Is Joe Biden Electable?

This week—like last week, last month and much of last year—featured a full news cycle devoted to Donald Trump. There’s a method to the critics’ obsession, yet it could backfire. They ignore Joe Biden’s weaknesses at their own peril.

The Georgia indictments of Mr. Trump and associates brought yet more focus on Mr. Trump’s mounting hurdles to re-election. A total of 91 felony counts, many to be heard by a hostile jury. Trials set to commence during the GOP primary. A polarizing candidate who is a nonstarter with key general-election voting blocs. There’s a near gleefulness in media stories describing the Republicans’ pickle: They’re barreling toward a nominee with too much freight to win the White House.

Yet doesn’t that also describe the other party?

The left is banking it doesn’t—at least not in comparison with Mr. Trump. But an our-guy-isn’t-quite-as-detestable-as-your-guy strategy is the definition of risky. Look at Mr. Biden in isolation. Democrats are by every measure putting forward their weakest presidential nominee in decades, one who makes even the hapless Jimmy Carter of 1980 look competent.

No, Mr. Biden isn’t facing four score and 11 criminal charges. But he is more than four score years old, and it’s increasingly difficult to tiptoe around the president’s disturbing decline. The long vacations, the early nights, the confusion, the mumbling, the bizarre statements. A June poll found that 71% of likely voters, including nearly half of Democrats, think Mr. Biden is too old to be president. The pace at which he’s getting worse has also been striking, raising the question of a Nominee Biden’s performance a year from now. God save the queen, man.

Even in 2020, the electorate understood that a vote for Mr. Biden meant a higher than usual chance that his running mate would become president. The need for a reassuring successor is even more important now, but he’s instead dragging the anchor known as Kamala Harris. A June NBC News poll reported she had a 32% approval rating and a net rating of minus-17, “the lowest for any vice president in the poll’s history.” Mr. Trump is averaging above 40%.

Then there’s Hunter. The plea deal collapse is its own sordid story, though the smell will only grow. Republicans will continue to produce evidence of Joe’s efforts to aid his son’s global influence peddling, hammering home the former vice president’s unsavory use of that position. The media will do its best to ignore any revelations, though that will prove tougher if and when Republicans turn their probe into an impeachment inquiry, with prime-time hearings.

Don’t forget the economy, or crime, or foreign-policy messes. The White House’s “Bidenomics” pitch boils down to one statistic: low unemployment. Biden policies also produced inflation, unmanageable energy prices, and the heightened threat of a recession. A Fox poll from late May found 83% of voters say the economy is only in fair or poor shape. That’s 14 points higher than in April 2021, a year into the pandemic.

Democrats and their media cheerleaders are blinding themselves to these liabilities—playing a game of See No Biden, Hear No Biden. They are working instead to keep Mr. Trump in the legal and media spotlight—the better to get him nominated. This is a repeat of the 2022 strategy, in which they labored to boost eccentric far-right candidates in GOP primaries, with the anticipation they’d later lose to Democrats.

That panned out for them in the midterms, but in a 50/50 country, and against an extremely weak incumbent, even Mr. Trump has playable odds. That Mr. Trump—with all his history, all his indictments, all the unrelenting media beratement—is still leading Mr. Biden in some head-to-head matchups ought to have Democrats working on plan B, C and D through Z.

That’s assuming Mr. Trump is the nominee—another uncertain wager. On the surface, the GOP primary looks like a repeat of 2016, with a crowd of opponents splitting the field and crowning Mr. Trump victor. But there are already big differences. The number of candidates at next week’s first debate will be half what it was eight years ago. GOP leaders and donors will press far more heavily on noncontenders to get out early. Mr. Trump, whose underlying numbers still show some real weakness, could find himself in hand-to-hand combat. In this political environment, the unlikely scenarios are entirely possible.

Mr. Biden versus a Republican opponent who is young, steady, and with a new plan? The race might be over. Democrats have a field of viable replacements but continue to bet all on their lamest horse. If next year finds the country electing a GOP president, the liberal establishment will have itself to blame.

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