Will Biden’s unpopularity matter in terms of the 2024 election?
Polls indicate that Biden is very unpopular, with low approval ratings. I don’t doubt that Democrats would love to replace him with someone perkier, but I don’t believe they’ll succeed in finding such a person and removing Biden. They would have done that by now if they had someone who fit the bill on a national level, but so far they don’t seem to have located that person.
Needless to say, Kamala Harris didn’t pan out for such a role. At any rate, let’s just stipulate that they’re looking for someone but that someone hasn’t appeared, and Biden seems determined to run again.
And in considering this question, it almost doesn’t matter who the GOP candidate will be. I’m going to assume Trump or DeSantis, but any GOP nominee would be lied about and demonized by a full court press in the press. Fascist, bigot, rapist, you name it.
Biden ran in 2020 with five assets. The first two would be true of any Democrat: (1) the power of the Democrat machine, whether it be “rigging” such as ballot harvesting in many states, or outright fraud, or money advantages that enable them to saturate the airwaves and internet; and (2) a press determined to help demonize the Republican and defend the Democrat, including lies about the former and the suppression of news that hurts the latter.
Biden’s next three assets were peculiar to him and/or to 2020. The first was the reflected glow of Obama, because he’d been Obama’s faithful VP for the entire eight years of the Obama administration. The second was COVID, which allowed him to curtail his appearances enormously, and keep to prepared presentations. The third was his own public persona honed over the years as a genial and avuncular fellow, somewhat of a blowhard but certainly not a radical (how anyone found that especially believable I don’t know, but I think many did).
And to various extents, all three are still operating. Perhaps the Obama glow has faded and been replaced by Biden’s own non-glow, but I believe it still lingers. COVID may have mostly retreated – although perhaps they’ll come up with a new surge or a new disease in time for November – but many of the voting changes are still in place, and now Biden will have the excuse of being too busy to campaign, because after all he’s president. The third is probably also not what it was in 2020, but one would have to really be paying attention to see it, and I think the MSM has covered him so carefully that’s it’s mostly intact.
Meanwhile, Biden and the Democrats and the press have demonized – and will continue to demonize – not only Trump and DeSantis but also Republicans in general. Don’t underestimate how hard it is for a lifelong Democrat, even one who has grown very unfond of Biden over the years, to cross that line and vote for a GOP candidate. Doubts and dissatisfactions with Biden are one thing; voting GOP is a whole ‘nother ballgame.
I’m not saying it’s 100% impossible for a Republican to beat Biden. I just think it will be very very difficult despite Biden’s awfulness and low poll ratings.
If Biden is re-elected – perish the thought – the composition of Congress is very very important. Actually, it’s important even if he isn’t elected, but it’s especially important in terms of stopping the passage of several things that would establish Democrats as permanently in power, if he is elected for a second term: (1) national voting “reforms” that end voting security measures such as voter ID and institutionalize policies that favor Democrats (2) making DC and perhaps Puerto Rico states; and (3) and packing the Supreme Court.
NOTE: Many Democrats don’t want Biden to run, and say so in polls. That does not mean they wouldn’t vote for him if he does run. It just means they’d prefer a Democrat who’s younger and more appealing. Many of them would also prefer someone they perceive as even more to the left than Biden.
I was not a Biden fan until I found he marched with King, was arrested in South Africa with Mandella, that his already dead WW2 uncle pinned a medal on him, that the subway conductor loved him, that his wife and kids were killed by a drunk driver, that his son Beau died in combat in Iraq , that he is a college professor, sang with Elvis,and the Beatles, that he graduated top of his class, as well as many other impressive, heroic, insightful, honest, and generous things.
Not to mention the obvious-while drawing rally crowds of dozens several times, he set a record for amount of votes accumulated by any presidential candidate.
In contrast to Dems (including elites) uniting behind Biden, we see this across the way:
The professional Republican club hate Donald Trump because he represents the base voters of the Republican Party, and the GOPe hate the base of the party much more than they hate Democrats. Exponentially more.
Advantage uniparty
There’s no path through the Electoral College for any Republican, don’t care who he is.
Any Republican has to get all of Trump’s states and then flip a few more. Other than Georgia and maybe Wisconsin, they aren’t “flippable” as they have been “fortified for democracy” as the saying is. All the Trump states plus Georgia and Wisconsin is only 258.
Anyone who can think of another blue state that any Republican can flip, go ahead and name it, and then explain how in that state Republicans are going to unfortify the election. Won’t be Arizona, that’s coming through loud and clear. Won’t be Pennsylvania either…
Popularity means nothing. Who’s counting ballots in the handful of states that can make a difference, is all that matters. Even in otherwise purple states, their blue cities are what gives the Dems the narrow margins, and those ballots are counted by people who live in those blue cities. They’ll count ballots for 105% of voters if they have to.
Frederick:
I tend to agree. That’s why Congress is so important as a counterweight. Congress has limited power to stop executive orders, but a GOP Congress can at least keep from passing legislation that would enable the worst excesses of the left.
Banned Lizard:
Conservative Treehouse is playing a destructive and divisive game that only favors the power of the left in the end. I have watched this going on for quite some time.
The GOP has a lot of flaws, many of which I’ve discussed many times. But there is no uniparty. The GOP will not be banning voter ID, for example, nor will it be making DC a state, or packing the Supreme Court while a Democrat is president. Ignore those things at everyone’s peril.
I really detest this “uniparty” horse manure. It is both destructive and untrue. The GOP isn’t as conservative as you or I might like. It has RINOs. It is in some ways corrupt. Members of Congress are quite often motivated by money. That does not make it a uniparty with the Democrats.
Forget Congress as a counterweight. If Biden is reelected, the country is over. Period.
TimK:
I thought that would happen in 2018 and/or 2020. I thought that the Democrats would be able to pass the things I mentioned (plus other similar things), but they did not. Once those things are passed, it’s really over. But Republicans in Congress plus Sinema and Manchin stopped them.
So no, Biden’s election won’t mean it’s over, if the GOP continues to be able to hold the line legislatively.
However, I agree with you in the sense that it might be a finger-in-the-dyke thing that will just buy a little time. But buying time is not nothing. Unforeseen things can happen. Some of them might be better than we think.
I love your semi-optimism Neo, but I tend toward pure pessimism. The focus of the Dems is complete control at the federal level. And they are almost there. Combine that with the blue states and the country is gone. If their control of the federal level allows them to then take control of the red states we are now in Soviet territory. Otherwise, I see CW2 happening. Not a good future either way.
There’s no way that Biden, or Newsom, doesn’t take POTUS next year.
@neo:But there is no uniparty.
I strongly disagree, because while this is true,
The GOP will not be banning voter ID, for example, nor will it be making DC a state, or packing the Supreme Court while a Democrat is president.
it is kind of a straw man to point it out because critics of the Uniparty say all the time that the danger is not that Republicans themselves will enact these things. Instead, critics of the Uniparty say that Uniparty Republicans will roll over when the Dems try to do it, or fail to set things in motion that would make it harder for the Dems to do it. Critics of the Uniparty have been correct about this for forty years.
This Schoolhouse Rock stuff you are talking about here is not what Congress primarily spends its time on. What Congress primarily is interested in is appropriations, and appropriations are how individual Congressmen and Senators build their wealth* and influence.
And this is where the Uniparty comes in. A guy like Mitch McConnell can still do very, very well for himself and his wife and their cronies by being token opposition in a Uniparty. It’s about having the power to swing appropriations to where you want them to go and you don’t need a majority for this, you just need relationships and knowing how to work the rules.
Uniparty Republicans sell us out on the Schoolhouse Rock things you’re talking about, in order to get their way on the appropriations that they personally* benefit from.
*Not saying appropriations go in their own pockets. What happens is that the Senator or Congressman who made the appropriation happen benefits materially, in other ways, from the relationship with the entity that benefits from the appropriation. Relationships go with the person, not with the party, and this is why there is a Uniparty. If Mitch McConnell became a Democrat tomorrow, none of his or his wife’s business cronies would care, because they benefit from HIM not from his PARTY. He takes the relationship with him when he goes. He might even be more valuable as a Democrat, provided he can square it with Kentucky voters, who themselves may have a good relationship with Mitch the man.
look how a dozen senators crossed over to ban guns to create this green nude eel boondoggle, while trump had to dislocate his joints several times to get the wall and substantial resource development,
they stole the election to destroy the country, and yet we pretend otherwise, look how much of a fetid twisted thing they have turned into, in two years,
Unless there is election integrity and the voter rolls are purged of phantom and illegal voters, the Repubs will never win another election.
In NY there is a group, Audit NY, that has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are at least a million phantom voters on the rolls. They are working to try to sue the state board of elections but having a hard time even finding a lawyer to take the case.
The Repubicans have the money to fix the problem but they don’t want to- they are part of it.
It’s my understanding that the Founding Fathers meant for the House to be the big dog in our republican form of government. The first among equals, as it were.
They did not foresee that the Democrats would be able to sidestep and neutralize the House via the manipulations of the regulatory state and the SCOTUS. Or that cities and urban areas would become so big and vote mainly to the left, thus unbalancing the Electoral College system for electing the chief executive. The Electoral College system is pure genius but I think it only really works in agrarian societes — the society that obtained when the Founders drafted the Constitution.
I am on a personal campaign of persuading my Democratic friends—the reasonable ones who are appalled by Biden but can’t bring themselves to admit it (the others are a lost cause)—to vote for RFK Jr. in the Democratic primaries, and at least to read and listen to what he has actually written and said rather than what the media say he has written and said. I have been independent for many years but may just re-register as a Democrat next year so I can vote for RFK Jr. myself. We could do worse. We already have. In any case, reasonable Democrats need to take their party back and clean it up, or we are all doomed. The GOP will not be any help, at least not nationally.
I seem to recall that in the 2020 election in Illinois all save three of the voting districts (or counties?) voted for Trump. But Cook Country voted in landslide numbers for Biden, and that made all the difference as far Electoral College votes was concerned.
The saying goes that Illinois south of I-80 — which is most of the state in terms of land area — is red. If weren’t for Cook County, Illinois would be red. But . . . woulda, coulda, shoulda. Cook County is north of I-80. Which means Illinois is blue.
There is now a recognition of the Republican problem in national elections. Hannity had Rona McDaniel and Reince Priebus on his show discussing the issues of truing the voter rolls, ballot harvesting, ballot integrity, mail-in voting, signature recognition, and monitoring the ballot count. Mcdaniel claims the GOP national party can’t put money into most of those activities.
The Dems used black money – Zuckerbucks- in 2020 to create millions of votes for Biden. The GOP needs to find some big donors to fund this and an activist who knows how to do the necessary groundwork.
Silicon Valley will seemingly always pour money into this sort of operation. Republicans need to find a source as well. It’s really the only hope for 2024.
The history of the Roman Republic — a wondrous polity when at its apogee, much superior to the Greek democracies — is a distant mirror to the ongoing dégringolade of the American republic. The multi-volume history of Rome by Theodore Mommsen and the single volume work by Cyril Edward Robinson are especially illuminating in this regard. (Not a fan of Gibbon, however.)
Also there’s Thucydides. Chronicling with matchless insight how a tyrannical democracy ruled by the Classical version of warmongering neocons committed suicide.
Unless Dem electoral fraud is now insurmountable, the margin of fraud exists and may still be overcome, as Trump did in 2016.
In that case Biden’s popularity does matter. His polling still has not touched bottom and his cognitive powers are dwindling by the day. What kind of campaign can he represent a year from now?
Plus some, though not all Americans, are catching on to the lies we are fed and the disastrous course Dems have set in terms of the economy, the border, the racial and trans hysterias.
Remember the Alamo! Remember Bud Light!
I don’t see that many Dems pulling the R-lever, but enough could sit on their hands, disgusted with Biden and the Party, to make the difference.
Furthermore, as Harold MacMillan may have said, “Events, dear boy, events.” There is too much dynamite laying about and too many matches.
Biden’s popularity would be a considerable factor in election outcome, provided that one believes that the personal sentiments of individual voters is correlated with the tally of votes counted.
It’s not that I don’t believe this is the case any longer; It’s that I believe exceptions to the case have become significant enough now, to determine the outcome over votes personally cast. I don’t expect the 2020 result to ever be accurately characterized for posterity, and I don’t see enough changes to think that any election going forward isn’t going to be gamed to the absolute max.
The power of nefarious voting system subversion is simply too great, and too easy to harness and deploy with cash money. If we want election security and a restoration of faith in elections, we must discard the electronics and return to paper.
@ Aggie “we must discard the electronics and return to paper.”
I agree, but remember that many elections have been stolen with paper ballots as well. However, they probably had to work harder to do it.
Not in every case, of course, if the election is local.
However, there were massive ramifications, as this led to Johnson’s eventually becoming President. Chaos theory at work.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_13_scandal
So far as I know, there has not yet been a verified expose of this case, but it’s widely believed to be true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Nixon#1960_presidential_campaign
In anything less than the Presidential elections, fraud is well-documented.
https://www.heritage.org/voterfraud
The relevant question is, “compared to what?” Biden is hugely unpopular. What alternative will the GOP provide?
If the GOP alternative is more Trump, say goodnight. Get ready to add two more stars to the flag and four more justices to the Supreme Court.
And I’m sorry – if Democrats were really worried about the polls showing Trump ahead of Biden, they would be shuffling Biden off stage left. They’re not. That really should say something.
Maybe those states in which their legislatures are controlled by the dumbpublicans can enact laws that – sit down for this one folks – follow their own state constitution and/or existing laws in regard to voting procedures.
So instead of allowing mail in ballots to be submitted 50 years ahead of and 50 years after election day, they could restrict voting to …..drum role please…… election day.
I exaggerate when I say plus/minus 50 years; this only applies to demokrat voters. Republican mail in ballots are discarded or somehow get lost in the mail.
@AesopFan, I’ve worked quite a bit in South Texas, and it’s like a country unto itself down there – not quite Texas, not quite Mexico, and ranches tallied in the millions of acres. George Parr was known as the ‘Duke of Duval County’, as his father was, before him. He pretty much controlled both Duval and Jim Wells county, and was known as ‘El Patron’. As with many of the large ranchers there, his land holdings went back through his family to the Spanish land grants. He wielded an enormous power to collect votes from the Hispanic population there, using a system of employment, political patronage, intimidation, and reward. And it was no coincidence that the Alice courthouse burned to the ground shortly after the election, taking all the records with it.
But: With modern security measures being what they are, I think a return to the paper balloting system would be eminently manageable. I think there’s almost no way that corruption on the scale of Ballot Box 13 could come to pass in a contested race. What bothers me is the myriad of ways that an electronic transaction – shifting the tally of votes, by adding a few tens of thousands at a keystroke, for instance – can be slipped through a system by a well-informed hacker, in a nano-second, without the possibility of being noticed, recorded, or audited. That has to stop.
Bauxite
I agree. Any Republican (even the ghost of Abe Lincoln) will finda tough path to the White House but Trump will be a catstrophic candidate in 2024 for so many reaons.
My two cents (and it might not even be worth that much).
Candidates who want to win primaries do it by catering to the party “base”, who tend to be the most extreme and least rational elements within the party.
As a result, both parties end up nominating candidates that moderates don’t want to vote for. The country is polarized because the leadership is polarized, because that’s how they got elected in the first place. It’s past time for the people with common sense to say “Enough !”,, but I don’t know how to do that.
The “uniparty” talk started because the two parties were closely aligned on immigration, trade, and foreign intervention. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush disagreed on cultural issues, but were united on those three topics. The label gained relevance as each party was “fiscally conservative” when out of power and spendthrift when in power. Once the label got started, people added other issues, but imigration, trade, foreign policy (and perhaps the budget) were the core.
For some people, McCain and Romney were the uniparty’s “designated losers” who didn’t properly contest the election (I’d say that McCain realized during the campaign that he wasn’t going to win, and Romney was so out of touch that he believed he would easily beat Obama). The way that the Democrats, the media, the bureaucracy, and McConnell and Ryan all opposed Trump (though to different degrees) gave further fuel to the uniparty idea. I’d say the “uniparty” label isn’t entirely wrong, though it can be taken too far. It catches aspects of our current political reality without telling the whole story.
Can Republicans win? I wouldn’t want to give up hope, but politics have changed in this century. People who actually make things or sell things are affected by economic downturns. Now we have many people who aren’t affected (or don’t believe they are affected, or don’t care about being affected) by inflation or recession. They vote predominantly on ideology. There are more hard-core conservatives than hard-core progressives in the country, but the progressives are more motivated, the Democrats have more money and use it more shrewdly (or more cunningly), and there are enough people who always vote Democrat (without being hard-core progressives) to make the difference.
The leftists in charge of the Democratic Party have shown they can win the White House with an unpopular candidate if they can count on a wide array of shenanigans being engaged in by the Deep State, Big Tech, Big Media, state election officials, the DNC, and even the GOP establishment during the 24 to 36 months leading up to an election. 2024, however, may be different. Working-class and middle-class voters in both parties may decide to no longer stand idly by as America is pushed closer and closer to the brink of self-destruction.
the democrat base are apparently kamikazi scotsmen insane, look at what the starting point of the debate were like in 2020, with their sacrifice to the skydragon, and appeasing the radical terrorists that call themselves antifa and blm,
so much humiliation dysfunction and possible economic calamity do they want,
Abraxas – McCain and Romney had hugely difficult tasks in 2008 and 2012. Most any Republican would have lost those elections.
McCain/Palin was ahead and, I believe, headed for victory before Lehman Brothers collapsed in September. Admittedly, McCain didn’t handle the “will he or won’t he” debate thing very well. But I don’t think there were many, if any, Republicans who could have overcome the Bush administration with ~30% approval ratings, an unpopular war, and a financial panic a few weeks before the election.
In 2012, I just don’t think things were bad enough in the country for the electorate to throw out the first African American president after one term.
FWIW, I think Republicans can definately win in 2024. They just need to run a candidate who doesn’t repulse significant portions of the electorate while also serving as the greatest GOTV machine that Democrats could ever hope for.
mccain took a dive, the jones memo commissioned by him and signed off on by wallace and schmidt, certainly testify to that, the circumstances surrounding lehman bros, are exceedingly strange,
All these leftist companies and groups: I wonder why they think it is going to work out well for them. They will be the very next enemy of the state.
If I was a betting man I would say Joey Plugs gets re-elected going away.
@ Frederick 100% agree: “Who’s counting ballots in the handful of states that can make a difference, is all that matters.”
@ physicsguy 100% agree: “The focus of the Dems is complete control at the federal level. And they are almost there. Combine that with the blue states and the country is gone.” See history. However, I am not without hope.
@ miguel cervantes 100% agree: “they stole the election to destroy the country, and yet we pretend otherwise, ”
@ IrishOtter49 100% agree: “The Electoral College system is pure genius ” + “The history of the Roman Republic…”
@ huxley 100% agree: “I don’t see that many Dems pulling the R-lever, but enough could sit on their hands, disgusted with Biden and the Party, to make the difference.” I am not without hope.
@ Aggie 100% agree – especially this: “I don’t expect the 2020 result to ever be accurately characterized for posterity, and I don’t see enough changes to think that any election going forward isn’t going to be gamed to the absolute max.”
@ Abraxas Nice work: “closely aligned on immigration, trade, and foreign intervention” + “closely aligned on immigration, trade, and foreign intervention.” + “the “uniparty” label isn’t entirely wrong, though it can be taken too far.”
@AesopFan Nice work. Want to follow-up on this part of the “historical” record.
“Nixon refused to consider contesting the election, feeling a lengthy controversy would diminish the United States in the eyes of the world and that the uncertainty would hurt U.S. interests.”
After a friend shared this article with me – please see link below – decided to do some research, and this is what I shared with him:
1) Nixon did not publicly challenge the theft, but his campaign did so privately and tried to prove the theft before the electoral votes were cast.
2) Agree with the author that it was a significant mistake by Nixon to not challenge the theft – PUBLICLY – but note the Dem/ Left/ MSM narrative is so prevailing that even this author is repeating it (i.e., …for good of country)
3) Some citizens refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of the abnormalities & questions – the same criteria used to question elections in other countries – as long someone they did not like, and his supporters, were harmed. They gave no consideration to the harm done to the country.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/09/blame-it-on-richard-nixon/
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Uniparty or no, the sad fact is, we do not live in a Republic. Maybe we haven’t for a long time, but certainly today we live in a corrupt oligarchy. The people in charge do not give a crap what any, most, or even all of us think. They do the bidding of the billionaires and mega-corporations, and get re-elected with ease.
The ONLY hope to overcome the blatantly obvious fraud they used in 2020, is that some of the light-blue State machines have not bothered to build the requisite fraud machine, and in what would otherwise be a Reaganesque landslide, we win in places like Maine, Vermont and New Mexico, while incredulously losing captured red states like Georgia.
https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2023/05/25/harvard-law-exposed-courses-encourage-ape-behavior-n1698176
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