We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Biden's 2024 prospects slip even as Democrats make gains
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
How are President Biden's electoral prospects looking?
A year out from the 2024 presidential elections, numerous states throughout the US held elections this week, and Democrats had a pretty good night. A constitutional amendment protecting access to abortion passed in Ohio, and Democrats won the two chambers of the Virginia legislature, a rebuke to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, who won an unexpected election there just 12 months ago.
But over the weekend, some bad news came out for President Biden with a poll from The New York Times showing that Donald Trump was beating him in five of the most important swing states. So what does this mean for Biden? Well, the interesting thing here is that Democrats, in recent years, have done quite well with a highly engaged, high educated, high propensity voters, the kind of people who show up in off-cycle elections, in midterm elections, and special referendums and things like that. Republicans have done much better. And particularly Donald Trump has done much better with disaffected voters, voters who are less likely to show up, lower-income voters and lower-education voters. And that's why Trump has done so well in 2016, 2020 and could again do well in 2024.
The poll released over the weekend shows that Americans broadly think Biden's too old to be president in 2025 and that he polls quite poorly on the economy and foreign policy and a whole bunch of other issues with voters saying they would actually prefer a Republican candidate.
So what does this contradiction mean between the Democrats doing really well in the actual elections, yet Biden's poll numbers being relatively poor? It means that the 2024 election is probably going to be a pretty close, hard-fought battle. Biden's age is probably going to be a liability for him. And Donald Trump has an opportunity to pull the kind of inside straight in the Electoral College that he pulled again in 2016. All he has to do is flip three of the most important swing states probably Wisconsin, Georgia, and Arizona, are the three most important to watch. But a lot can change in a year. Biden's political fortunes could rise and fall. President Trump could end up being in jail. And we may end up with two other candidates. Who knows?
Biden's 2024 election vulnerabilities and strengths
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week on a Monday here in New York City. And yeah, everyone, everyone talking about those polls, New York Times and Siena showing that Biden is behind Trump, not just in overall popularity, but also specifically in how voters in key swing states will vote. And, of course, that's the Electoral College. That's how you actually get elected president of United States. So, yeah, Biden supporters very concerned about that. But we are a year away, so it is early.
Having said that, a few things that I think are worth paying attention to. Number one, 71% of Americans say Biden, 80-year-old Biden is too old to run for president. Look, very few people actually work regularly with an 80-year-old. So I get it. And in a year's time, I'm fairly confident he's going to be a year older. So this is not something that Biden can do much of anything about. And there is material downside. Having said that, Biden is more obviously aging physically where intellectually, you know, one one-on-one in small meetings, he's still actually able to hold down meetings reasonably well.
Trump, on the other hand, at least if you've watched him recently and I've seen a couple of his rallies, is very physically robust, intellectually seems to be losing a lot more of the zip on his fastball. And I suspect that once he gets the nomination, which is virtually certain at this point, he's going to get a lot more real time coverage, more people are going to see that. So it plays definitely against Biden. But I don't think it's quite as dramatic a gap as we presently see.
Other issues out there I think are harder to address. Illegal immigration, for example, which is now not just about border red states, but it's about blue sanctuary cities that were happy being sanctuary cities when they have many illegal immigrants coming in. But you suddenly bring them in. They say, wait a second, we were fine with sanctuary city in theory, but in practice, this isn't going to work. And you see this happening in New York. You see it happening in San Francisco, in Chicago, in a bunch of cities around the country, and also hard to address because you had very limited immigration. While the pandemic was on, people weren't moving. Two and a half years of pent up demand. Now they are. And the willingness of Biden to play hardball, specifically with the Mexican government and the southern Mexican border, which is where the people are coming up through so far, has not been what it needs to be. Hard to imagine that issue gets much better.
The one that can get better for Biden is the economy, where increasingly the US economy is significantly outperforming those of other advanced industrial democracies post-Pandemic. And while inflation is high, it is coming down, though from a high base. And rates, no one expects they're going to continue to be raised by the Fed. In fact, indeed, they may well come down a little bit next year and that soft landing will likely help soften Biden's numbers on that side. Having said all of that, foreign policy is now becoming a vulnerability for Biden in a way that it really hasn't been over the last year or so. And few Americans actually vote on foreign policy. But when you talk about a huge issue, like 100 billion US dollars going to support Ukraine for a war that increasingly looks like a stalemate, where the counter offensive talked about for many months looks like a failure, and where it was a bipartisan issue of support for Ukraine, it's now become a partisan issue of Democrats strongly supporting more money for the Ukrainians. Republicans saying that's been too much money for the Ukrainians. And when Trump gets the nomination, the Republican Party presently voting more with the Dems likely to shift away from that support. And so I can easily see an environment where Ukraine feels like it's getting partitioned, which no one will accept and therefore is an unacceptable reality when Biden is running for reelection. That's been a signature foreign policy of his and he will be vulnerable to the Republicans.
The other issue, of course, is the Middle East. Now, if you can contain the Middle East war to Gaza and Israel, probably won't have much impact come next November. But if it expands, the impact on oil prices as well as the likelihood that US forces in the region are directly involved in some of the fighting with Iranian Shia proxies across the region, Yemen and Syria and Iraq and Lebanon and maybe even with Iran itself. That's a vulnerability too. Not to mention the fact that right now Biden's getting only just above 20% support from Arab American voters in the United States who are really important in places like Michigan, where they're 5% of the voting population, or Pennsylvania, where they're over 2%, both of which are larger than Biden's actual victory in those states back in 2020 elections.
So he has vulnerabilities there. And increasingly, the Biden administration is worried that, you know, this is going to be a challenge and there's not a lot of things they can do to ensure outcomes that are better. So in an environment where domestic policy looks okay, but people aren't focused as much on it, they're not as happy as they want to be on a couple of core issues. And suddenly foreign policy is a vulnerability, that to me feels challenging. Now against all of that, you have the fact that Biden is the president and incumbent presidents always historically do better in the United States, even unpopular ones. They get a bump because they can drive the agenda and they can drive the media coverage. That continues to be true for Biden. It's one of the strongest arguments for him to actually run a second time.
Beyond that, you've got the abortion issue, which continues to play strongly for Biden, very badly for Republicans. It was a conservative Supreme Court with key Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump that rid the country of Roe versus Wade, which ended up which was a quite popular decision by the Supreme Court for the majority of red and blue voters across the country. And there's a backlash that you see there. It's also one of the reasons why Kamala Harris is no longer seen as much of a drag on the Biden administration. In fact, in many ways, Biden is seen as much of a drag as Kamala is, especially in this last vote. And that's because she's been given not just immigration, which is a loser issue, but she's also been given abortion, which has been a winner issue. And as she's talked around the country, she's done better on that front.
Final point, of course, is Trump's unfitness. And while this is all played in 91 indictments, some of which are very real cases, some of which are politicized, but this is going to become a bigger turnoff for independent votes as people spend more time focusing not on Democrat versus Republican, but Biden versus Trump once the nominations happen. That's a vulnerability, too. So a long electoral cycle that no one wants to deal with, with two candidates that most people are very unexcited about. I guess we're going to have to talk about it more. But that's where we stand right now.
That's it for me. I'll talk to you all real soon.
Is Biden's embrace of Israel a political liability for him?
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
Is Biden's embrace of Israel a political liability for him in the US?
President Biden this week gave a forceful speech from the Oval Office following up on a strong condemnation of the Hamas attacks on Israel two weeks ago. He's requested $106 billion in aid between Israel, the US southern border and Ukraine, and has made a forceful defense of the need for the US to spend money to protect democracies.
This is a bit of a risk for him, however, because, within the Democratic coalition, there are wide range of views on Biden's policies toward Israel. A CNN poll from earlier this week found that only 27% of younger voters found that Israel's military response to the Hamas attack was fully justified, in contrast to 81% of older voters. And younger voters are a key part of the Democratic coalition, and for President Biden represents a risk in next year's election because they could defect from him in key swing states and move to the independent third-party bid of Professor Cornel West, who has been far more critical of Israel throughout the course of his public life.
Overall, Biden is doing okay on the question of Israel. 42% of people in a Quinnipiac poll approve of his response to the Hamas attacks, and a similar number approve of his policy towards Israel overall. This is more people approve than disapprove, which is a sharp contrast to the -18 points approval rating that he has overall. So while Biden remains relatively unpopular, his foreign policy is doing okay. However, going into 2024, there's a key risk here. One, we have the risk of younger voters bolting, but two, a broader conflict in the Middle East, where the US is seen as supporting an Israeli ground occupation of Gaza or a regional conflict that leads to barrels of oil being taken off the market, could result in higher prices for US consumers and a worsening economic outlook that would significantly degrade Biden's chances of being reelected in 2024.
So the Middle East crisis is contained for now, is somewhat of an asset for President Biden. But his close embrace of Israel and the possibility of a broader expansion are both key risk points to watch in the 2024 election.
Thanks for watching. I'm Jon Lieber. This has been US Politics (in a little over) 60 Seconds.
- Biden’s auto dilemma ›
- Ukraine war sees escalation of weapons and words ›
- Biden lands in Israel with half an agenda ›
- Biden seeks urgent aid package for Israel, Ukraine ›
- ChatGPT and the 2024 US election ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Biden's second foreign policy crisis - GZERO Media ›
- Israel-Hamas war set to expand & directly involve US - GZERO Media ›
- Biden's 2024 election vulnerabilities and strengths - GZERO Media ›
Hunter Biden's legal issues are an opportunity for GOP
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Is President Biden's son Hunter a political liability for him?
This week, an extraordinary scene played out in a courtroom in Delaware as a judge rejected a plea deal that was negotiated by lawyers for President Biden's son Hunter over illegal possession of a firearm and tax evasion. Republicans have been criticizing the plea deal for weeks, saying it was far too lenient on the president's son, and reflected what they've called a two-tier justice system being pursued by federal law enforcement. One tier is attempting to prosecute former President Trump for mishandling classified documents and his role in trying to overturn the election results in 2020, and another that is giving the current president's son a slap on the wrist that would've provided him immunity from far more serious charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent.
The younger Biden has struggled with drug addiction and has been involved in what seems to be some very shady business deals, including serving in lucrative board positions for foreign companies, despite seemingly offering very little value other than his last name, and making significant sums of money selling his art to democratic donors and others trying to curry favor with the Biden administration. Despite this, President Biden has defended him and kept him close, even inviting him to the state dinner last month with Indian Prime Minister Modi. And though Biden sees no threat to his reelection campaign, Republicans see this as a massive opportunity to take one of Biden's biggest campaign assets, the appearance of his integrity, and turn it against him by painting Biden with a whiff of corruption, including unfounded allegations that he took bribes as vice president to interfere with an ongoing investigation in Ukraine.
Republicans are hoping to neutralize the charges being leveled against former President Trump in state and federal courtrooms and paint the FBI and federal law enforcement as deeply politicized. Republicans don't have to prove a thing for this tactic to be successful. With the amount of confusing information about what President Biden did and didn't do that will come out in congressional hearings and a likely impeachment inquiry later this year, it will be enough for even normal independent voters to start asking questions about the politicization of federal law enforcement, what Biden did and didn't do, and ultimately discredit the Department of Justice with a large segment of the most partisan Republican voters. These issues are not top of mind for voters this year. The economy is. But they do show how brutal and ugly the 2024 campaign season is going to be.
- Hunter Biden's crimes won't impact 2024 election ›
- Hard Numbers: Japan’s gaijin population grows, Fed bumps up rates again, Hunter Biden’s plea goes bust, India plays games with new tax, Italian grandmas enforce order ›
- Hard Numbers: Hunter Biden cops to charges, Brazilians bust shark fin racket, Pakistan and India face off on home grass, Aussies worry about China ›
Despite unpopularity, Biden remains the overwhelming favorite for the Democratic nomination
Joe Biden is a historically unpopular president.
Two and a half years into his term, Biden’s average job-approval rating is a dismal 39.1%. His net approval – the difference between his approval and disapproval ratings – is -16.3%, the second lowest of any modern US president at this point in their term (the top spot goes to Jimmy Carter). Even former president and current Republican frontrunner Donald Trump was more popular than Biden.
Biden is struggling not just with Republicans (duh) and independents (whom he won by double digits in 2020), but he’s also unusually weak among Democrats and Democratic-leaning constituencies. More than two-thirds of Americans – including a majority of Democrats – say they don’t want the president to seek a second term. About half of these cite Biden’s age and mental fitness as major reasons why. Already the oldest president in history at 80 years old, Biden would be 82 on Election Day and 86 at the end of a second presidential term.
Biden’s unpopularity threatens to hurt his reelection bid. While he’s still the narrow favorite against Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – the top GOP contenders –Biden’s lead seems to be shrinking, and Democratic elites are increasingly worried that the president’s age, deteriorating health, and weak public standing will lose them the White House.
It follows that Democrats will nominate someone else to replace Biden at the head of the Democratic ticket and maximize their chances of winning in 2024. Right?
Wrong.
There are three possible pathways for Democrats to get a non-Biden nominee (well, technically four if you count a sudden serious health incident): Either he exits the race willingly, he’s forced to drop out, or he’s defeated in a contested primary. None of these scenarios is remotely likely to happen.
As long as he remains (broadly) healthy, Biden will lead his party next November. Here’s why.
Biden won’t exit the race willingly
While a growing number of Democratic leaders privately tell me they wish Biden would voluntarily step aside, their hopes will almost certainly be dashed.
The president officially launched his reelection campaign on April 25; his ongoing push to sell Americans on “Bidenomics” and the strength of the US economy signals that he has not changed his mind. Indeed, First Lady Jill Biden spoke of his motivation to run earlier this year, telling an interviewer: “He’s not finished what he’s started, and that’s what’s important.”
Barring a major health setback that forces him out of the race, Biden will remain fully committed to being the Democratic nominee.
Forcing Biden to drop out would be challenging and could backfire
Getting Biden to exit the race would require a coordinated pressure campaign among Democratic elites that leans on the president to make room for a candidate more likely to beat Trump. This campaign couldn’t be kept under wraps; to succeed, prominent Democrats would have to make their worries about Biden’s reelection prospects known in public and pledge considerable money to the effort, threatening Biden’s primary campaign by forcing him to compete for a limited pool of donor dollars.
There’s zero upside and big downside for any individual Democrat to go out on a limb like this.
If too few others join and the “coup” fails, the “plotters” would not only get frozen out of positions in a second Biden administration but also risk losing their jobs as party officials. Quoting Omar Little, “You come at the king, you best not miss.” At the same time, the attempt itself would risk causing a deep schism in the party that hurts the Democrats’ performance in the general election (like Sen. Ted Kennedy’s challenge hurt Carter in 1980 and Pat Buchanan’s challenge hurt George H.W. Bush in 1992).
Even if the “coup” against Biden were to succeed, the natural choice to replace him would be Vice President Kamala Harris, who is even less popular among the voting public and would be more likely to lose to the Republican nominee. Yet as the first woman, Asian American, and African American to serve as vice president, she would be a difficult candidate for prospective primary challengers to dislodge.
Replacing both Biden and Harris would require unprecedented behind-the-scenes coordination from a two-person ticket sometime in the next six months to provide sufficient time to qualify for the ballot in early primary states. But this strategy would risk alienating Black voters and progressives, both key elements of the Democratic base, which would put Harris’s challengers on the back foot from the outset.
The difficulty of replacing both Biden and Harris at the top of the ticket disincentivizes Democratic elites from trying to force Biden out in the first place.
Defeating Biden in a contested primary would be an uphill battle
The two current challengers to Biden – wackos Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson – have little chance of winning even a single primary. And while Democrats don’t lack for other good options to nominate, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, none of them can boast the national profile or broad appeal across the Democratic Party that Biden does.
The fact is that though Biden is unpopular, he has already defeated Trump once and is the only Democrat with the national profile to match the former president. Always strong with Black voters – he won 61% of Black voters in the crucial South Carolina primary in 2020 – and moderate Democrats, Biden has also done enough on the policy front to get progressives to endorse him (including $2 trillion in pandemic relief and billions’ worth of generational investments in manufacturing, infrastructure, climate, clean energy, and health care), as Squad talisman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) did earlier this month.
A new Democratic candidate would need to develop a national profile, gain nationwide name recognition, and win the trust of key constituencies like Black and moderate voters – all in a relatively short period of time. With state-by-state ballot-filing deadlines starting in the early fall, challengers would have to enter the race in the next two months. Even if they were ready to do that, Biden has rigged the primary calendar in his favor by moving key states that swung heavily for him in the 2020 primaries – including South Carolina and Michigan – to earlier in the season. This built-in advantage deters would-be challengers from entering at all.
Hunter Biden's crimes won't impact 2024 election
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Will Hunter Biden's tax crimes impact Joe Biden's reelection in 2024?
No, I don't think it will, but certainly it is impacting the continued erosion of US democratic institutions. I mean, this will be used by the GOP to say that, "There's differential treatment between the Biden crime family and the Trump crime family." My personal belief is that these are not equivalent, and I'll be talking about that later in the week. But what that means is the DOJ and the FBI are going to be seen as increasingly politicized as organizations. That's really unfortunate for the US, but it doesn't have much impact on 2024.
How will the EU's AI Act look in practice?
This is an effort by the regulatory superpower, the EU, which doesn't have a lot of big tech companies, and it doesn't have a lot of heavy security or military industrial complex, but it does have technocrats in Brussels, and Margrethe Vestager in particular in charge of competition, riding herd on this, wants to make sure that the EU is the one that gets to set the rules. And they are working really hard on the Americans in the transatlantic conversations with their own Member States to see that it is not going to be a hub and spoke model where individual departments get to regulate, but instead where the EU as a whole sets the rules. Having said that, this is early days and nothing is going to be actually rolled out for a year or two, minimum, absolute minimum, which means this is still a space driven by the tech companies.
Finally, how will the US respond to a possible China-Cuba military training facility?
Well, they won't like it, and maybe they'll try to disrupt it, though they already have all sorts of sanctions on Cuba. So, it's not like you can do much to the Cubans economically. And if the Cubans as a sovereign country want to do business with the Chinese, that includes military engagement, yeah, they're not a democracy, so it doesn't represent the interests of the people, but neither is the UAE or Qatar or Saudi Arabia, and the Americans have bases there. And also, keep in mind, US military capabilities and surveillance on China, a hell of a lot greater in China's backyard than China's abilities on the United States. At the end of the day, it's kind of open competition and the Americans are going to have to compete harder and continue to be stronger. And the CHIPS Act has done that. Maybe we'll see more of that in other areas, too.
US President Joe Biden and VP Kamala Harris during Biden's second State of the Union address.
It's official — Biden is running
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday officially announced he's running for a second term. As was widely expected, he kicked off his reelection bid in a video message on the fourth anniversary of his 2020 campaign launch.
The clip is entitled "Freedom," which Biden says is under threat in America from Republicans who want to undermine democracy, cut entitlement benefits, ban "woke" books, or take away voting rights. The footage is heavy on imagery of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection. It also features VP Kamala Harris closely working with Biden — although he mentions neither Harris nor his presumptive rival, former President Donald Trump, by name.
The US president, 80, now ends any remaining speculation that he might change his mind, a shock move that would have opened the field to other Democrats who, like many Americans, are still concerned about Biden’s age. He must now be in campaign mode 24/7 and no longer has the luxury of hiding from the cameras.
Making it official means Biden will soon be able to start fundraising. It also means that whatever he does as president from now on will be viewed through a 2024 campaign lens. Meanwhile, a majority of voters from both parties remain meh on a Biden-Trump rematch, which is still more likely than not.
So c'mon Americans, let's do it all over again!
Biden shifting to center ahead of 2024 reelection bid
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
How are President Biden's reelection plans affecting his policies?
The 2024 presidential election is already heating up, with the Republican field growing more crowded by the week, and President Joe Biden angling for a reelection campaign, despite speculation about his advanced age. So far, Biden has only drawn one potential primary challenger, 2020 candidate Marianne Williamson, who he can likely ignore. And as of today, it looks very likely that he'll be the Democratic nominee, with an announcement of his campaign coming sometime this spring, perhaps as soon as April. After two years promoting progressive policies like student loan forgiveness and a massive climate and healthcare bill, Biden is now attacking to the center, with pivots to the center in three critical areas: crime, immigration, and spending.
On crime, the President recently announced his support for a Republican effort to block a local District of Columbia Bill, which will mark the first time in over 30 years that Congress overrode a local bill in the capital city. This has angered many of Biden's allies on the left who support independent statehood for DC, but a huge vote in the Senate will demonstrate the fear that Democrats have of being seen as soft on crime.
On immigration, though Biden started off his presidency with the slew of progressive immigration actions that drew praise from Democrats, after two years of rising encounters on the Southern border, and verbal criticism and legal challenges from the Republican Party, the Biden administration is trying to take a more centrist approach to immigration, combining new opportunities for immigration with increased border enforcement, including most controversially reimplementing the practice of detaining asylum seekers, asylum-seeking families, which has led to some outcry from Biden's allies on the left.
Finally, on the budget, Biden is pivoting from arguing that the US needs to be investing in infrastructure and social spending to a plan to control deficits through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts. This effort is mostly designed to make Republican proposals for balancing the budget look unreasonable, but also will allow Biden to stake out centrist territory as a fiscal hawk after spending a lot of money in his first two years.
Policy-wise, 2023 is going to be largely about setting the stage for 2024, as Congress remains gridlocked on most issues and Biden's strong signals that he will be a candidate for President next year, despite his advanced age, will continue to drive his attempts to appeal to the middle, confident that the progressive left will not abandon him because of their acute fear of the one thing that they want least of all; Republican rule.