No doubt about it, the numbers are not only not good, they are brutal. More than twice as many Americans said that the economy was getting worse than said it was getting better. The Middle East remains a point of controversy. So, that's not helping him either!
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Almost six in 10 Americans feel Ronald Reagan should not run for a second term as president, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
Independent voters, a key to his victory over Jimmy Carter in 1980, now oppose a second Reagan candidacy by 50 to 42 percent, with 8 percent expressing no opinion. Even one-third of the Republicans interviewed said they are opposed to Reagan's seeking renomination.
In all, 35 percent of those who said they voted for Reagan in 1980 -- and 58 percent of all those polled -- said he should not seek re-election. Only 37 percent of all those polled said he should run again. Despite passage of a new tax bill and claims that economic recovery is at hand, the public continues to take a dim view, with 21 percent saying the economy is getting better, 45 percent saying it is getting worse and 33 percent saying it is staying about the same. citizens are sharply divided [on his Middle East plan]
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Without a doubt, there are differences between President Reagan and President Biden at the same point in their reelection bids. I posit that this is due to negative partisanship and the different natures of their voters. Nevertheless, it is instructive to see such terrible and similar numbers for Ronald Reagan and this is only a few months difference in time.
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My own view that polls are snapshots in time and that there are too many intervening events that will take place and will alter polls for the general election polls in 2023 to be used to accurately predict the 2024 presidential election. If President Biden doesn't win reelection (I believe he will), one thing we can say now for certain is that the general election polls that we see now before a single election in either major political party's primary has taken place did not and could not enable us to know so.
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Nor would it solve the problem. The Democratic Party perfect person candidate crushes President Biden. Yet the simple truth is that there is no single Democratic Party elected official who can defeat President Biden in the Democratic Party's primary. There is no one candidate around whom all of the disparate factions of the Democratic Party will unite more than the incumbent president. If there were, I absolutely guarantee you that President Biden would not be running for reelection.
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As I have previously shared with sources, it appears that we will get our 'soft landing '. The rate of inflation over the last six months annualized is 1.9%, nearly identical to the Fed's goal. Wages are growing faster than inflation. The gross domestic product grew at a rate of 4.9% last quarter. The unemployment rate is 3.7%. Household savings has increased. Consumer confidence and consumer spending have increased. This is the longest continuous period of time when we have had an unemployment rate of below four percent in fifty years. The economy is improving. Corporations are taking advantage in some situations and inflation does vary depending upon what the item is and where you are.
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Nevertheless, this is a very good economy according to all the metrics that we have used to evaluate an administration's economy historically. The political scientists tell us that it takes six to nine months for voters to recognize the economy has improved and is good. In fact, most respondents say that they are personally doing well. So, most likely we have many people who are partisan liars.
The point is that the majority of voters will recognize that this is a good economy before election day. President Gerald Ford lost due to pardoning Richard Nixon. No other president in recent memory lost reelection with a good economy.
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The first elections within each major political party's primary will take place. Our voters may take responding to polls more practically at that point. Right now, some of our voters are letting off steam and answering aspirationally. In an ideal world, there would be one obvious successor around whom the entire political party would coalesce. Voters will begin to take the election seriously as it gets closer, especially as it becomes apparent that despite the most earnest wishes of some of our most left leaning voters, it will be "King Trump vs Old Biden" to use Dr Soc Mama's phrase.
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I mentally reviewed the last century of presidents and found that there was not a single example where the incumbent president sought reelection and was defeated in his political party's primary. If that has ever happened, it hasn't happened recently and it's not going to this time.
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Any major Democratic Party elected official who enters the primary would be forced into losing by doing exactly what Donald Trump's so-called opponents in the Republican Party's primary are doing or go all scorched earth. But going scorched Earth, the only way to have any realistic chance at winning the primary, means running against the economy, against inflation, running against old, and running against a supposed but non-existent cognitive decline. The candidate would have to use these to bash President Biden daily. Doing so would likely cause those on the fence to support the president and cause the president's supporters (and there are more than you might believe) to aggressively respond.
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Furthermore, even doing so almost certainly doesn't help the other candidate defeat President Biden in the primary; President Biden likely wins the nomination anyway. The only outcome altering possibility is that the candidate helps Donald Trump defeat President Biden and nobody on our side would ever forgive them for that. Our voters will be forced to confront the real world in which the general election match up is again borrowing from Dr. Social Mama "King Trump vs Old Biden"
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Donald Trump's calendar will be chock full of court time. Donald Trump's civil and criminal litigation will constantly in the news and will divide his attention and the attention of his allies. This news won't help Donald Trump in the general election.
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President Biden and those who will be surrogates for him including former President Obama will begin campaigning in earnest. President Biden has a great record to run on.
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There is, in my view, a great probability that the federal Jack Smith attempted coup prosecution will yield a guilty verdict before the general election. Donald Trump is the only defendant in this prosecution because Special Prosecutor Jack Smith designed it for speed. Judge Tanya Chutkan will not allow this to be delayed beyond what is reasonable and the trial starts in March.
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There may or may not be debates. If President Biden squeezes ahead in the polls, I fail to see any benefit to participating in a debate because Donald Trump won't follow rules and won't be forced to follow the rules, but everyone expects this of Donald Trump. President Biden is, in part, running as the not Trump or the anti-Trump.
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Then we shall have a convention the likes of which we have never seen. We will absolutely slaughter him. We will expose him for the criminal he is and make clear that Donald Trump is only running to protect himself from being held accountable for his own crimes; President Biden is running for reelection to make your life better. Donald Trump will do his best to emulate Adolph Hitler and their project 25 falls right in line with the third Reich type government.
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Both of the major political parties will put on their own conventions.
We will remind the voters of his attempted coup and show the insurrection in detail. We will explain to the voters that there is a very good reason that administrations of both political parties have held the Department of Justice independent of the president and the rest of the executive branch. If the president can tell the attorney general who to investigate and prosecute and who not to investigate and who not to prosecute, then the president can tell the attorney general don't investigate or prosecute me or my allies but do investigate and prosecute my political enemies.
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There are some positions which are filled by political people, political appointees, filling the normal political positions with political people is perfectly fine. However, in many departments within the Department of Justice there are many nonpartisan government employees whose only priority is to fulfill the mission statement of the department. In Project 25, Donald Trump makes it clear that he will fire all these non political non partisan government employees whom he calls the 'Deep State's and replace them with people whose first loyalty is to Donald Trump and to the extent that they care about the Constitution at all, it falls second. We have never seen anything like this.
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The reason Donald Trump's attempted coup failed is because there were still some people in key positions within the administration, especially at the Department of Justice, who opposed the attempted coup. Project 25 would make sure that there is nobody in any position with significant authority whose first and only ultimate authority is to Donald Trump.
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There are more departments and agencies within the Executive Branch which historically are independent that will be completely politicized. Add to that a 6-3 radical right wing Supreme Court and it's obvious the jeopardy that we are in. And once one election result can be ignored, then the others can as well. We won't be able to put the toothpaste back in the democracy tube. Moreover, it is quite possible due to structural advantages that the Republican Party has that the Republican Party regains control of both chambers [our voters are concentrated in urban areas, gerrymandering, and the fact that each state has 2 US senators regardless of population].
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There will be an immense war with negative partisanship being the guiding light in media using opposition research, especially in social media. The Lincoln Project will do their two things: (1) zing Donald Trump in a way to get into his head and get him to not think about the campaign and (2) attract 5-10 % of Republican Party voters who dislike Donald Trump.
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In conclusion, there are no general election polls taken before even the first election in either major political party's primary has taken place which can be taken as the likely outcome of the 2024 presidential election. That is true no matter who is leading in them.
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President Biden's demise might have been written too early . Sixteen recent polls had President Biden ahead or even with Donald Trump including a new version of the New York Times Sienna College poll which replaced the one that caused everyone to pull their hair out and climb out on a ledge.
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