Where does Joe Biden Rank Historicalally in the United States after Trump Runes? The Case of the Reemergence of the House of Representatives
While there was an audible sigh of relief in many parts of the country after President Joe Biden won the 2020 election, some Democrats might feel that Trump’s reemergence is good news for the party. After all, Biden, who has said it is his “intention” to run again, seems to have the magic formula for defeating Trump. The contrast that he presents is powerful because he presented a stable, experienced and low key political leader. Trump would bring together Democrats behind Biden and allow the President to raise campaign funds.
The odds that the Senate will stay in place looks better than they have been in the current cycle, and there are some who believe Democrats might be able to gain control of the House.
Public polls show Biden’s job approval rating is consistently below 50%, and often well below that, in all the states most likely to determine the Senate majority – even though they’re almost all states he carried in 2020. Over the past three decades, it has become increasingly rare for Senate candidates on either side to win election in states where voters hold such negative views of a president from their own party.
Where does Biden rank historically at this point in his presidency? Using Gallup’s awesome presidential job approval center, we can track where recent Biden’s recent predecessors stood in the final stretch before the midterm election in their first term.
But the president ends the year in better political shape than Trump, and appears to have stabilized his slump. 25% of Democrat-aligned voters wanted him to be their nominee. Now that figure is 40%. The advantage a sitting president usually has against a primary challenger is further strengthened by those who want someone else.
This tension is part of the double negative election, where most voters are questioning the integrity of each party. Its impact is evident in the contrasting ad strategies of the two sides. Democrats have spent a lot of time raising doubts about their Republican rivals, especially on abortion and their personal ethics, even though Republicans have spent a lot of time tying them to Biden. The Republicans are trying to nationalize the Senate races, while the Democrats are trying to personalize them.
Moreover, defending reproductive rights and democracy were a not-so-subtle reminder to voters about the threat that a radicalized Republican Party posed to the nation. Biden found a way to make the midterms about something other than himself by focusing on these issues. Meanwhile, Trump did what he liked to do — draw attention to himself in a move that largely backfired.
Bryan Bennett, lead pollster for Navigator, says that the election is weird because of that. People are having to make tradeoffs between their immediate economic concerns and the power of the incumbent party. But at the same time, they know that same incumbent party is the one that is going to protect that fundamental human right” on abortion.
Noble says Kelly is benefiting from campaign fundamentals: the Democrat has significantly outspent, and also more successfully occupied the center, than his Republican rival. But Noble also believes that Kelly is surmounting disenchantment with Biden in part because some voters are already looking past the president as they assess the parties. Noble says that the job approval of the president is not having an effect. You are not seeing a direct connection to the Senate vote if you pat Joe Biden on the head.
The four Democrats who won in Trump-favoring states in November show it is possible for personal preferences to outweigh assessments about the country and the president. In 2020 Susan Collins of Maine won reelection even though more than three-fifths of voters disapproved of her, an incredibly high number, and thus she received support from other voters who disapproved of Trump.
The national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll released last week offered the latest snapshot of this divergence. The Republicans had the choice of which issue they considered most important in the future. A comparable share of Democrats picked preserving democracy (32%), abortion (21%) and health care (15%). Independents voted based on the priorities of the two parties, with inflation, immigration, and democracy on one side, and health care, abortion, and democracy on the other. Voters without college degrees tended to stress inflation, while voters with four years of college education leaned more toward democracy and abortion. The survey did not include crime, but it has provoked the most concern from Republicans and non-college educated voters.
Given these disparities, Democrats everywhere are stressing issues relating to rights and values, particularly abortion, but also warning about the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his movement. Since June, as CNN recently reported, Democratic candidates have spent over $130 million on abortion-themed ads, vastly more than Republicans.
The Concrete Isn’t Set yet: Democratic Candidates and the Importance of Jobs in the United States During the First Three Years of the Biden Era
In the long run, the most important of these may be the argument that the incentives for domestic production embedded in the trio of central Biden legislative accomplishments – the bills to rebuild infrastructure, promote semiconductor manufacturing and accelerate the transition to a clean energy economy – will produce a boom in US employment, particularly in manufacturing jobs that don’t require a college degree.
But those plant openings are mostly still in the future and only a few Democrats (such as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Arizona Sen. Kelly, and Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan) are emphasizing those possibilities this year.
The Inflation Reduction Act allows Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices is one of the main features of the Democrats’ legislation. According to Democratic pollster Geoff Garin, highlighting specific initiatives can allow individual candidates to overcome negative judgement on Biden’s economic management. His main concern is that too many Democrats are sublimating any economic message while focusing preponderantly on abortion.
The founder of Somos Votantes, a group that helps mobilize Hispanics for Democratic candidates, says that Republicans have not convinced voters they have a specific answer to the economy. “The concrete is not set yet,” she said recently after a day of door-to-door canvassing in Phoenix. “There is still a way to move people, connect with people.” The group stresses a message that tries to bridge the kitchen tables/values divide, by emphasizing that Democrats are committed to providing opportunities to help people meet their obligation to their families, while Republicans are focused on taking away rights.
Compared with January, there’s been a steeper increase in support for nominating someone other than Biden among Democratic-aligned voters of color (from 43% to 53%) than among White voters (from 57% to 63%) and among independents who lean toward the Democratic Party (from 60% to 77%) than self-identified Democrats (from 48% to 53%). Younger Democratic voters are less enthusiastic about a Biden-led presidential ticket than older voters are, with over half of those under the age of 35 wanting someone else at the top of the ticket.
The dividing line was college. Democrats held a 13 point advantage over those with a bachelor’s degree. Republicans held a 15 point advantage among people with no one.
In taking over the House in 2018 and winning the Senate and White House in 2020, the winning Democratic coalition during the Trump presidency relied on a significant gender gap and on winning women by a wide margin.
But the poll showed that Republicans had entirely erased what had been an 11-point edge for Democrats among women last month in 2022 congressional races to a statistical tie in October.
The voters were just as knowledgeable about Trump as they were about the incumbent. Roughly 28% of voters said they intended their vote to express opposition to him, only a few points lower than the roughly one-third who said they were expressing opposition to Biden.
Biden defeated a lot of younger and more exciting candidates during the 2020 Democratic primaries and went on to defeat Trump in the general election. This was not a trivial accomplishment. Most Presidents have been reelected since World War II. Despite Trump increasing his total votes and having more supporters, he couldn’t prevent Biden from winning the election, as he had promised to return government to normal after the Covid-19 Pandemic.
The mood of the nation is sour today. A strong majority of likely voters, 64 percent, sees the country as moving in the wrong direction, compared with just 24 percent who see the nation as on the right track. Since the beginning of this year, the share of likely Democratic voters who believe the nation is headed in the right direction has fallen by six percentage points.
“Everybody’s hurting right now,” said David Neiheisel, a 48-year-old insurance salesman and Republican in Indianapolis. “Inflation, interest rates, the cost of gas, the cost of food, the cost of my property taxes, my utilities — I mean, everything’s gone up astronomically, and it’s going to collapse.”
A Survey of Arizona Congressional Elections to Test the Democratic Party in the Presence of a Higher-Order White House Candidate
The live caller telephone survey, using cell phones and landlines, of more than 1,300 adults and about 1,200 registered was conducted last week by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, well after the president’s State of the Union address. Where all adults are referred to, the survey has a margin of error of +/- 3.3 percentage points, meaning results could be about 3 points lower or higher. Where registered voters are referenced, it has a similar +/- 3.5 percentage point margin of error.
Control of the US Senate will be decided next week in cross-pressured states where most voters disapprove of President Joe Biden’s performance but also express unfavorable views about their state’s Republican Senate nominee.
Mike Noble, an independent pollster in Phoenix, thinks that Democrats could make a run for the presidency in Arizona. In a poll released Monday by his firm, OH Predictive Insights, Noble said Kelly narrowly led Masters, even though a clear majority of Arizona likely voters expressed a negative view on Biden. The polls found that almost 20% of voters who were unfavorable toward Biden also expressed negative views about Masters. Noble said those voters were backing Kelly over Masters by more than eight to one.
Democratic hopes over the summer that Biden’s approval rating would steadily rise through Election Day, lifting their candidates in the process, have been dashed largely because of the persistence of the highest inflation in 40 years.
“The big problem for Democrats is things have not gotten better in people’s eyes, regardless of what they have done in passing legislation and what good it might do in the future,” says Alan Abramowitz, an Emory University political scientist. “If inflation had come down from where it has been, they would be in better shape. But you can’t convince people that things are going better when their own experience tells them that it’s not.”
“Over the past twenty or thirty years, what we’ve seen is a growing nationalization of these congressional races where there is a closer connection between opinions about national issues and national political leaders and how people vote in these House and Senate elections,” says Abramowitz. “It used to be easier for incumbents to run pretty far ahead of a president from their own party’s approval rating based on their reputation in their state or district, their constituency service, name recognition, things that you gain from being an incumbent. The value has been decreased over time.
But four other Democrats in 2018 defied that trend to win in states where Trump’s approval stood at 50% or more. The four Democrats that won were incumbents Joe Manchin in West Virginia, Jon Tester in Montana, and Sherrod Brown in Ohio and challenger Kathy Sinema in Arizona.
J. B. Poersch, president of Senate Majority PAC, thinks that personal differences explain the high Democratic support for Biden. “I agree with Mitch McConnell on one thing: candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome in Senate races,” Poersch said. The Democrats have a good reputation for delivering for their states and the Republicans have a list of extremists who are out of step.
The CNN mid-October polls raised that possibility by showing Cortez Masto and Barnes still narrowly trailing even though they were attracting double-digit support among voters who disapprove of Biden. According to Gene Ulm, a Republican pollster, Republicans will more than likely vote against Biden because of their feelings for him. The reason, he argues, is that in the end, disenchantment with current conditions and Biden’s performance will turbocharge more turnout from Republicans, and depress turnout more from Democrats, than most models now anticipate. He says that the composition of the electorate is going to crush everything.
Such exceptions have become rare in modern US politics. Because Biden’s standing is so weak in so many places, to hold the Senate, Democrats will almost certainly need a lot more of them.
What will the next few months be like for the presidency of Donald J. Trump? CNN analysis of Trump and other epsilon nominees
Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment. You can follow him on the micro-blogging site. His views are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
It looks like former President Donald Trump is going to launch another bid for the White House. On Thursday, Trump told his followers to “get ready” for his return to the presidential campaign trail – and top aides have been eyeing November 14 as a potential launch date, sources familiar with the matter told CNN. According to Trump, if he wins, he would be the first person since Cleveland to win two elections in a row.
While Trump has been hinting at another run for months, the news would certainly send shockwaves through the political world. One of the most controversial political leaders in US history is Trump. And as we have seen with recent Supreme Court decisions like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – as well as the toxic rhetoric and support for conspiracy theories within the GOP – his presidency was enormously consequential.
Republican politics may, or may not, be at a moment of transition. How things shake out in the next few months will be critical to Trump’s prospects. On one hand, the failure of many of the ex-presidents own candidates in the recent elections is prompting more Republicans to say it is time to move on.
Trump’s appeal seems to be fading. A disastrous midterm election for many of his candidates in swing states, which reflected the fatigue over his incessant whining about 2020, meant voters rejected his brand in consecutive national elections. The toughest test for Trump’s talent for circumventing accountability is from the twin special counsel probes. And some Republicans are looking elsewhere. The CNN poll shows that when GOP voters are asked who they’d prefer, 47% have an alternative in mind. Nearly 4 in 10 of them pick Florida Gov Ron. DeSantis, who is untested on a national stage but already looms as a big threat to the former president.
Finally, it’s worth noting that a midterm win would energize Republican voters like little else. The out-party is often more motivated and prepared for political battle than the party of the incumbent, which at some level is worn down by the realities of governance.
Trump’s Theme: Trump Can’t Win! Trump Can Get His Way: Putting a Stand Up for the Future of Political Science and Social Media
And if Trump announces his candidacy, the Department of Justice is weighing the possibility of announcing a special counsel to oversee two sprawling federal investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his alleged mishandling of national security documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. We have seen Trump attacks former special counsel Robert Muller who oversaw the Russia investigation. It will be more difficult to prosecute Trump once he is a candidate. Trump will claim that the investigation is simply an attempt to remove him from the running.
The President could be facing a shaky economy and divisions within his party if Trump avoids prosecution. And if election deniers enter positions of power after the midterms, and Trump escapes any punishment for January 6, it’s likely he will take advantage of the loyalists who have infiltrated state and local election offices to make sure that victory is his. Trump’s experience in this rodeo will help him perfect the rhetoric and technique that helped him get into office. And now that Elon Musk has purchased Twitter, Trump could be reinstated – giving him a way to direct and shape the media conversation once again. Trump has not publicly indicated that he will come back, since he was banned from the micro-messaging service.
Republicans are making the argument that Biden doesn’t know how to run the country, due to his frequent verbal gaffes. That drumbeat will only grow louder if and when he decides to run for another term.
The Day After The 2022 Midterm Election: An Initial Constraint on President Donald Trump and the Misleading Demographics in the 21st Century
Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is a weekly opinion contributor to CNN, a contributing columnist to The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
The results of the 2022 midterm election have not been fully tallied and the crucial question – who will control Congress? – has not been answered. On this day after, we can draw some initial conclusions.
First, there was no red wave, much less a red tsunami. Predictions of a huge Republican victory at the polls did not materialize. It was a deeply disappointing election for the GOP. In addition, it was a disastrous day for former President Donald Trump, who had hoped a Republican landslide would place him on a glide path to the nomination to become the party’s presidential candidate in 2024.
The challenge to democracy is not over, unfortunately. Deniers won the election. The victorious ones were worse off than the non-election-deniers. They pushed the voters away by parroting Trump’s lies.
In exit polls, 28% of voters said they chose their House vote “to oppose Donald Trump.” Before this election, 37% of people said they had a favorable view of the former president. That should alarm the party.
On election night, Trump told an interviewer, “I think if [Republicans] win, I should get all the credit. I shouldn’t be blamed if they lose. He deserves most of the blame, according to the evidence.
The First Day in the GOP Preterm Elections: After Mehmet Oz, Josh Shapiro, Howard DeSantis, and Kevin McCarthy
They may well do it. Rep. Kevin McCarthy may replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, but even if Republicans take the House, the Democrats’ performance is little short of amazing. The party in power since George W. Bush in 2002 performed better under Biden.
Biden has said that he chose to run for President in order to save US democracy. Despite the results on Tuesday, his party can take solace in the fact that they achieved their goal. These elections were a victory for democracy.
Josh Shapiro defeated Doug Mastriano, who ran a campaign rife with antisemitic innuendo against his opponent, in the attorney general’s race. Trump’s election-denying allies lost a lot of contests.
The football star Herschel Walker could still win the runoff in December. He should never have been on the ballot, because anyone who heard him campaign or knew about his past knows it. The man thought fame would do the trick like it did for him. Mehmet Oz was endorsed by him for the Pennsylvania seat. John Fetterman was a key skill for a political candidate after suffering a stroke, and Oz lost to him.
On the Republican side, some party loyalists have a contender in mind. Donald Trump’s victory is far from certain, even after he received a dedicated base of support and was the only official candidate in the race. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who, at 44, is closer in age to the former President’s oldest children, has revved up the GOP base with a series of policy wins and culture war battles.
Early voting in New Hampshire and South Carolina began on Saturday, and the first state where Trump spoke was at a rally for his White House bid. The defeated 2020 GOP candidate faced rising questions about regaining control of the Republican Party after a low energy start to his third presidential campaign, while the trip came with bad reviews of his previous campaigns. After his often disastrous interventions in swing-states during last year’s midterm elections, some key party leaders are skeptical he can win a general election.
To block Kemp’s reelection, Trump persuaded former Sen. David Perdue to run against him in the primary. The humiliation caused by the primary vote was felt by Perdue and Trump.
Despite his awful showing, Trump plans to declare his candidacy soon. Republicans would like him to just focus on golf, but Democrats find the prospect hard to stomach. The elections showed that he is a threat to the party.
The First Five Years of Presidential Campaigning: The Predictions for the 2010 Midterm Reionization of the United States and a New Hope for the Future
Soon, Americans will probably have to begin enduring another season of presidential campaigning by the most disruptive candidate in living memory, a man who has shown only disdain for democracy. Facing that prospect, it’s good to know the country took a step toward sanity this week, and that democracy fared rather well.
Yet the red wave so many anticipated didn’t happen. Votes are still being counted in key states and districts, but even if Republicans end up with control of one or both chambers, their majority will be extremely narrow. It’s safe to say Democrats will not face the “shellacking” they experienced in 2010.
The culmination of two difficult years, during which Biden has repeatedly come up short, is the result of this year’s midterms. At each stage of his tenure, Biden has achieved what many fellow party members thought impossible.
But things didn’t get easier for Biden once he entered the White House. Covid continued to wreak havoc on the country and the economy. Despite a 50-50 split in the Senate and Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema pitting themselves against the administration at various points, Biden was still able to move a formidable legislative agenda through Congress, overcoming fierce Republican opposition and even winning a few GOP votes along the way. The American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act stand up as a historic trifecta – a legislative track record arguably more significant than any that we have seen since President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Besides the three major pieces of legislation, Biden also appointed more federal judges by August than any president at that point in the term since John F. Kennedy, according to the Pew Research Center. Biden has also used his executive power to make progress on issues like fighting climate change, bolstering the US’ economic competitiveness, and forgiving student debt.
The Numbers Aren’t Counting in the Name of a Long-Term Candidate: The Age of Donald J. Biden
Trump’s numbers against other Republicans are far weaker and, again, heading in the wrong direction. A 40-point advantage for Trump against other named candidates has been trimmed to a low double-digits.
Voters’ doubts are based on Biden’s age, so “watch me” alone is unlikely to satisfy them. After watching Biden in office for a couple of years, two-thirds of voters don’t think he should run again. So there’s that.
Biden is widely expected to seek reelection despite his age. At 80, he is the oldest person to serve as president. As inflation stretches Americans’ wallets and after the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, he has struggled with middling approval ratings.
There are always doubts about Biden’s ability to serve a second term, even after exit polling. One of the things Biden and his team must figure out is how to address something other than telling voters to watch him.
In-person interviews with election day voters to find a candidate who isn’t afraid of losing: A multivariate analysis of the national election pool
29% of voters think abortion is their top issue after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. About 6 in 10 voters felt negatively about the decision, with nearly 4 in 10 expressing anger. Republicans had an 11-point advantage over the Democrats when it came to which party voters trusted to handle abortion issues.
CNN Exit Polls measure views of early and absentee voters by phone and online, as well as in-person interviews with Election Day voters. They were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. Here you can read more.
There’s little appetite for a 2020 rematch in the coming presidential election, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, as majorities of registered voters within each party say they’d rather see someone new nominated in 2024.
Just 44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll said they’d prefer to see Trump win the party nomination in 2024, with an even slimmer 31% on the Democratic side saying they’d like to see Biden renominated.
The steepest drops in support for a Trump bid came among older Republican-aligned voters (from 55% of Republicans and Republican-leaners 65 or older supporting a Trump bid in January to 37% in support of one now), White voters with college degrees (from 31% backing Trump in January to 16% now) and those who describe themselves as very conservative (from 65% behind a Trump bid then to 42% now).
A random national sample of 1,208 people were drawn from a probability-based panel to conduct the CNN Poll. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.6 points; it is larger for subgroups.
The Pain of Biden and Donald Trump: Early Perceptions of the Race for a Rerun of the Most Turbulent White House in History
Even as President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump move toward a rerun of the most turbulent White House race in modern history, many voters are pining for a break from the past – and the present.
Regardless of whether or not voters want it, the race is on. Early perceptions of the contenders’ strengths are important since they shape the decisions of potential rivals and donors in the early money chase. Trump is already a declared candidate, although he could use a relaunch after a tepid start, and Biden is giving every sign he plans on running, suggesting he’ll let the country know for sure early in the new year.
The argument that Trump’s viability is damaged beyond repair is strengthened by his dinner at Mar-a-Lago with extremists with a record of antisemitism. A lackluster campaign made it easier for Trump to portray criminal probes as persecution, and so far they haven’t convinced anyone.
And yet, the former president’s allies, like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio, will be hugely influential in the new GOP House majority. Paradoxically, the failure of Republicans to do better in November means that a thinner majority will be easier for extremists to manipulate as they seek to turn Republican control of half of the Capitol into a weapon to damage Biden and help Trump in 2024.
Still, any president is deeply vulnerable to unexpected outside events that could splinter his approval ratings and chances of reelection. The oldest president in US history will have to answer the age question every now and then. Republicans will seize on any slackening of the campaign trail pace, or even a cold, as proof he’s unfit for a second term. And while Biden appears healthy, the chances of an adverse event increase for people in their 80s.
New Hampshire gov. Chris Sununu: “It isn’t for sure” that Ron DeSantis is running for the Republican nomination in 2024
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that right now DeSantis would probably win the Granite State’s GOP primary. Sununu, who told Bash he’s considering his own White House bid in 2024, also took a swipe at Trump’s demeanor and the size of his event, which was an address to party activists rather than one of his seething rallies in a state where he won the 2016 GOP primary.
When he won a fourth two-year term in New Hampshire, Sununu said it was un-American to be a country where the best chance for future leadership is the leadership of yesterday.
According to a new CNN poll, Ron DeSantis has more support among Republicans and Republican leaning independent voters than Trump, with 75% of Republicans and Republican leaning independent voters having a positive opinion of the congressman.
Trump announced his latest presidential bid just a week after the midterms last month. But DeSantis has taken a different approach: saying nothing about 2024 and letting speculation swirl. Several consultants in Florida have said DeSantis likely won’t jump into the race until after state lawmakers meet for their annual legislative session, which points to a May or June announcement next year.
Much of the conversation in the leadup to the midterms revolved around how Republicans were clamoring for former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, while Democrats wanted President Joe Biden to stay away. A few weeks after the election, the picture looks different.
Instead, the opposite has happened. Major potential challengers like California Gov.Gavin Newsom never said they would run against Biden. Almost every power player in the Democratic Party has said they will back Biden, if he decides to run again.
The same cannot be said for Trump. Even after he declared his run for the presidency last month, just one senator has endorsed his bid for another term. Potential GOP challengers are going to compete in the primary.
At this point in the race, Trump is the best choice among Republican candidates because of his name recognition.
Biden’s status as a candidate has not been helped by the classified documents saga: What will he do when he gets into the spotlight?
Still, there can be little doubt that Biden’s not been helped by the classified documents saga. Most Americans believe that he did something unethical in handling the classified material.
Since then, his political standing has taken a small but noticeable hit in polling, while Trump seems to have slowed what had been a downward slide in Republican primary surveys after a historically poor performance by the GOP in the midterms.
About 60 percent of people searching for Biden in the last two weeks searched for Trump. This is the highest percentage Biden has reached when compared with Trump since the late summer and fall of 2021. In early September of 2021, searches for Biden peaked after the US withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan.
Neither of these are big dips, and both are within the polls’ margin of error. But they’re notable when looked at together and within the context of the average of polls – Biden’s average approval rating is down about 2.5 points from two weeks ago (when he was at his highest level since 2021).
A look at the number of people searching for Trump on Google tells the story of his inactivity. More people are not looking at him this month than in any month since he got into the presidential race.
In reality, Trump has a commanding 30 point lead over Ron DeSantis in a hypothetical Republican primary.
The question is what happens when Trump gets back into the limelight, as he has been this weekend. Will it remind Republican voters of what they like about him? Or will it remind voters of what they do not like about Trump?
There was also something jarring about a former president who tried to steal the last election – and incited an insurrection to try to cling to power – campaigning and being embraced by supporters as if nothing happened.
There is also a clear sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and feels that certain sections of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his turbulent one-term presidency.
I don’t think he’s very disloyal because when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal. But it’s not about loyalty – but to me it is, it’s always about loyalty – but for a lot of people it’s not about loyalty,” Trump told reporters, including CNN’s Kristen Holmes, aboard his jet this weekend.
For instance, the ex-president honed in on one of the strongest areas of the DeSantis record for many conservative voters – his frequent fight against federal Covid-19 restrictions and recommendations. Trump claimed the team was trying to rewrite history about his record. “There are Republican governors that did not close their states,” Trump told reporters. Florida had been closed for a long time.
He came to New Hampshire and gave a very boring speech. Sununu told Bash they received a response that the man read his teleprompter, stuck to the talking points, and went away. “So he’s not really bringing that fire, that energy, I think, that a lot of folks saw it in ’16. I think, in many ways, it was a little disappointing to some folks. … So I think a lot of folks understand that he’s going to be a candidate, but he’s also going to have to earn it. That is New Hampshire.
Judging by his remarks about DeSantis and evangelical leaders, Trump is not yet ready to acknowledge that reality. Though his decision to visit an ice cream parlor late in the day in South Carolina was an unusual foray into retail politics and first-person contact with voters.
Trump appeared Saturday to understand that his two years of fury over the 2020 election, which he still falsely says was stolen from him, may have turned off voters in 2022, when many of the election-denying candidates he promoted in swing states lost – potentially costing the GOP the Senate.
But he hasn’t abandoned all of his standard rhetoric. On Sunday evening, he called into a rally for one on his favorite election-denying midterm candidates – failed Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who is still falsely insisting she won in November. In New Hampshire on Saturday, a former president faced criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia as well as institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020.
We are going to stop the weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all investigation, investigation,” Trump said. He said his resistance to such probes was proof that the quality that many Republicans were fond of, helped propel him to the White House.
He said that he will challenge the establishment again and again, if he gets your vote next year.
The Pandemic of 1918 and the Rise of the Cold War: How Donald Trump might look backward at the State of the Union or the 2020 Election
Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He works for Congress with the Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The author’s views are his own, and they are expressed in this piece. View more opinion on CNN.
The 1918 influenza outbreak left millions dead in its wake and impacted daily life in ways similar to our own recent coronavirus pandemic. But in popular culture, it vanished largely without a trace nearly as soon it was over. The roaring 20s were the time when Americans were ready to move on from war and pestilence.
A similar dynamic is what one senses today. With the economy coming back to normal and the swine flu almost over, many Americans seem more prepared for politics that focuses on new challenges rather than old battles over mask mandates.
At its best, President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech offered that forward-looking vision, highlighting his administration’s commitment to rebuilding America’s supply chain and spurring innovation. There is a chance that our political system will offer up a sequel no one wants.
Republicans who want to push back against the excesses of the left understand that the DeSantis model can work at the state level.
Potential challengers like former US Ambassador to the United NationsNikki Haley have an uncertain path to the nomination, but also offer a different set of priorities. And many party operatives will admit that a Trump campaign that looks backward – at the indignities of the pandemic or his false claims about the 2020 election – will risk coming across as detached from the challenges facing working-class Americans.
If a younger candidate tried to push a more seasoned candidate aside, it could backfire. Just ask former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, who learned the hard way that attack lines that seem to focus on an older candidate’s memory or hearing do not play well. Any politician campaigning against a more senior opponent would have to be careful not to dismiss the older Americans ability to vote.
The Good, the Bad & the Ugly: When Donald Trump and Barack Biden stepped on to the White House Address the History of China, the United States and Israel
But the fact remains – the incumbent President and his presidential predecessor were alive for the creation of NATO, the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the state of Israel, the first color TV broadcast and other events that all but approximately 5% of Americans only know of from history books.
There is a wisdom in age and valuable perspective in having seen the long sweep of history. The President and the former President should be aware of the requirement for new voices and ideas to fulfill the demands of their jobs and have foresight to do so.
Both Trump and Biden fulfilled their stated primary objectives as President –Trump, to draw attention to the plight of the “forgotten men and women of our country” and to raise questions about the logic of globalization that turned a blind eye to the rise of China, and Biden, to seek a return to something closer to normalcy after the four chaotic years that preceded him.
Lots of surveys, including Marist’s, have shown that members of Biden’s own party think he’s too old and they’d have a better chance of winning the White House with someone else – although there’s been little agreement on who that should be.
A younger Democrat who taps into the discontent over the Dobbs decision or a Republican candidate speaking as a parent of children about the need to better protect them will allow for a much needed passing of the torch.
The State of the Union: Paul Biden, the GOP, and the Cascade of Effort and Decency in an Aftermath
Editor’s Note: Bill McGowan is the founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group, a global communications coaching firm based in New York. He is the author of “Pitch Perfect: How to Say It Right the First Time, Every Time.” Juliana Silva is a strategic communications adviser at Clarity. The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the authors. There are more opinion articles on CNN.
Perhaps more than any other politician, Biden is the king at eviscerating his political opponents with a high-beam smile. Just ask Paul Ryan, who experienced that firsthand in a 2012 vice presidential debate.
During his State of the Union address he made fun of the Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill in favor of the jobs it will bring to their home districts.
The question heading into the State of the Union address was: Would Biden’s empathy and decency stand out as much without his chaotic and mean-spirited adversary there to accentuate the stark contrast?
The answer, it seemed, was yes – in part thanks to a new breed of House Republicans more than willing to create chaos in the absence of former President Donald Trump himself.
Members of the GOP just can’t help themselves. They might have thought that disrupting Biden on the House floor would represent some kind of ambush.
The President turned tables on his critics by swatting the attacks away. If the GOP were to watch Biden’s videos, they would know that ruffling his feathers is hard. You don’t spend decades in Washington, DC, and still sport a thin skin.
During the State of the Union, Biden made a point of bringing vigor to his delivery, perhaps in an effort to prove there’s still plenty of fuel left in that 80-year-old tank. But even for candidates almost half Biden’s age, the campaign trail can be a grueling marathon.
But Biden has made a career out of being underestimated. The State of the Union made a loud statement when it said that underestimation of me was at your own peril.
Five Things About Ms. Haley: A U.N. Ambassador, Vpresident, Treasurer, and the Man Who Could Become a Senator
Haley is named after her. The former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador under Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley has called for “generational change” in the party after three disappointing election cycles for Republicans. She is the only one who is polling in the single digits. Here are five things to know about Ms. Haley.
The vice president is Mike Pence. The former vice president has stumped for midterm candidates, toured early-voting states to sign a memoir and poached staff members from rivals. But his popularity with Republican voters has fallen since he refused to try to block the 2020 election, and he is reluctant to criticize Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence appears in no hurry to make a 2024 decision.
Mike Pompeo is the Secretary of State. Mr. Pompeo has an imposing résumé: congressman, C.I.A. director, secretary of state. A new memoir allowed him to tour and test out a presidential message. A home-state paper, The Kansas City Star, said the book reads “like a guy at a bar trying to show his toughness.” Mr. Pompeo has said that he would decide on a bid “in the next handful of months.”
Other Republicans. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire are seen as weighing 2024 bids. The possible field is rounded out by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Liz Cheney, who lost her House seat after helping lead the Capitol riot inquiry.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/us/politics/bidens-physical-doctor.html
The Changing Landscape of Presidential Life After the 2016 Presidential Reionization Resummation: The White House’s President’s View of the Demographic Landscape
The White House press secretary said the president said this before the doctor memo was made public. He keeps up with his schedule and if you watch him, you will see that.
The president has undergone physical therapy in order to regain his flexibility, which is a result of a number of different conditions, according to Dr. O’Connor.
That topic, though, is more complicated than it seems, reflecting voters’ complex attitudes toward the two men, which in both cases fall far short of either an enthusiastic endorsement or a definitive rejection.
The recent survey findings don’t show how the presidential primary landscape will develop in the months to come or how public opinion might change in response. They help create a more complete picture of where things are now.
It’s good news for the president. He has had two low marks since the Afghanistan withdrawal in August of 2021. He’s benefitting in the survey from a rebound with Democrats, and in this hyper-partisan atmosphere, a president needs his base shored up.
whites without a college degree, those making less than $50,000 a year, voters under 45, and women who live in the suburbs are some of the factors that are leading to the biggest shifts. All are key target demographic groups, who helped Biden win in 2020. He took away some of the voters from Trump who were making inroads with these groups.
The reason they’re open to Biden’s message is because they are Democrats and independents who lean Democratic. There are three possible reasons.
That’s significantly better than Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who the poll also tested.
Still, the percentage saying they would be better off with someone else hasn’t budged. It’s important to know that voters with college degrees, those who make more than $50,000 a year and parents with young children are more likely to say they would be better off with another person.
There were 570 Democrats and independents who lean Democratic. Where they’re referred to, it is a +/-. The margin was 5.1 percentage point. The people interviewed were Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. This subgroup has a margin of 5.7 percentage points.