There’s one tiny sliver of hope for Joe Biden in a devastating new poll that flags rising concerns over the President’s age and performance and shows even most Democrats want another candidate in 2024. He could still beat Donald Trump.
This small consolation for the White House cannot disguise growing signs that Biden’s presidency is in deep trouble even before midterm elections in November, which threaten a devastating rebuke to his Democratic Party in the House. The New York Times/Siena College nationwide survey coincides with a flurry of unflattering stories about Biden’s age and political proficiency and growing speculation about his prospects for reelection. The question of whether any Democrats would dare challenge him in a primary is an increasingly hot topic despite dismissals by leading alternative potential candidates.
And yet, Biden, saddled with an approval rating of just 33% in the survey, is still in the game against Trump. The survey showed no clear leader, with Biden earning 44% to Trump’s 41% among registered voters, within the poll’s margin of sampling error.
The poll also shows that Trump would not be the unanimous choice inside his own party. Nearly half of Republican primary voters preferred another candidate for the nomination. That’s especially the case for primary voters under 35 and those with at least a college degree, majorities of which indicated they’d oppose Trump, according to the Times. Of all the names tested, however, Trump remained the favorite for the GOP nod by a wide margin.
A poll is just a snapshot in time, but it’s hardly encouraging news for the ex-President and suggests he has huge liabilities in the general electorate, despite expectations among his conservative media boosters that he would cruise to revenge over an elderly Biden in 2024.
But the closeness of the hypothetical Biden-Trump matchup also points to a more profound theme that is emerging as the US barrels toward 2024 and has implications beyond the identity of the person who sits in the Oval Office in 2025. A country mired in multiple crises, politically estranged within and facing risky international flashpoints may get a 2024 contest between two candidates whose answers haven’t worked over the previous eight years and whom millions of people would like to see 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 hyper partisanship and Trump’s attack on the 2020 election. It would likely leave the victor in 2024 without a workable mandate at a time when Washington is failing to respond to the country’s longer-term needs. And it would further strain faith among voters about the political system.
A defining feature of a 2024 campaign
A country where the passing of a political torch has been a strident feature of presidential races for generations could be about to endure one last slugfest between 1940s babies trying to defy time.
But paradoxically, a President who most of his own party wants to retire and an ex-President who left office in deep disgrace, could be exceedingly difficult to dislodge. The prospect of a November 2024 contest between a man who would be just shy of 82 and a 78-year-old former insurrectionist-in-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 earlier Democratic nominations. His team is adamant he is running for reelection and he has the best talking point — he already beat Trump and deserves a chance to repeat it.
Trump, meanwhile, is itching to launch a revenge campaign, associates have told AWN, even before November’s midterms. He may want to leap in to freeze out potential GOP rivals, capitalize on Biden’s low approval ratings and portray any potential criminal referral from the House select committee investigating his coup attempt as a naked political ploy.
Any attempt from inside the Democratic and Republican Parties to push either candidate out could backfire, and might require challengers to put their own political futures on the line to do so — diminishing the likelihood of truly contested primary races. The chances of either Biden or Trump giving up on a race for the good of their parties this far out seems slim, though events and health questions could still reshape the future of the two rivals.
Biden’s diminished presidency
Biden’s presidency has been in free-fall for nearly a year, since the messy and bloody US withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer and his overtaken vow last July Fourth that the coronavirus pandemic was all but over. Both undermined his self-assigned job description as America’s fixer.
It’s not just independent and cross-over Republicans who have lost in faith in Biden. His support in his own party is plummeting too, according to the Times poll, which shows more than 60% of Democrats preferring an alternative nominee in 2024. Those who want a change cite Biden’s age and job performance as the top two reasons why. This is a flashing warning sign for the President.
If Democrats do poorly in the midterms, where they are widely expected to lose the House but may cling to the Senate, the calls for a fresh face at the top of the ticket 2024 ticket will surely grow. AWN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere has spent recent days chronicling disquiet among Democrats about their President but he found a unified front from key party figures who warn an anti-Biden movement could let a Republican win in 2024. No one needs reminding how Sen. Edward Kennedy’s challenge in 1980 fatally weakened President Jimmy Carter — a one-term predecessor to whom Biden is increasingly compared — and heralded 12 years of Republicans in the Oval Office. But a cataclysmic midterm election will increase pressure on Biden exponentially.
