Biden's 2024 chances are much stronger than people realize
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Dec. 27, 2023, 11:00 AM UTC By Simon Rosenberg, Democratic strategist
As we head into 2024, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats are on the back foot for next year's elections. But there are three reasons I am optimistic that 2024 is going to be a good year for Democrats:
First, PresidentJoe Biden has kept his central promise in the 2020 election: that he would lead the nation to the other side of Covid, successfully. The pandemic has receded. Our economic recovery has been better than any other G7 nation. GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.9% last quarter, and more than 3% for the Biden presidency. We have the best job market since the 1960s and the lowest uninsured rate in U.S. history. The Dow Jones broke 37,000 this month for the first time. Wage growth, new business formation and prime-age labor participation rates are all at historically elevated levels. Prices fell — yes, fell — last month. Rents are softening, and gas prices and crime rates are falling. Domestic oil and renewable production are at record levels. The annual deficit, which exploded under Trump, is trillions less today.
The strength of the president's record is only matched by the strength of his party.
Consumer sentiment has risen sharply in recent weeks, and measures of life, job and income satisfaction are remarkably high. There is no doubt that recent years have been hard — Covid, an insurrection at the Capitol, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated OPEC price hikes, global and domestic inflation — but it is increasingly clear that America is getting to the other side of this challenging period, and are in a far better place than when President Biden took office.
Second, the strength of the president's record is only matched by the strength of his party.I don't think it is widely understood how strong the Democratic Party is right now. The party has won more votes in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done in modern American history. Over the last four presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the popular vote, their best showing over four national elections since the 1930s.
In both 2022 and 2023, Democrats prevented the historical down ballot struggle of the party in power and had two remarkably successful elections. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats' statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states. That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.
This year, Democrats flipped a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin; defeated a six-week abortion ban in Ohio; kept the Virginia state house, debunking the idea that Republicans could hide behind a 15-week abortion ban; and took state legislative seats, municipalities and school board seats across the country. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, grew his margin of victory from 2019, and Republicans lost mayoral elections in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Jacksonville, Florida, two of the largest GOP-controlled cities in the country. And in over three dozen state legislative special elections around the country, Democrats outperformed 2020- an election we won by 4.5 percentage points — by an average of 5 percentage points.
While in 2022, Republicans could point to gains in New York and California to offset their losses in the battleground states, there were no places in 2023 where they outperformed expectations. A blue wave washed across the U.S. in 2023, and this ongoing strong performance of the Democratic Party in election after election, in all parts of the country, should fill Biden's supporters with confidence.
Trump has, in political parlance, the highest "negatives" of any candidate perhaps in our history.
Finally, while Democrats keep winning, conventional wisdom continues to overly discount Trump's historic baggage and MAGA's repeated electoral failures. Despite these repeated failures, Republicans are on the cusp of nominating Trump again, who this time is an even more degraded and dangerous version of MAGA than he was in 2020.
Two things have happened to Trump since 2020 that are going to make it very hard for him to win in 2024 — the stripping away of women's reproductive rights, and his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and end American democracy for all time. Additionally, this year courts have already determined that he sexually abused journalist E. Jean Carroll in a department store; oversaw a yearslong financial fraud; and led a party-wide effort, involving hundreds of Republican leaders and thousands of willing allies, to overturn the last election, culminating in a violent attack on Congress.
Democrats will be able to argue that no one is more responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade than Trump; that his mishandling of classified documents is to blame for the most serious security breach in American history; that in concert with Russian President Vladimir Putin he will end the global liberal order that has brought America and the world unprecedented prosperity and peace; that he supports more dead kids in schools, a faster warming planet, lost health insurance for tens of millions of Americans and the end of American democracy for all time. Trump represents an unprecedented threat to the country, is even more extreme than 2020, and has, in political parlance, the highest "negatives" of any candidate perhaps in our history. It is going to be very hard for him to win next year.
For all these reasons, as we head into 2024, I am optimistic that Joe Biden and the Democrats will once again beat Donald Trump, and hopefully, this time, send MAGA into the dustbin of history where it belongs.
Simon Rosenberg
Simon Rosenberg is a veteran Democratic strategist and author of Hopium Chronicles on Substack.
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That was the first of his daily lies. Daily onslaught of all things Republican and calling everyone MAGA proves that.
Traitor Joe may be working hard for China, or Ukraine, or Russia, who knows where else the Biden Family raked in cash from?
2 billion form the Saudis, to Kusner, but thats fine yeah?
Is it?
Nice deflection.
Smooth.
Again with that outright lie?
Kushner didn't get 2 billion; his company did. The Saudis are expecting a return on their investment. If they don't get one whatever is left of that money will be gone.
As much as leftists can't stand the truth this was all done legally- which is the reason it was found out about so easily. No multiple third party LLC's like the Brandon clan trying to hide where the money came from. No "gifts" or payments to family members including kids that did nothing to earn the money. No obstruction from Garland and Weiss on those in the IRS and FBI that wanted to investigate Brandon's involvement.
If you don't think Garland, Wray, every federal DA, and state AG/DA aren't watching Kushner like a hawk for any small misstep in using the money; or misbilling/overbilling the Saudis- then you haven't been paying attention to our two tier justice system.
Make Biden 1 of 5
Right, senile old Joe is shoo-in for reelection. No need for the Dems to even show up to vote. /s
... it's as simple for me to vote in colorado as going to my mailbox.
Dow Jones Industrial Average
Is Biden increasing income inequality?
Will that average allow Americans to pay their debts?
Did Trump allow average Americans to pay their debts?
Yes.
Plus, he didn't make taxpayers pay for the college educations of people who took out loans.
Thank Trump for that.
Unconstitutionally by the way. Disqualifying him from running in 2024.
Of course it helps that the Democratic Party prevents any primary challenges, too. The Party is even going to fix Biden's screwed up primary schedule to cover his backside. Democrats will be rigging the election the way they always do.
Joe Biden has a strong record,
So the first sentience makes one believe the article is satire.
Gaslighted nonsense
Whatever happened to Joe's campaign promise to not run for reelection? Biden hasn't done much of anything outside consolidating NATO around Ukraine. As I keep telling right wing partisans, there isn't much the President can do to influence markets, so the slowing of inflation and robust job market is not something to praise Biden on.
The rest of the stuff in the article is about the Dem Party and not Cranky Uncle Joe. I do think Biden will do better simply because Dems are energized on anti-abortion, anti-populist and anti-Trump sentiments. Not on Joe's popularity.
It's too early to tell how well either side will fair come November.
Very true but it doesn't stop those in office and their supporters to taking the credit when the markets are up and deflecting to the other side when markets are down, just as it doesn't stop the critics from doing the same in reverse. Too many people are simply sheep who march for "their side" regardless and I believe their "side" will be more important come November.
Is it a surprise MSNBC would try to lie about Joes chances?
Not at all.
It has to push Traitor Joe's agenda upon its dimwitted audience.
America's economy leads the world post-Covid!
Is making a statement out of context better then out and out lying?
So the secret is bring the CPI up to 9% after getting it from Trump at about 2% and then celebrate when you bring it back to 4% and hope Americans buy your bullshit.
It appears your chart is now headed back in the wrong direction, we need to find a way to deflect from that as soon as possible.
We led the world pre-covid so Biden has accomplished absolutely nothing, He's fucking worthless.
To be fair to the senile, traitorous old bastard, he did warn us that we should “lower our expectations”.
You left out a horrid Foreign Affairs record, racist comments, and ZERO accomplishments in 50 years of federal work.
To be fair to the senile, traitorous old bastard, he accomplished a helluva lot for delaware banks. So much so that he became known as the senator from mbna.
Yet, his polling with independents on economic performance is very bad.
A month ago, as Biden was leaving the WH, a reporter shouted out:
”What’s your outlook on the economy next year?”
“All good,” Biden declared, and then added, “Take a look. Start reporting it the right way.”
If the reporting is unfair, he should hold a press conference and then a town hall, focusing on the economy. Taking questions from both press and public would provide an opportunity to make his own case, reported accurately.
Without a writer and a teleprompter? They would never let that happen.
Why do you think it’s a bad idea, Biden could control his economic messaging.
And yet, people still can not pay their legal debts.
Traitor Joe's economy did that.
Praising the economy while claiming that paying loans back "is just too hard" is fooling the idiots thinking the economy is good.
How do you spam your own articles with memes and still expect to be taken seriously?
Here's something for the Biden cheerleaders to cheer about. Biden poll numbers are going up. He ends the year at 39% approval rating which is up from the 37% just a couple of months ago.
Of course some would say he had nowhere else to go than up. Will that be enough to swell his voting numbers come November?
Yes, this is the one point in time MAGA will forever remember as that one golden moment when they believed Trump had a chance in 2024!