Why Democrats shouldn't panic about 2024 just yet
It's not a referendum.
Democrats are in full panic mode at the moment. And, understandably so.
Two new polls — one by the Wall Street Journal, the other by CNN — paint a decidedly dark picture of how the electorate feels about Joe Biden.
Almost three in four (73%) of voters say Biden is “too old” to run for reelection in 2024 in the Journal poll.
Only 26% of people say Biden has the stamina and sharpness to be president, according to the CNN data.
There are a lot more numbers in the two polls that look bad for Biden. Like, a lot.
But, all is not lost for Democrats, I think. And that’s because of a very unique quirk of the 2024 election.
Start here: The working dynamic of virtually every incumbent reelection is that it is a referendum on the man or woman in office. Voters tend to assess how a politician did in his or her first two or four years in office and then decide whether they deserve another term.
It’s just the way elections work. Especially a presidential election — because the president is the most high profile politician in the country and most people have some sense of how they believe he has performed over his time in office.
That referendum dynamic is, I believe, what we see operating in polls right now. People are very much not thrilled with Biden’s age. Nor are they particularly taken with how he has handled the economy.
And so, Biden’s numbers — and this is a technical term— stink. Which leads to worry among Democrats about Biden’s chances of winning next year.
But, I’d argue that there is something happening in 2024 that could well blow the “referendum” idea totally out of the water.
It’s this: Donald John Trump.
See, Trump isn’t a little-known challenger from the out-of-power party who will spend the entire general election trying to keep the focus on Biden and what he did (and didn’t do) in his first term.
Trump is, instead, a scenery-chewing, oxygen consuming, blot-out-the-sun type of political figure. He makes everything, every day about himself.
That is a very good thing if you are Joe Biden.
Jef Pollock, a widely respected Democratic pollster, made just this case on Twitter X Thursday morning.
Here’s, in part, what he wrote:
When we put our candidate up against the MAGA extremism of Donald Trump, we win. You can poll about Nikki Haley and Chris Christie all you want but Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. Period.
Republicans up and down the ballot will have to defend Trump's extremism and the devastation he brought to this nation on January 6th. They will have to defend his vision of chaos. And they will need to defend the MAGA unethical Supreme Court that sits squarely at his feet.
I think, broadly speaking, that is right. This isn’t a race between an incumbent and a challenger. It’s really a race between an incumbent and an incumbent. Which is especially true since Trump never conceded the 2020 election and continues to argue there was massive fraud in it. (There wasn’t.)
The race that will be hasn’t quite developed yet. That’s because Trump is still mired in a Republican primary fight. Yes, he is the overwhelming favorite to be the GOP nominee but most voters aren’t really comparing and contrasting him and Biden just yet.
That won’t come until Trump is the actual nominee, which, if I am guessing, will be clear by early to mid-spring of next year.
But, that day will come!
Now, you might say, what if Trump wises up between now and then? What if he and his team look at the polling and realize that if they can just keep the focus and the spotlight on Biden, he will win?
I would remind you this is Donald Trump we’re talking about. He is, I believe, not capable of executing a strategy in which he takes a back seat and tries to stay out of the media glare.
He is addicted to it. He’s spent his entire life chasing attention and you don’t just turn that switch off.
Which means, I believe, that there is a very real possibility that the 2024 election will be as much a referendum on Trump’s four years in office as it is on Biden’s.
That’s not something we’ve seen in ANY recent election. Which makes prognosticating what will happen in 14 months that much more difficult.
It also should give at least some pause to those Democrats who are getting jumpy amid all of these bad poll numbers. None of the above is to say Biden’s numbers are good — they’re not — but rather to note that the race that is happening now in the eyes of most voters is not the race that will happen next fall.
Biden is running against himself right now. And not doing too terribly well! But, Trump is looming on the horizon. And everything we know about Trump suggests that he will make the 2024 race about himself. Which may well be Biden’s only path to victory.
What continues to infuriate me when I hear the polling numbers about President Biden's age is that TRUMP IS JUST 3 YEARS YOUNGER!! Even if there were decades separating them, I'd still take an older, seasoned politician who's kept us out of an economic recession over the guy who tried to overthrow the country, has been credibly accused of multiple crimes, and has been found by courts to be a rapist. But hey, that's just me.
As was the case a few times in the past and probably even more true for 2024 this presidential election might be more about who you are not going to vote for rather than who you want to vote for. Trump and Biden both come with baggage, so a year from now it might come down to who Americans want less. Got to love a political campaign season about who is least worst.