but it’ll be eight days after the Iowa caucuses, which would be something like January 16, 2024.

JON: 

I worry what will happen if Biden continues to have such anemic support within the Democratic Party, like 25 percent enthusiasm.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

A Monmouth poll gave three options: do you want Biden to run, somebody else, or do you have no opinion? And I think 25 percent enthusiastically wanted Biden to run, 40 percent wanted somebody else, and 35 percent had no opinion.

JON: 

That’s a bad finding for Biden.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

I cannot think of any incumbent Democratic president since Harry Truman in ’48 who would have gotten a poll result like that.

JON: 

Someone young could say, “He’s been a good president but we need to focus on the future.”

WALTER SHAPIRO:

You have forgotten the even more likely model, the arrogant rich person, the hedge fund manager of the Tom Steyer variety, who was outspent by Bloomberg in 2020. He spent $345 million of his own money to do not as well as Bloomberg.

JON:

Let’s say somebody did that and won New Hampshire. Not getting any delegates doesn't really matter — they get huge publicity. The rich Democrat could do very well.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

The Democratic primary is even more screwed up than that. It would go like this: The Democrats would have South Carolina on February 3, which would be good for Biden. It’s supposed to be followed by Nevada on February 6. South Carolina would be on Saturday and Nevada would be the following Tuesday. Nevada is a state that Bernie Sanders carried in the 2020 caucuses — we don’t know how it’s going to play out next year, but it may not be a great state for Biden. Georgia was scheduled to go on February 13, another supposed firewall for Biden because of its heavy Black vote. Except that the decision is in the hands of the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, an anti-Trump Republican who said it's a wonderful idea for Georgia to move up [its primary date] — but in 2028, not in 2024. So as a result, there’s going to be — and the DNC hasn't thought this one through either — a weird three-week gap between Nevada on February 6 and Michigan on February 27. Not only does it set up a strategy for somebody to pour vast amounts of money into Michigan, but it leaves potential underperformance by Biden in Nevada hanging out there in the news cycle for three long weeks. All because the White House thought they were so smart.

JON: 

Now let’s make it even more hairy. So you might recall that in 2000, Bill Bradley had an early lead over Al Gore, particularly in New Hampshire.

 WALTER SHAPIRO:

Iowa was Bradley's Vietnam. I went with him early to Iowa in March of ’99, and he somehow convinced himself it was like the rural Missouri he grew up in. It wasn’t. He couldn't win, but he was in too deep to get out. New Hampshire, on the other hand, was the state in love with campaign finance reform. Gore was tainted by the Clinton fund-raising scandals. Bradley was running as a purer than pure campaign reformer, as was John McCain. In the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, Bradley had a heart incident. He seemed to recover but was rushed to the emergency room for a bad reaction to, I think, cream soda. He was fine, but it was interpreted as another heart attack. What happened was that independents in New Hampshire could vote in the primary of their choice. And there was a primary going on between John McCain, also a campaign reformer, and a fella by the name of George W. Bush. Bradley and McCain had even done campaign finance events together in New Hampshire. When it was perceived that Bradley was a sick man, a lot of those independents who would have voted for Bradley in the primary voted for McCain instead.  McCain was about 8 percent up in the pre-primary polls. He beat Bush by 20 percent in New Hampshire, with basically Bradley voters.

JON:

I was there for all of that. I had forgotten how much Bradley’s collapse, partly for reasons of health, affected the outcome. Now imagine it’s not Bill Bradley, who at that time of his health scare was in his mid-50s —

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

And still going strong.

JON: 

Imagine if it's 80-year-old —

WALTER SHAPIRO:

81-year-old —

JON: 

…81-year-old Joe Biden, who maybe doesn't have anything that wrong with him. Maybe he just has, like I’ve had for the last week, a serious head and chest cold. He can't really go on live television without risking having a coughing fit, which has been my situation for the last nine days. And so he goes off the trail for a week. Imagine what a huge thing that would be.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

There’d be [talk of] a cover-up. “Clearly the White House is not being open about Biden’s health condition. This is a serious crisis. He probably had a heart attack!”

JON: 

It wouldn’t just be Republicans piling on Biden, Democrats would freak out. That means, for Biden to sail to reelection, he has to go 18 months without a cold worse than the minor one he had last week. Think about that — 18 months without a bad head cold! — in order to stay on track to win this election.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

We’ve been down this road before. In September of 1955, towards the end of his first term, Dwight Eisenhower had a debilitating, massive heart attack, at a point when cardiac surgery was primitive.

JON: 

He seemed elderly, but he was in his early 60s.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

He was 65. I was just at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas. I was there in part because — oh, hell, my wife was doing book research there and I was there as a boy toy.

JON: 

I’ll plug Meryl’s book!

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

It’s a biography of the hostess with the mostest, Perle Mesta. But in Abilene I became fascinated by how Dwight Eisenhower, after seven weeks in the hospital and weeks convalescing at home, still decided, in January and February of 1956, to run for a second term.  I found notes from a January 15, 1956 meeting at the White House where Eisenhower assembled his closest aides and cabinet members, but pointedly not Vice President Richard Nixon, to discuss the pros and cons of a second term. Everyone said, “Oh, of course you have to run, chief, you’re indispensable. We’re at the height of the Cold War. No one else can do it.” With one exception: his brother, Milton Eisenhower, then the President of the Pennsylvania State University.

JON: 

He was a very close advisor to his older brother.

 WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Exactly. He was nine years his junior. He made the case to his brother: If you get sick for any reason during the campaign, it will be devastating. And if you get sick for any reason in your second term, it will be dispiriting to the country. It was a powerful argument, one that Biden should hear from someone. But it didn't carry the day in 1956. And I doubt it will carry the day with Biden, despite the risks.

JON:

Some Democrats, including me, believe that almost any Democratic nominee could beat Donald Trump, not just Biden — that we don't even need Joe Biden to beat Donald Trump. But beyond Joe Manchin running as a spoiler independent, there's one caveat: if, in October of 2024, Joe Biden gets sick, and the choice is suddenly between going back to a president who was very flawed, but at least didn't get us into a war and didn't blow up the country, or making Kamala Harris president, that gives Trump a chance to win. If your top priority is to not let Trump win, you should nominate somebody other than Biden. 

A lot of Democrats, because everybody's a pundit now, will say, “Well, you know, if Biden doesn’t run, the Democrats are just going to nominate Harris.” Wrong. The Democrats will not nominate Harris. Full stop. All these armchair pundits don't understand there are these things called primaries, and she’s just not popular enough to win the Democratic nomination. It’s just not going to happen. Somebody else would be the nominee. I don’t know if it’d be Amy Klobuchar, or Mitch Landrieu or Gavin Newsom.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis...

JON: 

There are a lot of possibilities, but if Biden were to get sick late, then that gives Trump a chance to get back in.

WALTER SHAPIRO:

If it's Trump who’s the nominee. I think there's no way of knowing at this stage whether he will be.

JON: 

Say something about that.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

I just love the certainty that DeSantis is dead, and Trump has been nominated, ten months before the first Republicans have cast the first ballot on a snowy Monday night in Iowa in January of 2024. The fact is that “March maneuvering” has very little effect on the outcome. 

Remember how Barack Obama was considered dead in October of 2007? John McCain was considered dead in the middle of 2007. Both won the nomination in 2008. Primaries are always surprising. No one saw Trump coming in 2016. No one saw Bernie Sanders coming at this point in 2015. Yet there is this level of certainty in the pundit community — not you, but...

JON: 

Everybody's a pundit now. I was talking about this in the green room of the New Orleans Book Festival with James Carville and Jonathan Martin. We agreed that the difference is this: It’s not just that pundits, who are actually in the business, often get it wrong. It’s that everybody in every coffee shop, because of the way our political culture is structured now, thinks they know for sure what's going to happen — that their judgment, even though they have not covered politics, is as good as anybody else's. It might be, but they shouldn’t be so sure of it. If they’d been wrong more in the past, like you and me, they might be more humble about it.

 WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Also, in the old days, you used to be able to call the county chairmen of the local parties, and they used to have a real handle on what was happening in, say, Hamilton County, Ohio. But now, these county chairs are intimidated by what they see on Morning Joe. Rather than telling you what they're seeing, they think what you really want to hear is the orthodox wisdom on cable TV.

JON: 

Great point. All that being said, do you think that there's a chance for somebody other than Trump and DeSantis?

WALTER SHAPIRO: Yes. I would put a lot of money on betting the field: Chris Sununu, Glenn Youngkin, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott. I could go on. The fact is, that DeSantis, for all of his other failings, in his long interview with Piers Morgan stumbled on [what] Republicans couldn’t abide about Trump. We’re tired of the daily drama. This was the Biden argument in 2020. But you can also put it in a Republican context. “Yes, Donald Trump was a great president and America owes him a great debt, but we're just worn out. We just can't take more of that daily drama.” That is a window for a non-Trump candidate or non-DeSantis candidate to make their case.

JON: 

The system is hardwired for surprise. If there’s no surprise, there's no story. The voters like to cause surprises.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

I have been surprised so many times — like not seeing Gary Hart coming in New Hampshire in 1984. I will repent of that for the rest of my days. As recently as 2012, two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, speaking to Rick Santorum, who was then at about 6 percent in the polls — although the Republicans had a hard time counting that year as well — I asked him: “Don’t you get discouraged?” He won the Iowa caucuses two weeks later.

JON: 

On the Republican side, there’s a guy nobody’s heard of, who I think will get his Andrew Yang moment. Nobody even knows how to pronounce his name.

 WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Oh, the one whose name I can’t pronounce.

JON: 

I just learned how to pronounce it. Vivek Ramaswamy [vih VEHK rah mah SWAH mee].

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Come on. That’s as ludicrous as having a president by the name of Barack Hussein Obama.

JON: 

Very smart, very well spoken. Comes from outside of politics. Writes books attacking woke thinking. Very successful in business. I think he’s already put $10 million into his own campaign. And he will be the smartest, freshest thinker on stage. You can take exception to his ideas — like using the U.S. military to go after drug labs in Mexico and sunsetting every federal agency after eight years — but they’re fresh. They will get attention as time goes on even if he’s an also-ran. The other guys are going to seem like they’re arguing about the past, particularly Trump. And these elections are ultimately about the future. 

 WALTER SHAPIRO: 

No one saw Howard Dean coming at this point in 2003 for 2004. For a while it looked like he was going to win the nomination. There is such a history of surprises. Even if the surprising candidate doesn’t get the nomination, they can come close.

JON: 

Right now, it looks like all systems are go for Biden to run.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

I dread it. But I think the only thing worse than Biden running is Biden running and being challenged for the nomination.

JON:

Despite what I said earlier, I don’t think he will be in a major way. But it could happen.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

I worry about an ambitious self-funder, like the Republican you just mentioned. There doesn’t seem to be anybody out there making noise about it. If Trump weren’t in the race, it would be more likely. What you also have to realize is that it’s in the best interest of campaign consultants to urge unlikely candidates to run, particularly if they can pay the bills. Because they get a percentage of the ad buy. People got very rich telling Tom Steyer he could win the 2020 Democratic nomination.

JON: 

Especially if he was paying a percentage of the ad buy. There’s a difference between a smart candidate like Barack Obama, who said to David Axelrod, “I'm going to give you a retainer,” and a dumb candidate, like most of them, who get buffaloed into giving their media consultants a percentage of the ad buy, which is a huge conflict of interest. It's hard for me to understand how some of these candidates can still be so dumb as to allow a fee structure like that.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Let me explain. Number one, it isn't their money, except for the self-funders for whom it is. Dropping $200 million dollars, for them, is like the change you find under the sofa cushions for you and me.

JON:

Right.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Number two, they are convinced that the only way they can have credibility is to have a major campaign consultant or several of them. The only way to get a major consultant, if you’re at 3 percent in the polls, is by giving away five or ten percent of the ad buy.

JON:  So what are the odds the Democrats hold the White House?

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Today? I’d say about 71 percent.

JON:  Why the specificity?

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

Because if we're making shit up, we might as well make it up. I mean, this is Nate Silver, giving numbers to the right of the decimal point. Actually, 70.73332%.

JON: 

Talk about arrogant. That guy still won't admit that his industry is broken.

WALTER SHAPIRO: 

One of the reasons we have fewer quality polls is because the people who get the attention are not [the actual pollsters], but polling analysts like Nate Silver and Nate Cohn in The New York Times, who analyze them.

JON:  

The odds that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee?

WALTER SHAPIRO:

89.3 percent.

JON: The odds that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee?

WALTER SHAPIRO:

Don’t know. But less than 50 percent.

JON: 

The odds that Donald Trump will return to the White House?

WALTER SHAPIRO:

13.63 percent.

JON: 

Your take on the indictment’s impact on the campaign? 

WALTER SHAPIRO:

I hate to be a broken record (talk about a dated phrase) in my reluctance to make predictions. What I will say is that we will have a much better handle on whether Trump can continue to defy gravity after a few more cases come forward. 

From what I’ve read, it is easy to assume that by the Iowa caucuses next January, Trump will have also been indicted in Georgia for pressuring Brad Raffensperger to find 11,780 votes and by the Justice Department for obstruction of justice in resisting a subpoena for the secret documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. And who knows what the slow-moving Merrick Garland will have done about Trump's role in the January 6th insurrection?

At what point do Trump's bleats about his martyrdom become repetitious? And at what point do the Republicans realize that, after the Wisconsin results, nominating the thuggish, self-pitying, authoritarian Former Guy again will doom them to defeat. I can't imagine that any of the roughly 12 percent of swing voters left in this country will suddenly develop a new fondness for Donald J. Trump. 

Maybe I am practicing prophecy mixed with wish fulfillment. But I can't, at the moment, see how Trump wins the November 2024 election.

JON:

From your mouth to God’s ears. Thanks, Walter.