Democrats 'extremely lucky' to run with Biden, 'not grateful enough': NYT columnist

Democrats are "extremely lucky" to have President Biden as a candidate and should be more "grateful," New York Times columnist David Brooks insisted on Friday.

Brooks appeared on a segment of "PBS Newshour" where he and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus discussed the upcoming Republican presidential primary debate. Host Geoff Bennett noted that despite concerns within the GOP, the Democratic Party has been ambivalent on President Biden’s election chances as well.

Brooks argued that while there are problems regarding Biden’s age and his approval ratings, the Democrats are overall "extremely lucky" to have the president as a candidate.

"[A]ny time you look at some alternative, whether it's the mystery moderate from the Midwest or Gavin Newsom or anybody else, things start unraveling really fast. And so the Democrats are lucky, frankly, to have a candidate in Biden who has presided over an incredibly strong economic recovery, who has presided over pretty good international peacemaking efforts, both in Asia this week and also in Europe, and who I believe whose numbers will go up as inflation recedes, as it is," Brooks said.

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He added, "And the strong job numbers are there. And they're extremely lucky to have a candidate, frankly, who's not a member of what you would call the coastal elite. And Joe Biden has — sends off all the right cultural messages for moderate independent voters who don't have college degrees. And Democrats are not grateful enough for what they have, in my view."

Marcus similarly pointed out that if any Democrat ran instead of President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris, it could risk dividing the party.

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"There are problems with Joe Biden's candidacy. There are many Democrats behind the scenes and a few publicly who talk about his age, who talk about other problems with his candidacy. But let's be serious. I'm old enough to remember — I'm sorry to say, I'm old enough to remember 1980 and what happened in the Democratic Party when it was riven by division," Marcus said. 

She added, "And if somebody were to emerge and challenge Joe Biden at this stage in the campaign, him having decided to run, his vice president, who, if he didn't — if he somehow chose not to run, if she were not the nominee, that would create some divisions within the demographics of the party."

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A poll conducted by The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that just 36% of Americans approve of Biden when it comes to the economy, lower than his overall approval rating of 42%. The same poll found that 55% of Democrats say Biden should not run for president again, though 82% indicated they would vote for him if nominated.

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Fox News' Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.