Democrats’ off-year election wins mask underlying vulnerabilities 

Despite Democrats’ notable off-year election wins, last week was a very bad week for Joe Biden. There have been a number of polls, both the New York Times/Siena poll and Emerson polling, showing Biden trailing former President Trump in five of six swing states. 

Beyond that, Biden’s approval rating is sitting at a record low 37 percent, per Gallup polling, indicating that Biden is now at levels on par with Jimmy Carter when he suffered an overwhelming defeat in 1980. 

Moreover, with the war in Israel dividing the Democratic party and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying an Israeli occupation of Gaza will continue indefinitely, we are almost certainly guaranteed that Democratic divisions will continue to fester.  

Indeed, the longer wars in both Israel and Ukraine rage, the more challenging it will be to maintain support for funding both nations, despite the currently robust levels of support for Israel among mainstream politicians on both sides of the aisle. 

To that point, while right now the American public overall remains supportive of our commitment to both nations, having seen what happened in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s not hard to draw the conclusion that a year from now support for both conflicts could potentially fall precipitously, as we have seen already — particularly on the political right — with Ukraine. 

On Friday, the news got worse for President Biden when Jill Stein announced that she would be running for president as the Green Party candidate. Stein got approximately 1 percent of the vote in 2016, but in key swing states, she may well have made the difference in electing Donald Trump. 

While there is virtually no chance that either Stein or third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will win 270 votes, their presence in the election very well may draw enough Democrats away from Biden in states where he already had very little margin of safety.  

As serious as all of that is, the fundamental problem is that Biden does not have an argument for reelection. The White House has spent the last few months trying to make the case that “Bidenomics” is working, and that it is only a matter of time until people feel it.  

The administration has also continually emphasized the underlying strength of the macroeconomy, and with some accuracy, as unemployment remains near historic lows, inflation is slowing and wages have remained steady. Yet, the polling is very clear that on the economy the GOP has between a 10-15 point lead with very little credibility attaching itself to the argument Democrats are making. 

Put another way, voters either don’t believe, or are not feeling, the supposed strength of the economy, and largely believe the economy is getting worse, despite Democrats’ claims to the contrary.  

Ultimately, on both international and domestic issues, the Democrats do not have a great advantage, and when one adds in the southern border, and law and order issues, it is almost certainly the case that the Democrats, on virtually every major issue, trail the Republicans. 

Now, what we did see in the midterms is that the issue of abortion probably made the difference in Virginia, Kentucky and perhaps New Jersey, albeit likely to a lesser extent. While it is certainly plausible that abortion will help Democrats in 2024’s congressional and state races, in a presidential election, where issues of war and peace and the overall economic management of the country are at stake, it is less likely that abortion will predominate.  

This is not to say that Republicans don’t have great vulnerability on the issue — they do — but until Democrats come up with a more coherent argument for their leadership, their argument will be reduced to what it was in 2018, 2020 and 2022: Trump is bad, he is corrupt, an extremist, and voting Democrat is the only way to preserve fundamental freedoms and rights. 

Is that enough to reelect Biden in 2024? It could conceivably be, and as Trump’s legal woes continue to mount, the New York Times/Siena survey did note that a conviction may sway some voters away from the former president. In addition, general elections differ markedly from primaries, especially closed primaries. 

But, at a time when the president’s numbers are sinking — and sinking precipitously — in both horseraces in key swing states and in overall approval, it wouldn’t be a bet that I would take, and I doubt many in the White House would disagree with me.

Douglas E. Schoen is a political consultant who served as an adviser to President Clinton and to the 2020 presidential campaign of Michael Bloomberg. His new book is “The End of Democracy? Russia and China on the Rise and America in Retreat.”