I’ve been saying, at The Spectacle podcast and elsewhere, that I refuse to make any assumptions about the 2024 presidential cycle. And let me offer the further caveat that Republican voters and conservative activists, not to mention current and prospective officeholders who wear that “R” next to their political names, had better pay a whole lot more attention to the structure of next year’s political cycle than to the personalities and candidates involved.
Which is a particular admonition, perhaps paradoxically enough, for those of you who go around caterwauling that American elections are finished because the Democrats are busily harvesting votes from graveyards and so on. The answer to that, which may very well be a valid characterization of how leftist politics operates today, is not to admit defeat but rather to get busy and attack those tactics at the root, be it by crowdsourcing challenges to fraudulent names in your state’s voter file or setting up your own precinct-by-precinct watchdog operations and other small but important block-and-tackle operations to stop the steal before it happens rather than later, when — as we’ve seen — it’s too late.
Holding the other side accountable for their dishonest tactics, however, is something for another column, and here’s why: that latest ABC News poll that has Donald Trump ahead by a 52–42 margin — a 10-point lead — over Joe Biden.
If there’s a safe assumption in presidential politics right now, it’s that Trump will be the Republican nominee. Of late he’s done a better job of focusing forward rather than backward, and that is the key to his victory next year. Trump still has a lot of detractors, but most Americans would far rather be living in 2019, under the crest of the Trump economic boom, than with … whatever it is that Bidenomics has left us. Trump’s promise is that he can just do the things he did after taking office in 2017 — plus more, since now he has a fuller picture of the challenges in front of him — and generate much the same in the way of results.
Which isn’t unrealistic, since most of what’s broken in this stagflationary economy rife with labor disputes, supply-chain struggles, productivity gaps, massive personal debt, and other woes is actually driven by stupid policies.
The American people get it. While Biden and his minions continue Baghdad-Bobbing their way through the message war on the economy, it’s clear none of what they’re saying is resonating. An NBC News poll showed Biden with a 72 percent disapproval rating on the economy, and that was Biden’s good poll this week (it had him tying with Trump 46–46 margin).
The ABC News poll had better news — and worse. While Biden’s economic disapproval rating was only 64 percent, his overall approval rating sat at just 37 percent and, of course, he’s losing to Trump 52–42.
It’s hard to see what else Team Biden can do in order to fix those numbers.
They’re crowing that “inflation is down,” but the problem with that is that prices are not down — instead, prices are beyond what ordinary Americans can afford.
We’re not talking about for a new car. We’re talking about for groceries, clothes for the kids, the light bill.
And so credit card debt is through the sky, and credit card companies — shockingly enough, given that their paid stooge for four decades in the U.S. Senate is now at least nominally the president — are charging usurious rates on the trillion-dollars-plus in credit card debt owed by American consumers who can’t afford Dirty Joe’s inflation.
Does anybody believe that the budget negotiations coming to a head in the next few days will produce a sizable cut in federal spending, thus relieving pressure on inflation and, therefore, interest rates? There’s no reason why you should.
And there’s no reason why you should believe that the stealth Green New Deal policies of the Biden regime, which have put a collective noose around the necks of producers in our economy and forced them to pass the heightened costs of production onto those consumers, will be desisting any time soon.
So nothing in this economy will change. And what we’re seeing is that this unaffordable, stagnant Bidenomics state of being that the regime’s lickspittles keep touting as Good For You will continue to be an anvil chained around Joe Biden’s political neck.
If a major legacy corporate media poll is showing him down by 10 now, what’s that going to look like in six months or a year?
And what does it mean for the future of the Democrats’ ticket?
Last Friday, I got into a little bit of an argument with Dan Proft, on whose Morning Answer show on AM 560 in Chicago I’m a frequent guest. I saying that I don’t assume anything about the 2024 race, and, especially, I don’t assume Joe Biden will be the nominee. Proft says it’s a Trump–Biden race more or less set in stone, and he’s of the opinion that Jill Biden won’t let her husband leave office voluntarily.
And he might be right about that.
At this point, she’s essentially the 21st-century version of Edith Wilson, who ran the federal government for more than a year after her husband Woodrow had a stroke and sat more or less as a vegetable in the presidential bed. Joe Biden isn’t quite as moribund as Wilson was at the end of his presidency, but, on the other hand, nobody really thinks he’s in charge — and with every public appearance he makes a further case for that majority position.
Like, for example, when he extolls the great work of the Black Caucus while addressing the Hispanic Caucus. Or when he makes repeated references to “dog-faced pony soldiers,” a movie reference nobody can identify as having an actual source.
Or when this happens:
Biden plays the race card:
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) September 25, 2023
"The black community is going to suffer, in particular" if a US government shutdown occurs. pic.twitter.com/5dhC8CWKAy
He’s conflating the debt-limit deal with the budget negotiations, which is a lie Biden would tell if he had his full faculties. But he can’t sell it anymore, and so he falls back on race.
Gonna put y’all back in chains, and so on.
Little wonder that in the NBC News poll mentioned above, some 74 percent of the respondents have moderate to major concerns about Biden’s cognitive capabilities.
And that the latest HarrisX poll is the third showing Biden behind Trump — it has The Donald ahead 46–41. And Biden’s support from anyone who isn’t a Democrat partisan is at this point next to negligible:
Notably, all of the recent RealClearPolitics Polling Average polls from September have Trump leading Biden or at least in a virtual or statistical tie.
Inside the HarrisX numbers, Trump leads Biden by 8 points among independents (42%-34%) and 10 points among third-party voters (25%-15%).
Also, there is a large majority (69%) of registered voters who say Biden should not run for reelection, including 78% of independents and 93% of third-party voters.
Biden remains 16 points underwater on his approval rating as a net 56% disapprove of the job he is doing and just 40% approve (which is largely just the 75% of Democrats polled). Only 8% of Republicans, 9% of third-party voters, and 33% of independents approve of Biden.
So what happens as a result? Is the door open for Gavin Newsom, or J.B. Pritzker, or Phil Murphy, or even Gretchen Whitmer, to jump in and save the day? (RELATED: What if Biden Drops Out?)
Well, as this column has noted, Newsom already said it isn’t him. And it’s probably true. Here’s something interesting Larry Elder said to Maria Bartiromo on Monday:
Kamala Harris, absolutely, positively, and in no way under the sun, will be elected president in 2024. Elder is correct that black women tend to be big Kamala Harris fans, but nobody else is.
And one does not get the impression that Jill Biden will pull herself and her husband aside for the benefit of Kamala Harris.
It isn’t as though the Republicans have a clear political path ahead either. Depending on what the appellate courts do with that Jack Smith Jan. 6 case in the D.C. federal district courts with a hopelessly biased jury pool and an even worse judge, it’s entirely possible that Trump will be convicted of a felony by the time the Republican convention rolls around, and a lot of blue states (and maybe even some purple ones) will use that to try to force him off their ballots.
Which is not an endorsement of any of it. It’s simply a statement of the reality.
Even given that, and even given the justifiable concerns about election integrity in this ballot-harvesting free-for-all environment that states like Michigan, Arizona, and Pennsylvania are ushering in, it still looks less problematic for Republicans saddled (to style the situation in a pejorative fashion) with Trump than for Democrats stuck with Biden.
As Elder said, for as long as he can fog a mirror.
Politically, that’s questionable. Physically? By this time next year? Well…
You really shouldn’t assume anything about 2024 right now. Especially not on the Democrat side.
via spectator
