In another universe, Joe Biden had a pensive and slow morning on April 24th. He might’ve slept in, and spent some extra private time in the Oval Office. He then told his aides he was ready, and they lined up the camera. He instructed them to record, and told the simple truth to the camera:

“When I ran in 2020, I told you all I was a transitional candidate. It has been an honor serving you as president, and I intend to step down at the end of my term to let the younger members of my party reinvent our platform and message as they see fit. Youth is our future, I hope that you look back on my term as a stabilizing force for good.”

He might’ve groaned after he was done recording, giving a resigned smile and shrug to his aides. Deep down, everyone wants to run for a second term. Joe just knew it was his time to go. Pelosi had done it in the house, and it was yet another step undertaken by the Democratic Party to appeal to its new and historically engaged base of young people. 

Alas, we do not live in this universe. In our timeline, Biden’s powerlust overcame any rational understanding of approval ratings, an unpredictable Republican field, and strength of the Democratic bench. Sure, Biden might be a relatively safe choice when Trump is the Republican candidate. What if he isn’t? Perhaps a more centrist candidate manages to coalesce support early on, and narrowly edges out Trump in a series of midterms throughout more moderate states.

The Biden Camp’s plan for if the candidate is not Trump? Say that any candidate who wins the Republican nomination is beholden to the Trump side of the party. This messaging might have some truth to it, but how well will it land if the candidate you are attempting to target earned their nomination by expressly swearing off Trump and his beliefs as their primary campaign message? It won’t look great.

Do I think that Biden is a bad president? Quite the opposite. He has delivered an alarming amount for our country, and I believe we will look back at his time in office as a transformative time both economically and culturally. It takes more than just an ability to get stuff done legislatively in this era, though. Biden has to be wiley, cunning, quick on his feet, and charismatic. There is almost always media being produced about him or with him as the centerpiece, and bite sized clips of his speeches and interactions are now the primary way many voters consume messages from their president. When he seems flustered, or can be easily edited to look that way, it creates an overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the president. 

It doesn’t matter how many times campaign ads or speeches list accomplishments and “historic investments.” As long as Republicans can tie Biden to incompetency and produce clips of his pauses or stutter, he will be perceived as the old grandpa who can’t remember his own kid’s names.

There simply is no cure for age, and for Biden’s inability to be as sharp as a younger candidate. Younger people like Desantis simply have more acuity and a better visual presence, both because they are younger and because they already have reputations for being strong oratory candidates. Now that Biden’s reputation has been cemented as blabbering and weak, his lackluster stage presence has become a self fulfilling prophecy. Biden could be 99% perfect in every public appearance–but if everyone is hunting for a single misstep in his speech, they will inevitably find one. What might’ve been an innocent mix up for Obama becomes a glaring indictment of Biden’s mental agility. In a world where quick soundbites and cheeky clapbacks are the way to win an election, a near octogenarian is almost never going to be your best option.

We already saw this play out in the debates between Biden and Trump in the run up to the 2020 election. The consensus on those debates was overwhelming frustration: no one could understand what anybody was saying, mainly because Trump was incoherently rambling in an incredibly aggressive fashion. Biden had a couple of great response moments, but he didn’t avoid getting choked up or caught off guard by his whirling dervish of an opponent. If there had been a younger, more agile candidate on stage though, it would have been simply embarrassing to watch Trump flounder against a younger and clearly more stable option.

Let’s say for a second though, that Biden runs into none of these issues. Trump wins the Republican nomination, and Biden wins as a result of fear of Trump’s violent rhetoric and extremist ideas. We might have another four years of a democratic president, but unless Biden can miraculously save his persistently low approval ratings, 2028 will be a prime breeding ground for any Republican contender that is not Trump. The marketing is already set up for them: we have settled for Biden and the Democrats for eight years, and it’s time to try something new. Sounds like a slam dunk to me.

This all neglects to mention congressional races: in a 2024 election where people are frustrated about voting for Biden but hold their nose and do it anyway because they hate Trump, they might be more likely to split their ticket in order to balance out the vote cast at the top of their ballot. This would be a prime breeding ground for more divided government and gridlock, probably the worst case scenario for a legislative acrobat like Biden who gets the majority of his campaign tools from big spending passed by Congress.

To be clear, I don’t buy into any of the “Biden is senile” BS. Even if he is, countless aides and analysts could essentially take over many decision making processes, simply getting the symbolic go-ahead  from the technically elected president. If I had to pick between these aides and another four years of Trump, I’m picking the aides. Senile or not though, Biden will prove to be a liability for the Democrats. It might take four years to happen or it might be coming in 2024, but the karma train fueled by popularity (or lack thereof) has never failed before.