What If Biden Doesn’t Run Again?

The Economist: “There is precedent for a president reneging on a re-election pledge, but it is not a happy one. In 1968, after a disappointing show in the New Hampshire primaries, Lyndon Johnson dropped his campaign for another term just eight months before the presidential election—which his party subsequently lost to Richard Nixon. Still, an open primary might not be as catastrophic as some Democrats fear.”

“When evaluating a party’s presidential bench, conventional wisdom tends to focus on those who campaigned in the previous election. Most of those also-ran Democrats—such as Pete Buttigieg, now transportation secretary, and Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts senator—do not inspire much confidence as contenders. Ms Harris’s standing is so dismal that she would not freeze the field as Mrs Clinton did in 2016. That leaves room for alternatives.”