Biden will win in 2024 unless Republicans change course
Jack Elbaum
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By every available metric, President Joe Biden is deeply unpopular. His approval rating is a mere 40.8%, the lowest among any president over the past 90 years except for Jimmy Carter. He has net disapproval in every single swing state. And there is not a single issue where the public approves of his performance, whether it be the economy, foreign policy, inflation, crime, immigration, or even Ukraine.
Based on these data, it is reasonable to conclude that Republicans should be able to cruise straight to the White House in 2024 and beat Biden handily. After all, it seems there are no indications that the country wants four more years of him.
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Yet the data also suggest that he will likely retain the White House anyway. For starters, he has an advantage over both former President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in the polls, beating the former by an average of 0.9% and the latter by an average of 1.9%. Additionally, the betting odds have him as the most likely candidate to win in 2024, a significant shift from the start of this year when he was a somewhat distant second. Not to mention that Biden is still seen more favorably than both of the top GOP contenders.
Why is this? Well, considering Biden’s abysmal approval numbers, both generally and on specific issues, the job of the Republican front-runners in this race is to 1) be normal and 2) point out all the ways in which the Biden administration has been anything but. This shouldn’t be hard to do, considering its proclivities toward the bizarre, untrue, and vicious.
It is clearly not normal for cocaine to be found in the White House, for the president to be caught in the crosshairs of his son’s shady overseas business dealings, to regularly have difficulty speaking coherently, to attack political opponents as comparable to slaveholders after claiming he wanted to restore civility — and do all this while refusing to acknowledge that one of his grandchildren even exists.
In other words, normalcy is nowhere to be found in the Biden White House.
The issue is that making Biden and his administration seem like the “not normal” ones has proven quite the challenge for Trump and DeSantis. When it comes to Trump, the reason is obvious: He is orders of magnitude more ridiculous than Biden is. He has decided to make his plainly implausible claims that he won the 2020 election a centerpiece of his campaign, along with other things he likes to complain about, all while being indicted in crimes he almost certainly committed. Substance? There is none to be found. Disciplined and targeted messaging? You have to be joking.
DeSantis is a slightly different case, as he has demonstrated a remarkable ability to appeal to a wider coalition while delivering a steady, strong message. (See his 20-point victory in the former swing state of Florida.) However, it has become conventional wisdom at this point that he has taken a seriously mistaken approach thus far in his presidential run. Instead of maintaining his image of a politician that was able to govern “a refuge of sanity when the world went mad,” he has resorted to odd and unpopular positions and rhetoric. It has not helped him in either general election or primary polling.
So, what must be done? First, Trump needs to be gone from the race. He lost to Biden once and will clearly lose to him again. Second, whatever candidate were to emerge as the alternative to Trump must focus on actual substance — the issues that actually matter to people. As they say, “it’s the economy, stupid.” Last, Republicans must present a clear contrast between the substance and stability they are providing versus the incoherence and chaos of the current administration.
This change of course is necessary. Not in six months or a year — but right now. Unfortunately, it does not seem too likely. The Republican Party will pay for this with its credibility, and the country will pay for it with four more years of Biden and Kamala Harris. I hope to be proven wrong.
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Jack Elbaum is a summer 2023 Washington Examiner fellow.