1. The news could hardly be worse for President Biden. He’s running even (statistically) or slightly behind in national poll after national poll. He’s running even (statistically) or slightly behind in poll after poll of so-called battleground states, where the outcome of the Electoral College vote will be determined. That’s the good news.
The bad news is Mr. Biden is running for re-election in an environment unrelentingly hostile to his success.
This from a Wall Street Journal/NORC survey taken a month ago:
The American dream—the proposition that anyone who works hard can get ahead, regardless of their background—has slipped out of reach in the minds of many Americans.
Only 36% of voters in a new Wall Street Journal/NORC survey said the American dream still holds true, substantially fewer than the 53% who said so in 2012 and 48% in 2016 in similar surveys of adults by another pollster. When a Wall Street Journal poll last year asked whether people who work hard were likely to get ahead in this country, some 68% said yes—nearly twice the share as in the new poll.
This from NBC News:
Voters are more pessimistic about the future than they have been in decades, according to the latest national NBC News poll. The survey finds a record low share of voters — just 19% — who say they feel confident that their children’s lives will be better than their own generation. That’s the lowest level the poll has recorded on this question dating back to 1990.
This from PRRI:
More than three-fourths of Americans (77%) believe that the country is going in the wrong direction, compared with only 22% who believe the country is going in the right direction. The vast majority of Republicans (90%) and independents (81%) say the country is going in the wrong direction, compared with 59% of Democrats.
Most Americans, regardless of religious tradition, see the country as going in the wrong direction: 92% of white evangelical Protestants, 82% of white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants, 79% of white Catholics, 75% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, and two-thirds of Black Protestants (68%), non-Christian religious Americans (66%), and Hispanic Catholics (64%).
This from Reuters:
U.S. President Joe Biden's popularity slipped this month to its lowest level since April, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed, the latest data point raising concerns about the Democrat's re-election bid next year.
The two-day opinion poll, which ended on Saturday, showed 39% of respondents approved of Biden's performance as president, matching April's reading and down marginally from 40% in October and 42% in September.
This from The Washington Post:
As the US economy continues to improve, President Joe Biden continues to not get credit for it. Only 35% of voters in seven swing states trust Biden on the economy, according to a Bloomberg/Morning Consult poll, with 51% saying it was better under Donald Trump.
This from a Fox News Poll:
A majority of Americans disapprove of how the government has handled border security and support the construction of a wall on the southern border, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.
Seventy-one percent of registered voters surveyed said that current levels of security at the U.S. border are not strict enough, with a majority of Democrats and Biden voters saying that more needed to be done to secure the border with Mexico. Eighty-two percent of independents voiced their disapproval with current border policies.
This from AP/NORC:
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds much of the public oddly united in sizing up the one trait Biden cannot change…In the poll, fully 77% said Biden is too old to be effective for four more years. Not only do 89% of Republicans say that, so do 69% of Democrats. That view is held across age groups, not just by young people, though older Democrats specifically are more supportive of his 2024 bid.
And, finally, this from NBC News:
According to a new poll out Sunday from NBC News, 70 percent of Americans do not want Biden to run for a second term, compared to only 26 percent who do. Among those who don’t want the 80-year-old president to pursue a second term, 69 percent cite age as a reason why, with 48 percent calling it a “major” reason.
Worse yet for Biden, the new survey shows him facing a steep uphill climb in a general election. The NBC poll shows 41 percent of Americans plan to vote for Biden in 2024, compared to 47 percent who say they will back the Republican nominee.
Team Biden’s Response:
How, you might ask, has Team Biden responded to this avalanche of dreadful data?
Response #1: Polls taken a year before a presidential election don’t tell us anything about what happens twelve months from now. They’re meaningless.
Response #2: Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independents who are concerned about Biden’s poll numbers are “bed-wetters.”
Response #1 is much-touted by Biden’s handlers and his enablers in the “mainstream” news media. It’s nonsense, obviously. If the numbers were reversed, Team Biden would be touting them every minute of every hour of every day. Pretending that the political environment going into a re-election campaign is “meaningless” is like pretending that it’s not snowing outside during a snowstorm.
Response #2 is the Macho Man side of Team Biden. Man up, you weanies. Get over yourselves. Stop your “bed-wetting” and say the Serenity Prayer:
Biden is going to be the nominee. Accept the things you cannot change.
Needless to say, those who are concerned about Biden’s poll numbers are not reassured by Team Biden’s “bed-wetting” message.
The Road Map.
Everyone understands that addressing the president’s perilous political standing requires more than dismissive talking points. There has to be a plan, a roadmap that reassures bed-wetters everywhere that all is not lost.
The current version of the roadmap comes in two parts.
Part One (via Politico):
(A)s the 2024 election comes into focus, Biden is poised to run the most overtly abortion rights platform of any general election candidate in political history as he and his team navigate the first presidential cycle in the post-Roe era.
“I think it’ll continue to be a really galvanizing issue, and we’ll continue to find ways to make it front and center,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez told POLITICO, arguing that abortion rights will increase in salience as more Republican-led states pass anti-abortion laws and news headlines showcase problems arising from the restrictions.
Abortion rights are “going to be a major theme in the 2024 campaign,” predicted Ron Klain, Biden’s former White House chief of staff.
Part Two (articulated by the president in a recent speech):
President Biden issued a broad and blistering attack against former President Donald J. Trump on Thursday, accusing his predecessor and would-be successor of inciting violence, seeking unfettered power and plotting to undermine the Constitution if he returns to office in next year’s elections.
In his most direct condemnation of his leading Republican challenger in many months, Mr. Biden portrayed Mr. Trump as a budding autocrat with no fidelity to the tenets of American democracy and who is motivated by hatred and a desire for retribution. While he usually avoids referring to Mr. Trump by name, Mr. Biden this time held nothing back as he offered a dire warning about the consequences of a new Trump term.
“This is a dangerous notion, this president is above the law, no limits on power,” Mr. Biden said in a speech in Tempe, Ariz. “Trump says the Constitution gave him, quote, the right to do whatever he wants as president, end of quote. I never heard a president say that in jest. Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans but by vengeance and vindictiveness.”
Two Themes Discarded:
Mr. Biden’s handlers arrived at abortion and “democracy endangered” as the two major themes of the president’s re-election campaign after two previous “themes” were introduced and quickly discarded.
Previous Theme One: President Biden has accomplished more in a shorter period of time than any president since FDR; evidence of his vast experience and deft political skills. (Unsaid but no-mistaking-it message: Biden accomplished much more than fancy-pants Obama ever did).
The problem with Theme One was (and is) this: the electorate never asked him to “accomplish” “big” things. Biden was elected to get rid of Trump. Period. He did not have permission to “go big or go home.” When he “went big” anyway, the backlash was almost immediate.
Previous Theme Two: “Bidenomics”! The rough translation of the “Bidenomics” theme was: you’ve never had it so good, you ungrateful louts. Mainstream news media bought into the “Bidenomics” messaging big time, with story after story puzzling over how voters could be so sour when everything was so sweet. Accompanying these stories were charts and graphs explaining just how out of touch voters were with their reality.
“Bidenomics” was quickly binned, when it quickly became obvious that voters weren’t keen on being told they were idiots. Mainstream news media, however, didn’t let go of voter idiocy as a key source of Biden’s political woes. That messaging continues to this day.
Stay The Course.
The truth is that there is only one economic message when times are tough: “stay the course.” Blaming your opponents or the news media or the “elites” or (a Biden first) the voters isn’t going to work. Reality is reality. People are understandably nervous (if not dismayed) by what the future might hold. Their finances are fragile. They are frustrated by the political choices on offer. They are looking for leadership and finding none.
It is possible that the economy, over the course of the next year, will achieve the much-hoped-for “soft-landing”; avoiding recession, with inflation falling and job growth holding up. That would lend resonance to a “stay the course” message and bolster Biden’s prospects for re-election.
If a “soft landing” is not in the offing, “stay the course” is still the only economic message that works. You have to hold out hope. Otherwise, what’s the point? If it’s hopeless it doesn’t matter who is president.
“Stay the course,” however, won’t turn the tide. “Better days are coming” requires other reasons to be patient.
Generic Democrat.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about the 2024 presidential election is that the White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, is a stronger candidate against Donald Trump than Biden himself. Put another way, a “generic Democrat” leads Trump in virtually every survey of the electorate. When the choice is Biden vs. Trump the race is tied or tilts toward Mr. Trump.
Which means that Biden’s only path to re-election is to make himself generic and Mr. Trump the issue. And that, Team Biden has decided, requires elevating the stakes of Mr. Trump’s possible election to “democracy endangered”. Abortion is about turning out the base. “Democracy endangered” is about making “persuadable voters” think twice about voting for Trump.
Will It Work?
One thing we know is how White House occupants prepare for re-election campaigns. They conduct a vast amount of quantitative (opinion polling) and qualitative (focus groups) research.
The electorate is then divided into three parts: those for, those against, those “persuadable.” Those against are discarded immediately. They’re never going to vote for the incumbent so there’s no point in gauging what they think. Those for are probed for likelihood of turnout and what issues will drive them to vote. Those persuadable are probed for big themes that might cause them to vote for the incumbent or not vote for the challenger.
What needs to emerge from all this survey research is a narrative that explains the value of continuing on with President Biden. As noted at the beginning of this missive, there are any number of reasons to send him packing. The overwhelming majority of voters would prefer he leave at the end of his term. So what is the unique selling proposition of a Biden re-election campaign that persuades persuadable voters in “battleground states” to do what they would rather not do.
Danger to democracy seems a bit grandiose. Biden hardly seems up to the task of defending it. He’s not a warrior or a warhorse anymore. He’s old. The notion that he’s going to suit up and do battle with the forces of darkness isn’t really “credible,” because he can’t suit up, go out on the field of battle and do battle. His handlers won’t even allow him to do regular press conferences. They are terrified about how he will perform in the debates next fall. In their estimation, Biden can’t campaign in any meaningful sense, because the more you see him, the more concerned you are about his age and ability to do the job.
If voters aren’t sold on the notion that what stands between them and the end of democracy is Joe Biden, they might be more open to a variation on that theme. The variation goes something like this: what stands between you and chaos is Joe Biden.
For all but a few Democrats, a majority of Independents and a significant slice of Republicans, Trump is a one-man anxiety-creation machine. Serious, senior people who used to work for him —from General James Mattis to former White House chief of staff John Kelly, to former Attorney General William Barr to former National Security Advisor John Bolton to former legal counsel Ty Cobb (and on and on and on)—will willingly attest to the chaos engendered by Mr. Trump and that follows in his wake. They’ve lived with and through it. They know first hand how disturbing it can be.
Trump himself all but promises chaos, with endless late-night screeds on social media, wild threats, and menacing behavior. That will continue. Trump’s campaign team might like it to stop, but they might as well try to stop the Mississippi River from flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Chaos is a feature, not a bug, of Trump’s personal re-election campaign. It will continue because Trump enjoys it; enjoys pushing the envelope into what was once unacceptable behavior.
This is the Biden campaign’s opening. Even people highly critical of Biden, when faced with the choice between stability or chaos, will choose the former. An example of this will be The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, perhaps the nation’s leading conservative voice. It will not endorse Trump for president. It may not endorse Biden. But the price of chaos is well beyond their willingness to pay.
In the stability vs. chaos frame, voters won’t be asked to vote for Biden, they’ll be asked to vote for stability. It’s not exactly an uplifting message, but it’s what they’ve got. If the issue is Biden, defeat is certain.
Perhaps the general despair about the future is due to the two candidates for President. We can do better.
This is a great analysis. It ignores a few things, such as the Biden family's awful corruption, and also the impact of Trump trials over the next several months, never mind possible surprises in a few of the early caucus and primary states. But from a 30,000 foot view, it captures the Biden conundrum. A few of us said in early 2020 that if Trump makes the election a choice, he can win. If he makes it about himself, he's likely to lose. Trump, an extreme narcissist, can't help himself. An enfeebled and impaired Biden can still win, but only if Trump is the GOP nominee.