The discourse is suddenly alive with revived talk of how the public turned against Joe Biden because of his mental incapacity. In particular, they hated being gaslit: told he was fine when the evidence of our eyes told us otherwise. However, there are some problems with this theory. Here's the first one:
Biden's approval rating dropped to under 40% by the end of 2021 and never budged by more than a couple of points after that. But that was long before serious concerns about his fitness began to stir. The evidence suggests the public turned against him because of inflation and Afghanistan and not much else.
Other polls had long showed slight unease with Biden's age, but again, that barely changed during his entire presidency. It was there from the start and never got worse until the very end.
Second, all the inside dope we're aware of suggests Biden was mentally fine all the way through the start of 2024. Only at that point did insiders start to notice deterioration, and Biden put their doubts temporarily to rest with his strong State of the Union address in February.
Only the next few months were dicey, finally ending with a decisive vote of no-confidence only after Biden's disastrous debate performance in late June. Biden's approval did drop a bit during this period, but then rebounded when he pulled out of the race. This is a little hard to parse. Did voters continue to harbor a small amount of resentment over the "Biden charade" or was everything forgiven and forgotten after Kamala Harris took over the reins?
It's hard to say with any precision, but the evidence suggests that Biden's fitness had, at most, only a tiny impact on the race.
I believe this is correct. People who actually live with people with dementia could never interpret Biden's symptoms as dementia. Even the disastrous debate performance is consistent with overpreparation and enormous fatigue resulting from it (although I agreed after it that changing the candidate was the less bad option.
However, what really matters is this: Joe Biden in his present state is a far better President than his successor and predecessor ever was, ever will be.
BTW: When was the last time a President lost reelection and won again after his successor's only term.
Grover Cleveland.
I think you're misconstruing the sentiment.
A. People are mad at Joe and his top level team members from masking the effects of his aging. The belief is that, had the effects of his aging been exposed during the primary season by actual primary debates and campaigning across the states, he would not have won. We would have had a candidate that was known to the nation, and therefore comfortable with them, rather than a 100-day rush to set up a campaign and reach out to voters.
B. And to the extent that Biden bestowed the race to Harris, it also set her up for failure by obligating her to clutch to and support his record, rather than run against it.
I'm not saying this is my sentiment, but I understand where these folks are coming from.
I don't think approval ratings mean much at all. The president isn't meant to be our best mate.
Why would the Vice President attack the record of their own Administration?
Not saying she would attack it, but surely she would have run against parts of it if she felt that she had the freedom to do so. I can't imagine anyone on the primary stage running against Biden while also claiming they fully supported everything his administration did.
This is certainly an argument that's made. Although its more wishcasting than an actual argument or facts or logic.
#2 obviously doesn't make sense, she was under no such obligation.
Is that how politics work between POTUS and VPOTUS?
She could have easily come up with one or two memorable "Here's what I would have done differently" things (and Biden is a cagey enough bastard that the two of them could have quietly cleared internally what those one or two things were) and banged on those during her campaign. Combine that with "Here's what I'm going to do next" sorts of items, and you thread the needle between "clutch[ing]" at the Biden record and running against it.
I think that the stumbling block was that Harris probably was genuinely proud of the Biden-Harris administration, and rightly so. They did a fucking good job.
The stumbling block was that she's a woman of color. Full stop.
I meant the stumbling block on Harris criticizing the actions of the Biden administration.
+1
After she had said on The View that she couldn't think of anything she'd do differently from Biden, she did come out and say, "My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden's presidency."
That nuance was read to mean that she was reticent on what she actually thought about Biden's strategies and policies.
To reiterate a point: In a primary challenge to Biden, do you think there would be anyone claiming they'd do exactly what Biden did?
No, but holding a primary challenge is not a condition precedent to Harris running more forcefully on a "what I'd do differently is this" campaign. She could have done that quite readily, primary or no primary.
Not sure what this means.
If you are asking whether or not the VP is obligated to support the Pres after the Pres drops out of the race and the VP becomes the candidate running for office....no, obviously not. There is literally no reason to think this.
So the answer is, yes, you think this is how the relationship between POTUS and VPOTUS works.
Ask Hubert Humphrey.
The WSJ today has a 2-3K piece up on the lengths to which his inner circle hid his deficits. This was going on for years.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/biden-white-house-age-function-diminished-3906a839?st=eUwf2n&reflink=article_email_share
"The WSJ today . . . "
And I should care what the Rupert Murdoch Journal says . . . why?
Because you want to know the truth? It's easier to keep your narrative, but maybe you should check out other possibilities... there were a lot of people pointing out Biden's deficits for more than the last year.
The Dems liked hiding behind someone who didn't know what was going on. It gave them the opportunity to pursue unwise ideas without being accountable.
There are plenty of left leaning media folks who were quitely saying the same, it wasn't just the WSJ. It was not unnoticed that the media had little to no access to Biden.
So the President's staff set up what would be an effective White House operation, especially someone of his advanced age. Big fucking deal. The malpractice would have been if they done otherwise and I will remind everyone Ronald Reagan's White House largely did the same damn things, especially in his second term.
And that was a problem, too. Just because one side does it doesn't mean that the other side gets a pass.
"rather than a 100-day rush to set up a campaign and reach out to voters."
Maybe. We'll never know for sure. But Harris peaked early in those 100 days, and the exit poll data suggests that the later voters decided who to vote for, the more heavily they broke for Trump. More time might not have been what would have helped her.
On the other hand: I think it's underestimated how poorly informed the marginal voter is. A big part of the problem could simply have been that people who dimly were aware that Biden was the Dem president didn't understand why (or even that!) Biden wasn't on the ballot. More time for Harris to campaign might have helped on that front.
I think that the "angry at Biden's people for concealing BidenSoOld" argument is extremely weak, in part for much the same reason. Most normal people have no idea as to any of this stuff; the two camps that harped most on the idea that Biden's age was being concealed were (a) rightwing types who lumped it into the general narrative that the Dems were lying to the public about all sorts of stuff, and (b) media types who decided that a Trump-Biden rematch was a boring contest that needed to be shaken up and/or (sometimes explicitly and openly!) demanded that Dems be held to a higher standard (for some reason). Neither of those camps actually influences the marginal voter.
So why do you think half the population hates the Democrats? It's time for honest navel gazing.
I'd much rather have this conversation than another endless round of "where it all went wrong".
Policy matters. The middle and working classes feeling like they are losing ground and the decks are all stacked against them matters. The left, globally not just in the US, has supported labor and unions. People feel sold out to multinational conglomerates and the wealthy who rig the system for their benefit. The rise of the authoritarian right everywhere is a reflection of exactly this. It's anger at the people who were supposed to be defending but have turned into enablers.
"So why do you think half the population hates the Democrats?"
I don't think that they do. I think that Trump won an election against an incumbent party (and basically an incumbent candidate) in a year where people were upset about inflation. Not just here, but globally, incumbent parties took a beating. And it was a close thing.
So, in terms of navel gazing, I'd say more-or-less what I'd say generally: Dems should organize around opposing the idiot stuff Trump is doing and going to do, and focus on (a) doing--or at least, proposing--things that benefit most Americans while (b) loudly bragging about it.
Biden did great on (a); he and Harris needed to do better on (b).
But that would have mean Dean Phillips as our standard bearer. UGH. YUCK!
Seriously though the argument would be stronger if the decision point was in early 2023 after the mid term loses to allow capable Democrats to decide if they were going to run now freed from the harm of running against your president.
Thing is, though, that the lack of 'actual primary debates' was not on Biden or his staff in anyway, shape or form - - it was100% a function of all of the OTHER potential candidates independently choosing not to run.
There ewere no Gene McCarthy's in '24....
Is this to suggest Biden would have won because Hispanics wouldn't have failed to vote for him because he wasn't a woman?
The comments accompanying a WaPo article about Biden’s valedictory speech the other day were overwhelming negative. His legacy, at least for the moment, has been obliterated by anger at the loss to Trump. WaPo readers are still pretty representative of mainstream politically engaged Dems and they are not blaming Kamala. .
I'd say that Kevin's opinion on this issue is bullshit. Biden should have kept his promise to be a bridge to a younger generation, and should have done it in a timely fashion. Like in 2023.
Biden is no exception to the rule that when ego wins, people lose.
There's no reason to think that this would have made a difference.
Literally every politician running for office is fueled by ego. It doesn't make any sense at all to make up a fake rule and pretend that ego isn't driving every candidate. But I suppose we want to direct our anger and blame somewhere, even if it doesn't make any sense.
Agreed. The proximate cause of Trump getting elected was Republicans supporting him in the primary. And then however-many-millions of people voting for him in the general.
The blame for Trump and every stupid and destructive thing he does rests squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans who put him in office. Blaming Biden's "ego" is simply another variation of the idiocy where we act like only the Dems have any sort of agency.
When will the left acknowledge that Kamala was vacuous? Period.
When will you acknowledge that Kamala was NOT vacuous and you have trouble accepting a BIPOC woman as president.
He made no such promise. Period. Any President who makes himself a lame duck immediately in his first term might as well resign.
I think he would have if Trump would have faded into oblivion - and/or prison - like he should have. Biden originally ran to defeat Trump, and when it became obvious that Trump was running again, he decided he needed to do it again. It was the wrong decision, but I think he made it for the right reasons at least. I just don't buy the idea that Biden ran again because he was drunk on power and just refused to give it up. Maybe that's what happened, but there's a perfectly reasonable alternate explanation, so I don't see any need to cast him as a villain. In hindsight, it was a fuck up, but it's time to let it go. He did a good job, but misjudged the correct time to leave.
Let it go? Tell that to Kevin. I'm not going to be silent in the face of a provocative post by Kevin. At this point, all I can do is observe the destruction of the country by Republicans and their ignorant and extremely unserious voters.
I believe my opinion that Biden is the person most responsible for our electoral defeat has considerable support among people who are opposed to Trump and fervently wanted him to lose the election.
Decent President but lousy politician.
Obama’s approval ratings were middling in his re-election year, and he began the election season trailing Romney. One reason he was able to come back on an economic record that was less than stellar (unlike Biden) was his energetic campaigning. Biden’s mental acuity proved a burden on already shaky political ability. Now that all the votes have been counted, it is clear that millions of Democrats voters did not vote and I doubt a Biden campaign would have been more effective than Harris in shaking that tree. In fact, one of the few unheralded facts of the election is that Harris prevented the Senate races from being a rout by preventing the flip of three more seats.
"One reason he was able to come back on an economic record that was less than stellar (unlike Biden) was his energetic campaigning."
There's a diference between a bad economy because unemployment is high and a bad economy because inflation is high, though. The former chiefly impacts the unlucky sods who are out of work which, even in a really bad recession, is a minority of the public. Conversely, everybody (apparently) gets pissed off if a carton of eggs costs more than they dimly remember it costing in the halcyon days of yore.
Politically, I think you're right.
I think you might also agree with me in thinking that it's the economic problem one wants to have, overall. Because it's easy to fix with higher interest rates - which is what happened.
A big hole where lots of people are out of work for a long time is much harder to fix. But apparently better politically.
Sigh. I hate people.
With the economy the Biden administration showed that if you live with some short term higher inflation and interest rates you can get pretty damn close to full employment.
Voters said “yeah about that, we really want the low inflation and interest rates, as long as it’s someone else that’s unemployed we’re cool with that”
Krugman used to make this point in his columns all the time -- you'd rather trade a mistake on the inflation side for a mistake on the employment side. *But*, that's only obvious if you look years out, and integrated over time. Lost earning, savings, and investment capacity over a career isn't quite as obvious as the fact that the eggs I just bought for Holiday baking were $4.20/dozen (compared to $2.50 back in 2019), or that my morning yogurt is now up to $1.50 from $1.00 over that time. The 6 months I was unemployed way back in 2000 probably translates to ~$100K less in my retirement account today. That's a lot of eggs or yogurt.
Joe Biden was not going to bring on a recession to lower prices. Jimmy Carter did that and it didn't help him at all.
Well put. I definitely do agree, and likewise hate that that's the dynamic.
It's not all about the economy. It's also about the crazies that make us try to memorize pronouns and sign loyalty oaths. The Democratic Party has to stop being SHRILL!
I believe it was the "economy", really inflation more than anything else that sunk Biden, and Harris couldn't run away from or against the Biden administration on this issue. So she was stuck. My pet hypothesis is that people resented that the govt COVID checks ended. I have not seen this analyzed but I've wondered about it.
And I know we want to say it was because Harris was a woman but Tammy Baldwin won Wisconsin and she is an openly gay woman.
One state vs a national election. How many Hispanic votes did Harris lose in Wisconsin.
I think you mean relative to Baldwin. Hard to make an exact comparison given the timeframe difference. But according the source below, 61% of vote majority Hispanic wards in Wisconsin voted for Hillary and 42% voted for Kamala. Drops seem similar across time. Here's the link:
https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2024/11/how-wisconsin-split-its-ticket-once-again/comment-page-1/
Black support dropped about 2% between 2020 to 2024. 4% between Hilary to Kamala
A Catholic democrat friend (they still exist!) told me that unofficial church organizations were schilling for Trump via Spanish language outreach. "Save the babies" "A chicken in every pot". He about lost his mind arguing with people (he's Hispanic).
Harris outperformed Biden’s 2020 total in Wisconsin. Yet Biden won and Harris lost.
In my world, Trump doesn’t even survive the primaries. I don’t understand what people who like Trump see in him. But it’s real. Like a person in love not seeing the object of their desire’s faults. They look for reasons to like him and ignore the reasons to dislike him. We continually argue about how “we” lost and what “we” should/could have done differently. Since the margin of loss was so small just about anything said could be true. But the real question is why is Trump popular? He has no real beliefs or policies. People he openly says he hates think he loves them. It is weird.
I believe it was the "economy", really inflation more than anything else that sunk Biden
Agreed. Maybe a younger, more charismatic candidate could have sold the strength of the economy more skillfully than Joe was able to (and by the time Harris got there perhaps it really was a lost cause). But in general I agree with Kevin (it wasn't "anger at Biden" and you "it was the economy.").
People focus on the many tens of millions who voted for Trump. But that's yesterday's news: we know that 40%-45% of the country strongly prefers the GOP no matter what national conditions are like. The real question is what drove the net shift of about 5% of the electorate from the previous cycle? The economy is the most likely explanation. What's been going on in other democracies is added evidence of this...
We should have better data by the middle of 2025, but certainly the early evidence suggests Democrats did very poorly with Hispanic voters compared to previous elections. Well, Hispanic household income is about 30% below the national median, and Hispanic household wealth is something like 70% below the national figure (these numbers are from Pew Research). In other words, it stands to reason that, if the economy was mostly quite strong but inflation was problematic in 2021-2023, the modest slice of the electorate that would consequently turn against the incumbency party would be less affluent voters.Richer voters aren't as negatively impacted by nine dollar Happy meals and higher rents. Working class whites were already in Trump's camp, of course. And Asian voters are much more affluent than the national median. That leaves Black and brown voters. And yes, Democrats saw some erosion in their share of the Black vote, too.
Recessions weaken administrations. Inflation kills them.
I think you’ve covered it well, the incumbent party everywhere is losing.
People are mad but they can’t really articulate why and are taking it out on whoever is in power.
I think it is the basic enshitification of things under late stage capitalism combined with COVID broke people and we haven’t really recovered from that.
This is a fake non--issue from Republican talking points.
It's interesting that a primary challenge from the Left (not including Marianne Williamson) didn't emerge against Biden even during the middle of the Gaza war (which shows how impotent they are). Maybe it was too late I don't know (although Eugene McCarthy began his '68 campaign in December of '67). The person who ultimately ran against him, Dean Phillips, had no real disagreements against the admin. (especially on Gaza) other than he was old, which was a poor reason to run such a campaign. Given the activist energy around the topic (which was ultimately wasted around campus takeovers) it would have been interesting to see if such a campaign would have been effective or exposed Biden's infirmities much earlier in the process and perhaps triggered a withdrawal during that same process.
Why was that a poor reason?
Because a strong majority of Dem voters rallied around Biden because of attacks from media/ GOP on Biden's age. Phillips was barking up the wrong tree.
Also Phillips was a conservadem who thought Blacks were too powerful in the Democratic party. Pretty much a deal breaker for a ton of Democrats.
Glad this topic came up because I think an objective look at the Biden Administration is needed. The biggest mistakes it made in my opinion:
1). Doing very little about immigration until late in his Presidency. The policies implemented in 2024 should have been done in 2021.
2). Afghanistan. Bottom line is people don't like Presidents who lose wars as much as it was the right decision. Biden's popularity tanked after the withdrawal and never recovered and it's not a coincidence. Ask Gerald Ford about it. Same thing happened to him. Would the Panama Canal Treaty been an issue for Reagan to successfully use against Ford if Saigon hadn't fallen? The one criticism that can be made of Biden was his naive optimism about the Afghan government holding on even after U.S. pulled out. The South Vietnamese government was much stronger in 1975 and it still collapsed. He should have known better.
3). Inflation. Covid is what caused it and the Russo-Ukrainian War made things much worse as far as basic commodities voters understand the prices of. More populist rhetoric against big corporations and more anti-trust promotion might have mitigated this but I appreciate Biden not going the recession route to try and prices down. No one should lose their jobs just so eggs can be cheap.
4). Incumbency/establishment. Let's face it Dems have been in power for 12 of the last 16: years and dominate in many cities, states and localities that are in many cases just not well run and can be used as fodder against the party. Time out of power may not be such a bad thing if it leads to some rethinking a new ideas. A lot of people were voting against the in-party and in anti-politician she, Biden being the epitome of a politician was not a good position to be in.
I would add Gaza/Israel. People like clear lines and the blurred lines of support for both Israel and Gaza was too muddled for many voters to accept, whether on the far-left or the center-right.
Agreed. Biden didn't even pretend to want to stop it. A week? A few months? Maybe. 13 months of one-sided carnage and Biden was still giving the IDF everything they wanted, and that pissed a lot of people off
I think Biden knew the government in Afghanistan wasn't going to hold up, but he really couldn't say anything about it for fear of accelerating the collapse. He just knew that staying wasn't going to improve anything and so got out. I think he should get praised for his decision frankly.
Agreed. Damned if he did and damned if he didn't.
Agreed. If nothing else, the idiots in DOGE should be praising him for saving the US hundreds of billions of dollars due to the wastefraudabuse that was otherwise occupying Afghanistan indefinitely.
It’s was Jimmy Carter not a Gerald Ford who was president when the canal treaty was passed.
only the Democrats could have lost to such a weak candidate as Trump. I think Biden is a very good president but he was too old and I was dismsyed that he ran. pure hubris. nobody would have picked Harris to run. she was there to balance the ticket is all. she fell into the nomination by accident and was not a strong candate. if we had had a normal primary season and the usual 18 dwarfs got windowed down to a winner that would have made a much better TV show, which is how you win an election these days.
"only the Democrats could have lost to such a weak candidate as Trump."
Counterpoint: Biden is the only democrat who ever beat Trump.
Trump has run three times and won twice, and come close the other time. That's a batting average that very, very few people have. As much as it pains me to say it, Trump is not a "such a weak candidate" that the only way he wins is if the Dems run a complete failure.
Totally true to note that a lot of Trump's "strengths" are unfair and antidemocratic (media giving him fawning coverage/sanewashing his idiocy, because he drives clicks; certain plutarch billionaires plowing hundreds of millions of dollars into promoting him, etc.), but thems the cards we was dealt.
From tactical level, I think the Harris campaign did a good job of organizing, setting itself up without too many issues and rallying the party to its side in a short period of time. Thus by the end of September it looked like she could win. But strategically, the campaign failed because Harris refused to either strongly defend the Administration's record or offer anything new or bold because, quite frankly, the Administration, because it had a lot of success passing it's agenda, was pretty much out of new or different ideas to run on. Thus Harris found herself poorly positioned, much like the Clinton campaign, of neither willing to commit to staying the course, or trying something new, especially against a candidate like Trump.
If Jimmy Carter can have his reputation rehabilitated after his term in office so can Joe Biden, especially given what's coming. Bottom line is he beat Trump and probably was the only Dem who could and won the most votes anyone has ever won for President on his third try and was also Vice President and a long-time U S Senator. I think he'll be fine as far as reputation goes and he did the right thing stepping down. He simply could not campaign or get through a second term.
Now we'll watch Trump go through all the age problems
The only thing that explains why as many as 77 million people voted for someone so obviously criminal and incompetent as Trump is tribal solidarity - he, like the Republican party since Goldwater, Nixon and Reagan, stands for the continued dominance of the White Christian tribe. This of course is apart from the higher-income people who actually benefit from Republican economics. No, the white "working class" was not voting for Trump over Democrats because of his economic promises, which he himself demonstrated to be phony in his first term.
So why is the state of the continual culture-war conflict not considered to be an important influence on a given election? Racism especially is essentially taboo in the MSM. When Trump or Republicans do something egregious, such as the Madison Square Garden rally or the late-stage advertising about trans students, the media take some note, but then the subject is ignored when it comes to assigning reasons for political swings. Polls and interviews never ask if racism is a main motivation and people don't answer honestly if it is asked, but this is not a justification for ignoring the subject.
The left seemed to be winning the culture war up through the pandemic as the media covered BLM and other matters favorably and corporate America gave more prominence to non-whites and anti-racism in various ways. But obviously resentment was building up and the right was consolidating its own racial, religiose and mysogynistic factions. These things were used by the right to organize on the national and local scales, down to school boards. Of course the resentment was focused on Biden as the leader of the "other" side.
The great majority of discussion in the media and bloggery is just unrealistic without considering the dominance of culture wars in politics.
This question ignores the very real and almost always ignored fact that Trump and his brand of vitriol and anger is quite popular. He won on it in 2016, nearly won in 2020 and won on it in 2024. Anger and punishment was his main theme in 2016 and again in 2024.
It seems likely that if not for his comical and tragic mishandling of Covid, he would have won in 2020 as well.
It's very likely that there was nothing Biden or Harris could have done differently that would have made a difference. A huge chunk of America likes the Trump vengeance show. Nobody cared about Afghanistan, the economy was strong....we should admit that Trumps brand of anger is quite popular with voters.
It's interesting how many people thought Trump was shooting himself in the foot over the fall election season by turning his campaign away from inflation and Afghanistan. Then after after Trump won, there was no consideration to the apparent fact that these were not decisive factors. Trump wasn't focused on these and the roaring economy didn't actually appear to matter to voters. Trumps focus was on fighting the wokes, the Trans and the brown immigrants and this resonated with voters.
The pandemic may have given Biden the 2020 election instead of Hillary and Kamala losing the 2016/2024 election.
The poll numbers here probably aren't helpful here since Democrats presumably got the whole 40% that approved of Biden. The question is whether the more Democrat friendly in that 60% that didn't contained a significant percent who decided to vote for Trump, or not vote, because they were put off by the Biden stuff. My guess is no, but I don't think you can tell from that Biden data. It is certainly possible.
Biden should have skipped that debate, run a carefully scripted and rehearsed Rose Garden campaign, and let his administration continue to run things for him like they probably did all along. Nancy Pelosi should have kept her big old mouth shut and left well-enough alone. Stupid old Democrats messed this up all the way down by deciding they needed to DO something to fix something that not only wasn't broken, but was the best, most pro-Democratic policy presidency of our lifetimes (since LBJ). Really wish the Democratic olds still around would learn to butt out and let the kids that are actually running things now take over.*
* Anyone didn't realize Biden wasn't really running things from the time he became the candidate in 2020 was surely stupid enough to vote for him again. The rest of us were fine with it and were ready to vote for him again, anyway, because his administration was awesome.
I'm a bit late to this discussion, but I'll say I've read all the comments and something Kevin wrote (at the beginning of the page) has my eye.
"The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it." —George Bernard Shaw
I think this Shaw quote is very relevant to things like selection of a politician. We often have feelings which influence us greatly, but we don't realize how much. In this election, it is said that the longer undecideds waited, the more likely they were to pick Trump. One would think they could see his flaws, so let's just assume for a moment that they weren't in love with Harris, so they fell back on their "like" of Trump. It may have always existed, or it may have been the "his presidency wasn't bad" or it may have been some other early moment of the campaign when they saw him in a positive light. Was there a particularly negative moment for Harris? I don't think so. She was a very good or excellent candidate. But, to distinguish her from Biden was difficult and to make her stand out as particularly better than Trump was difficult because she hadn't been president and his first term "wasn't so bad".
So, it was almost a coin toss, and the resulting numbers showed that.
Yes, yes, I know she crushed him in the debate. Maybe we needed another, but Trump wouldn't risk it. He knew how bad that made him look. Besides, a lot of people don't watch debates. Do late-deciders?
So, on key things, Trump was lucky or smart. He followed Obama and took credit for the economy. He was against Harris and avoided a 2nd debate. These are two key things of the race, as I see it.