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Biden's vigorous SOTU speech aims to prove doubters wrong
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What's going on with the Biden State of the Union?
So big week in US presidential politics. Super Tuesday basically effectively ended both primaries for the Republicans and the Democrats. We now have two all but official candidates. Joe Biden gave his fourth State of the Union address this week. Big question around Joe Biden, is he up to the task? 75% of Americans say that he is too old to run for a second term, but he is a attempting to prove them wrong like he did last night in Washington with a vigorous speech where he spoke for an hour, which officially kicked off his campaign.
Biden spoke about themes of income inequality, he spoke in favor of aid to Ukraine, and he rolled out a couple of tax increases that Republicans don't like. There's a lot of risk in every public appearance that Biden gives these days because of the fact that Democrats are very concerned that he's going to make a verbal flub or that he's going to look physically frail. That did not happen last night, and I think that's a good sign for Biden for now.
But every time he goes on stage for the rest of the year, there's going to be concern about how old he looks. So the campaign can now begin in earnest. Biden didn't mention Donald Trump by name in the speech, but he did indirectly attack him, talking about how Republicans are the party of the rich and how the threats to democracy represented by this election. At least that's how Joe Biden wants to frame it.
Why Mitch McConnell is stepping down
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What are the implications of the retirement of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell from his leadership post?
This week Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell announced his intention to step down as leader of the Republicans after serving longer in that post than anybody else in American history. There are really two implications that I can see.
The first is that McConnell was basically acknowledging the inevitable. It was very unlikely that he would be able to stay on as leader after this Congress anyway. If Donald Trump wins the presidential election, then he almost certainly is going to push McConnell out of the job. And if he didn't win the election, there's a whole generation of Republicans in the Senate who are looking for an opportunity to step up. McConnell, at 82 years old, did not represent that new generation. So the time had come to pass on the torch, and McConnell chose this February to announce it.
The second takeaway is that McConnell is really giving the speech the Democrats are hoping Joe Biden would give. McConnell's only eight months older than President Joe Biden, who's running for a second term right now. And lots of questions have come up recently about Biden's fitness for office because of his advanced age. This is going to be an increasing problem for Biden as more and more Democrats start talking about it. But in the absence of any challenger, it looks like Biden's going to be the nominee and his age will just be a liability they all have to learn to live with.
3 themes to watch as US election season begins
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
With the Iowa caucuses coming up, what are the big themes to watch in American politics this year?
Monday of next week is the first day the official kickoff of the US presidential campaign season, even though it feels like it's already been going on for six years. It really only starts on next Monday with the Iowa caucuses begin. Donald Trump has a big lead in the Republican primary. Nobody's challenging President Biden on the Democratic side. And so here are three themes to watch throughout this election year.
The first is, can anyone beat Trump in the Republican primary? Right now, it's down to basically Trump, the top of a field of contenders. And then you have a distant second, former South Carolina governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. And in third place, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, with some also rans like Chris Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy, who don't really have a chance. Of that bunch, Haley is probably best positioned to make a deep run into the primaries because of her ability to consolidate the fundraising apparatus behind her in the last several months. DeSantis could still come on strong with a strong showing in Iowa, but it's really going to take a lot of money to last through the March Super Tuesday caucuses. And right now, Haley looks like the best bet. But to get there, she's going to need to win a state. Right now, she's behind in Iowa. She's close, but still behind in New Hampshire. And she’s still behind in her home state of South Carolina. So the thing to watch for is field consolidation in late January, maybe early February, And if Haley can actually get some momentum to beat Trump.
The second thing to pay attention to are Trump's criminal trials. And a major question for 2024 is how much do these things hurt him on the campaign trail? Certainly being prosecuted by the Democratic prosecutor in Manhattan and Biden's DOJ has helped Trump consolidate his position on top of the Republican field. But it seems like the conventional wisdom is that it probably hurts Trump in the general election. Now, this may or may not be true. Voters already have been accustomed to the fact that Trump's been accused of various crimes. Trump himself is running on delegitimizing the system that's put him on trial, and that's going to be a continued theme throughout 2024. And the question for the general election is right now, Trump is beating Biden in head to head polling matchups, which are not very reliable this far out. Does that advantage start to erode as Trump's criminal trial stay in the news throughout the summer? And what happens if he's eventually convicted of a crime? And the one to watch is probably the DC election interference case that the federal government has brought in the District of Columbia.
Final thing to watch for in 2024, what happens to the state of the economy? Biden's approval ratings are relatively low for an incumbent seeking reelection in the high thirties. That's a pretty bad sign. The economy's been fairly resilient so far with low unemployment and decent wage growth. But Americans are still saying they're very unhappy about the state of things. Inflation has been a huge part of that. High grocery prices, expensive services are all things that Americans are dealing with on a day to day basis. Does the economy flatline or tank in the first half of 2024, which would be a real disaster for the incumbent President Biden? Or does it continue to muddle along and potentially improve as inflation fades in the rearview mirror, which would be a tailwind for the incumbent? And you'd expect to see that in rising approval ratings throughout the spring and summer.
Thanks for watching. This has been US Politics in (a little over) 60 Seconds.
Ballot battle: Colorado vs Trump
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
Is the Colorado Supreme Court going to block Trump from appearing on the ballot there?
The answer is probably not, but they might. The Colorado Supreme Court, this week, ruled that former President Trump, cannot appear on the Colorado ballot on the grounds that he engaged in insurrection against the United States, which under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, bars a political candidate from appearing for federal office. Now, the Supreme Court is almost certainly going to take this issue up. This is a precedent that will be set for other states who are also trying to bar Trump from appearing on the ballot at all. And this puts the Supreme Court in a really difficult position. The court does not want to be in a position to intervene in what it sees as very political questions.
The most prominent example of them getting involved was, of course, the Bush v. Gore case in 2000, which basically handed the presidential election to then President Bush as they had to resolve a very narrow set of differences over what counted as a legitimate ballot in Florida. And in this case, the court is once again going to be asked to make a very political decision about who can run for president. The courts would much prefer that the political branches of the government make this determination, including Congress. And one legal argument they've made is that the 14th Amendment is not self-executing, but would in fact require Congress to step up and define what it means to commit insurrection against the United States.
There are multiple paths for the court to defer on this question, including the idea that the Senate has already acquitted President Trump of inciting an insurrection against the United States. But this is not an obvious position for the court to be in. They are certainly going to come out of this looking more politicized one way or the other. Either they bar the most popular and prominent Republican candidate from appearing on the ballot, which Republicans are going to say, suggest that we live in a banana republic, or they're going to say that Trump can go ahead and appear on the ballot, which will make Democrats to say, well, the court is completely politicized because the six Republican-appointed judges will always obviously going to side with the Republican presidential nominee.
A decision in this case could come quite quickly as the Colorado ballot deadline is approaching in early January and the court is going to need to weigh in here in order to set precedent for other states that are looking at doing something similar to what Colorado did.
So yet another unprecedented piece of a Trump presidential story is this case and Trump's norm, destroying political career continues to challenge the very foundations of the American Constitution. So lots to watch here. Stay tuned.
What Democrats and Republicans have in common this Thanksgiving
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What are three things that lawmakers have to be grateful for this Thanksgiving?
Well, the first is that they get to go home. Lawmakers reached a short-term deal to fund the government until January 19th, which means that they won't be around Washington, DC, beating each other up over levels of funding. That can all wait until 2024. They can go home and enjoy the holidays with their families and not pass much other legislation this year.
The second is that so far, the Inflation Reduction Act seems to be working to spur manufacturing in the United States. There are 22 new battery plants currently under construction. There's record investment in electronics manufacturing, and a number of European companies have announced their intention to expand green energy projects in the United States and not because of these subsidies. Now, of course, the real question about the success of the program is going to come when the subsidies stop, and you can judge how well the US has done in spurring this manufacturing in the US. But for now, Democrats are happy because it looks like the IRA is working. Republicans like the jobs, even though they didn't vote for the bill.
The third thing that both parties have to be grateful for is that there are no competitive primaries, which means that there's no choosing sides. There's no traipsing through the snowy fields of Iowa to campaign for one guy or another. Donald Trump is almost certain to win the Republican nomination, and Joe Biden faces no real challengers. So, both parties can marshal all their resources for the general election in 2024. And neither party is likely to go through a particularly divisive primary in the first half of the year.
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?
Meet Mike Johnson, US House Speaker & DC's most Googled person
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
Who is Mike Johnson?
Mike Johnson became the most commonly Googled person in Washington, DC, this week when he won a surprising bid for the House speakership after Republicans failed to rally around multiple nominations from across their caucus once they removed former speaker Kevin McCarthy from his seat several weeks ago.
Johnson is a fourth-term congressman from Louisiana who is somewhere in the middle of the Republican conference, If you look at his voting record and ideological positions. He's got a lot of attention from the media for his role, both in trying to overturn the 2020 election results and also some of his comments on Social Security, Medicare, and abortion. But this is really a mainstream Republican House member who is going to struggle in his new role as speaker, having no leadership experience or any experience in passing bills whatsoever.
That lack of experience will be tested almost immediately with the upcoming November 17th government shutdown deadline and a bipartisan push to provide up to $106 billion in additional aid for Taiwan, Ukraine, and Israel, and, of course, securing the southern border. That package probably would pass the House and Senate overwhelmingly once it comes together out of the Senate. But Johnson himself is trying to leverage his role as speaker, along with his fellow conservatives, to get cuts and appropriate spending starting in 2024.
And that's going to be the big story of early next year, because what's likely to happen is that Johnson will punt government funding and take the threat of a government shutdown off the table into January or maybe even April. And make the rest of this year, this fight about foreign aid.
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.
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