Inflation above 8%, the threat of recession, Democrats’ timid response to the Supreme Court’s repeal of abortion rights and Biden’s low popularity predict negative results in November’s midterm elections, which are already traditionally bad for incumbent presidents.
Jeffrey Cummins, interim dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at California State University at Fresno, told Lusa, “The Democratic base is getting nervous. “There is an expectation that this will be a positive avalanche for Republicans and will mean less odds for Biden’s re-election in 2024.”
Analysts emphasized that the normal cycle of midterm elections is for a president to fall in approval ratings and lose his party seats. However, he added, “while the economy is generally good, there is also a huge concern about inflation.” “In terms of support for the current party, we know that the economy is the most important factor in elections.”
The outcome of the midterms will change the balance of power in Congress and, according to Cummins, will mark the point at which strategies for 2024 will begin to take shape.
Some Democratic voices have called for Joe Biden not to run again, like Democratic National Committeeman Steve Simeonitis and other senior officials interviewed by The New York Times.
“Because of Biden’s low popularity and age, the organization [do Partido] The Democrats don’t want him to run again,” political scientist Brian Adams, a professor at California State University in San Diego, explained to Lusa.
“Contesting a presidential election is a very serious process and requires a lot of energy. He did it at the last moment because we were in an epidemic and nothing could be done.
Adams believes that if Biden runs again he will face strong opposition [do Partido] The Democratic Party will have primaries where multiple candidates will try to unseat him.
But academics don’t believe the president will. “I suspect that if the system [do Partido] Democrats are rallying against Joe Biden and saying I don’t want him to run again, he won’t. “Unlike someone like Trump and Bernie Sanders, he knows he can’t be effective without the support of the establishment. [do Partido] democratic”.
Jeffrey Cummins has expressed confidence that Biden will run again and warned that if the party tries to nominate another candidate, it will not go well. At least that’s been the case in the past, though never before has an incumbent been so old — he’ll be 81 at the time of the campaign.
“Age is definitely a concern and it gets attention,” Dean said, noting that some of the president’s recent public gaffes have focused on him, such as the moment he confused Sweden and Switzerland at the NATO summit in Madrid.
Cummins, however, thinks it’s not a factor. “It’s ironic because when Trump was president he made a lot of gaffes that were ignored and not attributed to his age or anything like that.”
Professor Brian Adams also played it down, saying that “talking about cafes is a lot to feed the media and make complaints about”, which he thinks is not relevant to future re-election.
“In these meetings about the 2024 election, the big campaign donors, the senators, the governors, the Democratic caucus, they’re not talking about guffaws,” Adams said. “They talk about Biden’s age, his popularity, his lack of activity, his lack of accomplishments.”
Joe Biden’s low profile in the presidency is one reason the progressive wing is dismayed. Especially after the Supreme Court’s recent rulings that gutted abortion rights, weakened the fight against the climate crisis and made it more difficult to regulate guns.
“Most recent presidents didn’t have great legislative accomplishments,” Adams recalled. “But Biden is not seen as presidents of the past. He is not seen as leading on the front lines of tragedies.
The Biden administration’s response to repealing abortion rights has been seen as underwhelming. The president called several Democratic governors to a meeting in the last week of June and asked for an exception to Senate rules to codify abortion rights into law.
However, two Democratic senators are against it, making a solution unlikely, and Biden has rejected an offer to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court and use federal territories to provide abortion services.
“The progressive wing wants to see someone do more about the climate crisis,” Cummins said. “They want Biden to do more, but he can’t do it in a legislative way and even in an executive way, his options are limited because of the peak”.
Professor Adams believes the Supreme Court’s rulings will strengthen the democratic base and avert disaster in the interim. But Biden’s reprint is something else.
“If he has no intention of running again, he won’t say now. It would wait a year after the midterms, so November 2023,” he suggested. “It’s not clear to me that he wants to run again.”
