Should the Democrats fail to produce something to convince prospective voters, they will be in serious trouble during the upcoming midterm elections and unable to stop the slide leading into the presidential elections.
Democrats can’t help but welcome Trump home
By Matthew Fraser, Editor in Chief
The 2020 United States presidential election is only a year or so behind us. As such, it would normally seem much too early to call the results of the next federal election; however, with the ever frailing figure of Joe Biden on one side, and the enigma of Trump on the other, ‘normal’ is not a word to consider. Especially when the impression of each man is what drove voters to the polls last year more so than any level of policy proposed.
But what makes me so sure that Trump will make a triumphant return to the White House in 2024? To begin with, we must consider that few if any people voted for Biden due to a personal loyalty or even hold a strong like of the man. When you look at his predecessors in Obama and Trump, both men had nearly unshakeable loyalists who stood by them through thick and thin. When the Affordable Care Act was floundering in the Senate, a majority of Democrats still reported positive views on Obama. Whenever the media would highlight Trump’s abysmal ratings across the country, he would retort with an often fabricated 90+ percent approval rate within the party. Biden has no such loyal base to fall back on.
According to a poll conducted by NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist, 44 percent of Democrats favour a different candidate for the 2024 presidential election, with 20 percent of those surveyed being unsure. Put another way, more than half of his party does not think Biden is up to snuff not a year and a half after his election. This is stunningly bad news as the president struggles to pass his Build Back Better agenda. But the polling bad news doesn’t stop there. A comprehensive poll tracker by FiveThirtyEight reveals that since August 27, Biden has been more unpopular than popular across all polls. As of a November 7 update, Biden has a disapproval rating of 51.1 to 42.6 percent.
But this might be acceptable seeing as Joe Biden indicated he would be a one-term, transitional president. For many people, this indicated that he would not be seeking reelection, but instead, be stepping aside for Kamala Harris to run. However, Harris is even less popular than Biden. According to a poll by The Hill and HarrisX, only 39 percent of voters surveyed approve of Harris as VP. Worse still, a USA Today poll found that only 27.8 percent of voters surveyed approved of Harris.
Should the Democrats fail to produce something to convince prospective voters, they will be in serious trouble during the upcoming midterm elections and unable to stop the slide leading into the presidential elections. This issue of not being able to show Democratic voters anything was stressed by Senator Richard Blumenthal who openly worried about this in a statement to The Hill. The issue is that voters will likely hold a ‘what have you done for me lately’ mentality going into the primary and a failure to secure anything positive in the Reconciliation package will erode confidence.
With the Democrats having control over the Senate, House of Representatives and White House, many Americans will wonder why Biden has had his agenda so thoroughly dismantled. When one looks at the remanents of the Reconciliation bill it is easy to argue that almost no part of that bill will make substantive, long-term impacts on the average American voter.
Politico’s ‘West Wing Playbook’ newsletter featured a statement from a citizen named Jake Wright that almost perfectly encapsulates the problem facing Biden and the Democrats: “I’ve been a Democrat my entire adult life, but letting a program expire… or means-testing it so that people who will genuinely benefit from it will lose out on much-needed help infuriates me[…] It makes me wonder why I bother supporting these people.” In the process of appeasing the “moderate” Democrats (I prefer the term corporatist), Biden has dropped nearly everything that the average American would want to see passed or that would improve their lives.
Free community college was initially proposed but was removed at the behest of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. That is one thing that Democrats could very easily lean on to prove their worth and effectiveness to the American people, but it is now gone. Biden’s very own words on the matter were: “I promise you—I guarantee it—we’re going to get free community college in the next several years, across the board.” And yet, as Vox outlines, this promise has slipped and fallen by the wayside. Why would a voter show up for someone who consistently fails to keep their promises?
Climate change is another issue where Democrats will be nearly indistinguishable from Republicans. Though many Democratic members will say that they acknowledge the reality of climate change, they will be almost completely unable to point to anything substantive that they have done to address it. Louisianna Senator John Kennedy may accuse Biden of following climate change as if it were a religion, but the infrastructure and reconciliation bills’ removal of a key climate proposal thoroughly counters that argument.
The Democrats have essentially managed to pave the way to a Trump reelection with their own mistakes and failures. They have managed to provide the average voter with absolutely nothing worth voting for while compromising with themselves to remove the few good things they had on their side, to begin with. The situation is so bad that one political commentator openly said that: “All you can hope for is that there’s some Democrat who comes out of nowhere who’s Bernie-esque but in a younger package—a Charismatic package—who can hold together a coalition. But I don’t see it.” I don’t see this deus ex machina emerging, but I do see another Trump term.
