Are Democrats ignoring the next Obama to save Biden's struggling campaign?

The current governor of Maryland possesses quite an impressive pedigree. After emerging from a troubled youth, Wes Moore became a Rhodes Scholar and served in Afghanistan in the famed 82nd Airborne as an Army Reserve intelligence officer. He then earned a spot as a White House fellow in the secretary of State's office after having already interned for Homeland Security before his deployment.  

The son of Cuban-Jamaican immigrants, Moore went on to work in the banking sector and then ran the Robin Hood Foundation, an advocacy organization with the “common commitment to helping low-income New Yorkers escape poverty’s grasp.” 

Moore is currently the nation’s third African-American to be elected governor of any state. He is Maryland’s first.

Given this record, why are Democrats still sticking with Biden-Harris instead of someone who possesses at least as much charisma as a 2004-era Obama?

As a contributor to The Hill wrote of Moore’s 2022 gubernatorial race, his competitor “ran into a buzzsaw of charisma embodied by Wes Moore.” Why not use that and improve your chances of winning? Why not the person whom then-President Obama appointed to the Corporation for National and Community Service Board in 2014?

Moore told the story of his rise in his 2010 bestseller, “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates.” In it, Moore explains the tragic life of another Wes Moore from Baltimore. The other Wes Moore was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for the February 2000 murder of off-duty Baltimore County police Sgt. Bruce A. Prothero. 

The central question the book answered: Why were the lives of these two African American males from the same neighborhood, similar ages, single-parent households and with very similar names so incredibly different? One enjoyed the American dream; the other succumbed to the stereotypical fate of the American Black man. But why? 

Governor Moore concluded that a key reason is the poisoned reservoir of low expectations from which too many Black Americans are forced to drink. As he explained in one interview about this similarity that “haunted” him, “We know that we are not just products of our environments, but we are products of our expectations.” 

Moore’s mother and other family members played a nurturing role in getting him off the streets. That made the difference. Moore quoted his mother, who often said, “Kids need to think that you care before they care what you think.” She clearly cared.  

Moore elsewhere stated, “We are not promised anything — in a moment's notice things can change by the decisions that we make.” How we play the cards we are dealt determines so much, the governor would say.  

With all of these pluses in Moore’s toolkit, why, pray tell, are the Democrats making such a poor decision when, as Moore might put it, they are not promised anything? Why is that party choosing to remain in the quagmire in which it has placed itself with Biden?  

On the one hand, the sitting present is a sitting president. Forcing him out would be a slap in the face to him and to those who choose to think their eyes are lying about the aging and increasingly deteriorating 46th president. Indeed, several publications have put out pieces articulating their concerns. A Washington Post opinion piece said the worst mistake Biden made in 2023 was deciding to run for president in 2024. 

Biden has done some good things, but there is growing evidence that his mental acuity is slipping. It is sad to watch him make so many cringy comments. One directed at Moore is not an exception. In 2023, Biden referred to Maryland’s first Black governor as “the boy.” This is not only strikingly racist but demonstrative of political cluelessness. 

How can a president who won with barely over half the electorate in 2020 think he can call the Marylander who, one year before the 2022 gubernatorial election day, was polling a little over 1 percent and went on to win the race with more individual votes to winning his 2022 race in a historic landslide "the boy?"  

Moore, like most Democrats, is playing nice in the sandbox. He isn’t stepping on the elder statesman’s toes, a wise act under normal circumstances. 

Are these normal circumstances, though? Isn’t it time for the Maryland governor, or some other Democrat, to stand up and take the swing from the guy who’s been on it for more than half a century? That is for the Democratic National Committee to decide.

Christopher Brooks is a professor of history at East Stroudsburg University.