There’s a sliver of hope for Joe Biden in a devastating new poll that signals growing concerns about the president’s age and performance and shows that even most Democrats want another candidate in 2024. But he could still beat Donald Trump.
That little consolation for the White House cannot disguise growing signs that Biden’s presidency is in trouble even ahead of November’s midterm elections, which threaten a devastating rebuke to his House Democratic Party.
The New York Times/Siena College national poll, published Monday, coincides with a flurry of unflattering stories about Biden’s age and political proficiency and growing speculation about his re-election prospects.
The question of whether any Democrats would dare challenge him in a primary is an increasingly hot topic, despite rejections by top potential alternative candidates.
And yet Biden, with an approval rating of just 33% in the poll, is still in the game against Trump. The poll showed no clear leader, with Biden winning 44% to Trump’s 41% among registered voters, within the poll’s sampling error.
A poll is just a snapshot of time, but it is not encouraging news for the former president and suggests he brings huge uncertainties to the general electorate, despite expectations among his conservative media supporters that he would exact revenge on a Elderly Biden in 2024.
But proximity also points to a deeper theme that is emerging as the US approaches 2024 and has implications beyond the identity of the person who will occupy the Oval Office in 2025. A country mired in multiple crises, politically distant and facing risky risks. International boiling points may have a contest in 2024 between two candidates whose answers haven’t worked in the previous eight years, and which millions of people would like to see them retire from the stage to make room for younger, fresher faces.
Such a scenario would be an indictment of a party system that is already fused into dysfunction by hyperpartisanship and Trump’s assault on the 2020 election. country’s long term. And that would further undermine faith among voters in the political system.
The defining characteristic of a 2024 campaign
A country where the passing of a political torch has been a raucous feature of presidential races for generations may be on the cusp of one last struggle between 1940s babies trying to defy time.
But, paradoxically, a president whose majority in his own party wants to retire and a former president who left office in deep disgrace can be extremely difficult to dislodge. The prospect of a November 2024 dispute between a man who is just under 82 and a 78-year-old former insurgent chief is very real.
Biden is a proud man. He waited a lifetime to win the presidency and resented being overlooked in favor of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for previous Democratic nominations. His team is convinced that he will run for re-election and that he has the best talking point – he has already defeated Trump and deserves a chance to repeat it.
Meanwhile, Trump is eager to launch a revenge campaign, associates said. CNN , even before the November elections. He may want to step in to freeze potential GOP rivals, capitalize on Biden’s low approval ratings and portray any possible criminal prosecution by the House select committee investigating his coup attempt as an explicit political ploy.
Any attempt from within the Democratic and Republican parties to oust either candidate could backfire and require challengers to put their own future politicians at risk to do so – lessening the likelihood of truly contested primary elections. The chances of Biden or Trump pulling out of a race for the good of their parties seem slim, though events and health issues could still reshape the future of the two rivals.
The decline of Biden’s presidency
Biden’s presidency has been in freefall for nearly a year, since the messy and bloody US withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer and his dated promise last July 4th that the coronavirus pandemic would be all but over. Both themes undermined his self-attributed depiction as America’s problem solver.
It’s not just independent Republicans who have lost faith in Biden. His support in his own party is also plummeting, according to the New York Times poll, which shows more than 60% of Democrats prefer an alternative candidate in 2024. Those who want a change cite Biden’s age and job performance. as the two main reasons. This is an intermittent warning signal for the president.
If Democrats do poorly in the midterm elections, where they are expected to lose the House but can still hold on to the Senate, calls for a fresh face at the top of the 2024 ticket are sure to grow. Edward-Isaac Dovere, from CNN has spent the past few days chronicling the unrest among Democrats over their president, but has found a unified front of key party figures who warn that an anti-Biden move could let a Republican win in 2024.
No one need remember how Senator Edward Kennedy’s challenge in 1980 fatally weakened Jimmy Carter – a one-term president to whom Biden is increasingly compared – and who was the harbinger of 12 years of Republicans in the Oval Office. But a cataclysmic midterm election will exponentially increase the pressure on Biden.
While the White House dismisses questions about the upcoming election as media speculation, conversations about Biden’s age and prospects are growing among Democratic voters and a wider swath of Americans outside the presidential bubble. Given that Biden was the oldest president ever the second he took office, the question of his age would always arise. His political problems may have only advanced the conversation. Incidents like what happened recently when Biden fell off his bike, which could happen to any president, get a lot more coverage given his age.
And it is undeniable that the president is not the energetic, pat-on-the-back, and quintessential politician of those years when he was vice president. He’s noticeably aged for the job. It is his misfortune that despite regular training and a doctor’s report that he is fit to serve, he has to endure relentless public scrutiny. But that comes with work.
The White House must prepare for constant questions about Biden’s future plans, Democratic strategist James Carville told Erin Burnett of the CNN , on Monday. “It won’t go away. I suspect they don’t like this story very much, but they will have to deal with it,” said Carville, who masterminded Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted on Monday that Biden was focused on the present rather than the future. “Polls will go up and down,” she said. “That’s not what we’re just focused on.”
How Biden could turn it around
Biden’s woes among Democratic voters may reflect the divided nature of his party — and even his own success in 2020. His victory in the Democratic primaries was forged when he ran as a statesman’s voice for a silent majority of moderates in one party. with an increasingly young and progressive base.
But this electorally successful coalition proved to be governmental uncertainty in many cases. Despite early achievements, such as passing a major Covid-19 relief bill, reducing child poverty and signing a bipartisan infrastructure bill, hopes for a Lyndon Johnson era of progressive reform have sunk, much to the frustration of liberals across the country. House furious that moderate senators like Joe Manchin of West Virginia curtailed Biden’s agenda.
An unlikely late effort to pass some big wins, such as spending on social and climate topics, ahead of midterm elections could excite Democratic voters and improve Biden’s prospects. But there have been signs in recent weeks that raise new alarm — including the White House’s initial response to the Supreme Court’s overthrow of the constitutional right to abortion, which followed a draft conservative majority opinion published by the website Politico weeks earlier.
The White House’s blunder over abortion has also raised doubts about the dexterity of Biden’s operation, with a re-election campaign looming after the midterm elections. Running for the presidency as the current president brings a new set of challenges unknown to first-time candidates. The commander-in-chief is torn between his duties in the United States and abroad and the often grueling cross-country campaigns.
It’s hard for any president to keep up, let alone one who will turn 81 during the election year. That’s why some strategists still think Biden will eventually analyze his prospects for 2024 and decide not to run again. It would be painfully ironic if he imitated Johnson, not with the scope of his domestic reform program, but with his decision not to seek re-election after a full first term amid unfavorable political prospects.
However, Biden has a card up his sleeve to play with the Democrats that could change everything. An early Trump campaign launch would allow the president to once again draw a sharper contrast to a potential alternative that is viewed with horror by nearly all Democrats — and many more Americans.
The New York Times poll, for example, found that if the 2024 choice was between Biden and Trump, 92% of Democrats would go with the president.
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
