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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.
- Voting booths wait for Election Day at Lane County Elections in Eugene.
- USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
The Democrats post some wins – but continue to worry about 2024
Meanwhile, south of the border, the Democrats and Joe Biden enjoyed a much-welcomed series of wins, picking up the Kentucky governorship, the Virginia legislature, and a pro-choice ballot initiative in Ohio.
The midterm success came just days after a new poll showed President Joe Biden badly trailing Donald Trump, his likely opponent, in key swing states.
As Politico reports, there are two different ways to read the Dems’ success. The first is that the party is actually doing better than people think, which is good news for Biden’s 2024 reelection bid.
The other is that the problem for the Democrats isn’t with their party or their platform, it’s with their president. Biden’s approval rating is currently at just 38.5%, and calls for him to make way for a younger Democratic contender are getting louder.
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?
Republican candidates line the Miami stage for Wednesday's GOP debate.
What this week’s vote and GOP debate mean for 2024
In a world obsessed with reading polls like prophecies, many are looking at Tuesday’s election results for evidence of where Americans really stand.
Despite Joe Biden’s lagging popularity, Democrats scored key victories on Election Day. They maintained control of the governorship in predominantly red Kentucky, made an impressive showing in Mississippi, and enshrined a constitutional right to abortion in Ohio. The abortion issue also helped Dems flip the House of Delegates and maintain control of the State Senate in Virginia.
So was Tuesday a harbinger of 2024?
Not if the five Republicans who took to the debate stage in Florida last night – former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott – have any say. With Donald Trump, who is 48 points ahead of second place DeSantis, refusing to take part, the debates are more of a pep rally for the Republican base than a competition at this point. But they reveal what the GOP thinks are winning and losing issues for the party.
Support for Israel was the biggest topic of debate, with candidates competing to display more support for American Jews domestically and Israel’s military abroad. National security followed close behind, and there was plenty of squabbling over who would be toughest on China. Meanwhile, the abortion issue got buried – it didn’t get mentioned until an hour and a half in.
But beyond the issues, Tuesday’s election results highlighted emerging threats to the GOP …
The power of the moderate Democrat: With the Republican Party reeling from the PR nightmare of taking three weeks to appoint a House speaker and the hard-right’s growing influence, many moderate Republicans and traditional conservatives are showing more of a willingness to shop around on the ballot.
Incumbent Democrat Andy Beshear’s win in Kentucky’s gubernatorial race and Democrat Brandon Presley’s narrow loss in his bid for the governor’s mansion in Mississippi are testaments to the power of the moderate Dem in suburbs, swing states, and even predominantly red ones like the Magnolia State, where Presley earned 47% of the vote.
Both candidates are being lauded as emerging political leaders because they can build coalitions, a strategy Democratic candidates running in inhospitable districts – and national elections – should heed. Beshear is one of the most popular governors in the country, despite running a state that voted for Trump by 26 points. His campaign leaned into the abortion issue and Medicaid access, rejected partisanship, and focused on jobs and the economy, gaining him cross-party appeal.
Abortion could help Biden’s popularity problem: We have seen what happened in Ohio before, and we're not talking about last August when Issue 1 – which concerned adding the right to abortion to the constitution – doubled turnout. Back in 2004, former President George W. Bush looked weak in the polls, so the GOP proposed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage in 11 key states, increasing socially conservative turnout in tight races among voters who might have otherwise stayed home.
Now, Democrats are taking a leaf from Bush’s playbook. At least 11 states are on track to have abortion-related measures on their ballots in 2024, including swing states like Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The election will almost certainly be close, and getting abortion on the ballot could overcome Biden’s lukewarm popularity and get Democratic and moderate voters to the polls in the states where he needs them the most.
In Ohio, 18 counties that voted for Trump in 2020 voted in favor of Issue 1. The same goes for 67 other Trump-won counties in the six states where abortion has been on the ballot since Roe v. Wade was overturned.
In previous debates, only former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley recognized that abortion restriction was a liability for the GOP. But following Tuesday’s election, DeSantis softened his stance, while Haley continued calling for compromise, and Vivek Ramaswamy said “male responsibility” and paternity tests were the answer.
The moral of the story: Even with Biden’s approval rating in the tank, this week's election showed how making a few key counties a little less red can be decisive – a strategy Democrats will no doubt be hoping to repeat in November 2024. Meanwhile, Republican candidates will prepare for the next debate on Dec. 6 in the hopes of wooing voters ahead of the first primary in Iowa on Jan. 15.Hunter Biden steps off Marine One at Ft. McNair, after spending the night at Camp David, in Washington, U.S., June 25, 2023.
Hunter Biden catches a gun case
Federal prosecutors indicted U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on three federal gun-related charges on Thursday. The indictments come after a plea deal the younger Biden believed he had struck with federal prosecutors dramatically fell apart at the last minute in July. Hunter now faces up to 25 years in prison for allegedly lying about his drug use on a federal form that was required to purchase a handgun in Delaware in 2018.
President Biden is at no legal risk from his son's indictment. But the charges are politically inconvenient to say the least. They come just days after the House GOP began an impeachment inquiry that centers on so-far-unsubstantiated allegations that President Biden used his political position to profit from his son’s business dealings.
On top of that, the trial – which will likely get under way next year – will now serve as counter-programming to the multiple trials in federal and state court of former President Donald Trump which are slated to start in the spring. That’s right, America: as the 2024 campaigns hit the homestretch, the DOJ will simultaneously be prosecuting President Biden’s son as well as his likely election opponent, Donald Trump. What could be better for a bitterly divided nation?
Mitt Romney will be defined by opposing Trump
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics:
Mitt Romney is retiring from the Senate. Will he be missed?
Utah Senator Mitt Romney and former Republican presidential candidate announced this week that he won't be running for reelection in the Senate to represent Utah in the next election cycle. Some people are speculating that this is because he might lose a primary challenge.
Romney remains pretty popular in his home state, but he does represent a dying breed of Republican, which is kind of a Reagan's Republican, Reagan's Republican. He's firmly from the pro-business country club wing of the party that has really been demolished by President Trump over the last several years as more populist Republicans, who have a stronger appeal to white working-class voters, have really taken over the party and trying to reshape it in President Trump's image. Romney was well-liked by some people in Washington, but not necessarily by his Republican colleagues in the Senate, where he was a bit of an oddball, supporting President Trump's impeachment, going against the tide of several other Republicans on a host of issues. And even though he ran as a conservative Republican in the 2012 nomination process that he won, he's now retiring with a reputation as a moderate Republican in today's party.
Romney always had kind of a difficult time fitting into the political world. He was obviously a businessman who was looking for ways to succeed, running as pretty liberal on issues like abortion when he was governor of Massachusetts and then positioning himself as, quote, “severely conservative” when he ran for the Republican nomination in 2012. And his legacy, however, is probably going to be mostly defined by his opposition to President Donald Trump over the last several years in his tenure as a Utah senator.
He'll probably be replaced by somebody further to the right of him. And the Senate itself is set to go through a generational transition as more of the old era Republicans start to retire and a new crop comes up. It's going to move the party in this much more populist direction.
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Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a happy Monday to you. Want to turn to US domestic politics for this week's Quick Take in part because there's been a surge in the GOP among the candidates. We've had Trump way out in front, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the major challenger pretty much for the last several months until this last week, with an outsider Vivek Ramaswamy in a couple of polls showing up as number two. Certainly enjoying a surge. So thought it was worth taking a little bit of a look at him.
First of all, I mean, let's be clear, the big news remains the Trump indictments and the Democratic efforts to drive them. It's all about the politics. It is not about rule of law. That's what it should be if it were a properly functioning representative democracy. That is not the state of US politics right now. But aside from that, it's "is anyone a potential challenger to Trump on the GOP side?" And, you know, the idea that Trump is not going to participate in the Republican primary debates, as we see this Wednesday, is his political interest in showing that "I'm going to get this nomination and all the rest are pretenders to the throne." Completely understandable that that's the way he's handling that, but it's interesting to me that to the extent that anyone else is getting oxygen, it is the candidates that are most like him. In other words, those that are willing to take on his message that are proactively being supportive and engaging.
It is DeSantis and Vivek and that shouldn't surprise anyone in terms of where the Republican party is and is going as the Democratic party has increasingly become a party identified with urban elites and the Republican party increasingly with rural working and middle classes. And that is a grievance-based and anger-based "let's beat up on the establishment." It is not the center. Trump did very well as an outsider, not because his policies made a lot of sense, but rather because they really animated the emotional anger channeled the sense of disenfranchisement and otherness of people that felt like the elites were part of this shadowy, globalist deep state. Vivek Ramaswamy, in my view, has been the most effective at engaging on the political stage in that. He's basically portraying himself as the young Trump, as the person that can carry the mantle that, you know, if Trump is one more Covid episode away from not being with us,
Vivek is 38 years old. He's an entrepreneur, young kid. You know, he's an outsider. He is never been a candidate. Heck, he's barely voted most of the presidential elections. He hasn't participated in, said he was jaded at the time. That is a feature, not a bug for someone who is, you know, wants to run on "I'm not a politico, I'm not a part of Washington. I have no political experience, and that makes me better." I mean, he proactively said like, "I want to run the government the way Elon runs Twitter/X, which I'm not clear that appeals to people that care about governance, but that's not the point. This is anger and people that want to hurt the folks that are benefiting from the fruits of governance over the course of the past, say, 40 to 50 years in the United States.
He's aligned with Trump. He's aligned with Tucker Carlson, that's the lane here. I definitely see in his policy statements that, you know, anti-woke but more effective in his rhetoric on that front than DeSantis has been. Talking about the global reset versus the great uprising. In other words, anti world economic forum, anti-woke, anti global control, anti deep state, anti all of this, you know, anything that feels like the forces that you don't understand that are in control of you, Vivek is opposed to them. It's very much like Trump's drain the swamp, which again, of all the things that Trump did, drain the swamp was, you know, the one he was least actually interested in. Fantastic on the rhetoric, and then appointed all the CEOs and billionaires to run cabinet to reduce taxation. I mean, the men north of Richmond did fantastically well under Trump and likely would under Vivek.
But that's not the point. The point is not appealing to an analytic reasoned policy debate. It is appealing to a sense of anger, and we want to burn it down. And in that regard, Vivek has been most effective in some of his policy statements that really antagonizing the mainstream media. I saw this in particular, with a CNN interview that he did in talking about Russia and Ukraine and in saying, "hey, I'm going to make the Ukrainians give up some of their territory and say there won't be any NATO for Ukraine because I want to pull Russia away from China." And I mean, you can just imagine this is absolutely intended to drive mainstream media crazy, and they do, and it's a massive amount of attention for this young outsider. And he's winning, not winning for the nomination, of course, that's not the point.
But he's winning in the performative sweep that allow him to do far better from personal career perspective on the back of deciding to run. Running this presidential campaign is an absolute no brainer for someone like Ramaswamy. He'll have bigger book deals, higher speaking fees, has a decent shot of being on a Trump cabinet if Trump were to potentially win. But he also is setting himself up to be one of the younger forces that can wear the populist MAGA mantle assuming the GOP stays intact beyond this presidential cycle. And so in that regard, I find him a very important cultural phenomenon and political phenomenon. We are going to see more of this as long as American political dysfunction continues to be a primary driving force, as long as the US is more polarized, riven with more disinformation, more mistrust, and more feeling of illegitimacy than any of the other G-7 advanced industrial democracies.
This is the lane to run on, at least on the right. I think we'll see more of it on the left as well. But again, the demographics of where the GOP is doing well, it aligns particularly with this form of nativism and populism. And I do feel like Vivek has been very effective there. We'll see on Wednesday night with the debate how he does on a stage with, you know, ten folks, many of whom are fully part of the GOP establishment. I suspect he'll do very well because this is really meant for small sound bites social media, and he's going to be an effective bomb thrower there. So will Chris Christie, by the way, who's a fantastic debater and is the one that is really taking Trump on individually, but of course, Trump is going to be talking to Tucker Carlson who has said in his private texts that he can't stand the guy, thinks he's a lunatic.
But that doesn't matter because they occupy the same lane. And as political entrepreneurs for themselves, this is exactly what they should be doing, which is teaming up to make the establishment debate that the party forces want to have less relevant. And it makes Tucker Carlson more relevant to his fans and to his revenues as bottom line, and it makes Trump more relevant too. So that's where we are this week, kind of depressing state of affairs in terms of US politics, but from an analysis perspective, got to get that right either way. Hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Politics, trust & the media in the age of misinformation
Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, GZERO World takes a hard look at the media’s impact on politics and democracy itself.
In 1964, philosopher Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase, “the media is the message.” He meant that the way content is delivered can be more powerful than the content itself.
A lot’s changed since 1964, but the problem has only gotten worse. The ‘80s and ‘90s saw the rise of a 24/7 cable news cycle and hyper-partisan radio talk shows. The 21st century has thus far given us podcasts, political influencers, and the endless doom scroll of social media. And now, we’re entering the age of generative AI.
All of this has created the perfect ecosystem for information––and disinformation––overload. But there might be a bright spot at the end of the tunnel. In the world where it’s getting harder and harder to tell fact from fiction, news organizations, credible journalists, and fact-checkers will be more important than ever.
How has media changed our idea of truth and reality? And how can we better prepare ourselves for the onslaught of misinformation and disinformation that is almost certain to spread online as the 2024 US presidential election gets closer? Can trust in American’s so-called “Fourth Estate” be restored?
Ian Bremmer sits down with journalist and former CNN host Brian Stelter and Nicole Hemmer, a Vanderbilt University professor specializing in political history and partisan media.
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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