The 2024 presidential political season is still early, but the hot takes have been atrocious. Among the worst is the notion that President Joe Biden is in trouble because people want an alternative, and because conspiracy theorist and Nazi sympathizer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is in the race.
There are several genres of polling questions that provide shockingly useless information. For example, “Would you be more or less likely to vote for well-known candidate X if she did Y?” I mean, would I be more likely to vote for Mitt Romeny if he criticizes Donald Trump? Sure! But I’m never voting for him. Would I be less likely to vote for President Joe Biden if he kicked a puppy tomorrow? Yup. But I’m still voting for him.
Another one is, “Is the country going in the right or wrong direction?” Republicans say it’s fine when they have the White House, but of course they think it’s going to shit when they don’t.
Democrats are more conflicted. It’s good that Biden is in the White House and he’s been a shockingly good president. But the Supreme Court is standing in the way of progress, dragging us back down to the Dark Ages. So … which is it?
But the most worthless polling questions of all are those that ask whether people wish someone else was running for office. An April NBC poll found, “70% of Americans believe Biden should not run for re-election, with 51% of Democrats saying that. Meanwhile, 60% of Americans, including a third of Republicans, say Trump, 76, should not run for president.”
A CBS/YouGov poll in early June found 33% of voters, including 42% of Democrats, thought Biden should not run again. A Quinnipiac poll this week found that “nearly half of voters would consider a third-party presidential candidate In 2024” (LOL, no they wouldn’t.) Additionally, several polls have shown both Trump and Biden with low personal approval ratings. We live in polarized partisan times; no national politicians will have positive ratings.
But is this a problem we need to be worried about? In 1982, a Pew poll found that only 36% of voters wanted President Ronald Reagan to run again. He won the next election by 18 points. A Washington Post poll in December 2013 found President Barack Obama’s approval rating at 43%—just a smidge higher than Biden’s current situation.
Here’s the problem with asking whether voters want someone else before an election: It’s a political Rorschach test. The question isn’t “Biden or this specific other person,” it’s “Biden or your fantasy candidate that aligns with all of your very specific views.” Yes, I too have a fantasy candidate I wish existed who agreed with me 100% and was running and was guaranteed to win the next election. But that person does not exist for me, nor for you or anyone else. We live in the real world.
And this real world? I was an Elizabeth Warren supporter four years ago, but it seems clear in hindsight that Biden was likely the only Democrat in that field that would’ve beaten Trump. It was so much closer than most of us like to remember. Flip 43,000 votes in Wisconsin, Arizona, and Georgia, and we have a 269-269 Electoral College tie and Trump wins with the majority of House state delegations. Flip another 33,000 votes in Nevada, or 21,000 in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, and Trump wins outright.
Turns out we did need the old white guy to get across the finish line. And the fact that the best Republicans can do to tar Biden is to call him “sleepy,” and he still fails to generate the rabid hate that a woman or non-white candidate would generate. (All of this makes me want to answer “wrong direction” to the question above as we still have so far to go as a society.) Truth is, Biden just isn’t that scary to conservatives outside the 20%-30% MAGA bubble.
As such, his approval ratings today matter as much as they did in 2022, when his low 30s did little to hamper the Democrats’ historic victories in the midterm elections. Democrats already support him, and those numbers will increase further over the next year as Democrats rally around the flag. His overall numbers will lag, but it doesn’t matter. We are too polarized to ever give credit to someone from the other party, and that’s fine because Democrats will still vote as if the fate of their country depends on it, because it does. And there are objectively more of us than there are of them.
Which leads to the second bullshit narrative: The idea that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is somehow a threat in the Democratic primary. Conservatives have certainly been trying to make it a thing. For example, the right-wing Washington Free Beacon has been writing headlines like, “Kennedy campaign has 'surprising strength,' poll shows.” The surprising strength? A USA Today poll that had Kennedy at 14%. For his part, USA Today reported, Biden “only” had the support of 67% of Biden 2020 supporters.
Got that? Sixty-seven percent is weak, 14% is strong. And I wish USA Today and right-wing outlets were alone with such inanities. Forbes reported, “2024 Democratic presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—an environmental lawyer with anti-vaccine views and a strong family dynasty at his back—has higher favorability numbers than either President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump, according to a new poll by The Economist and YouGov, even as Biden maintains a lead in the 2024 primary.”
Egads, sounds bad! But look at the breakdown in Kennedy’s “support,” and you find that 56% of Republicans had a favorable view of Kennedy. So his “support” isn’t just propped up by his famous family name, but by Republicans who like his very right-wing Nazi views, conspiracies, and his attempted ratfucking of the Democratic primary. That makes him as “popular” as Kyrsten Sinema, who Republicans pretend to like as long as she’s making trouble for Democrats.
Yet Kennedy is pretending to run in a Democratic primary, and among Democrats, he’s got nothing. In a recent NH poll, Biden was beating Kennedy 68-9 in New Hampshire. A Harvard poll last month had him at just 15% support and Biden at 62% nationally, despite most people still not knowing that he’s an antisemitic conspiracy nut who hangs out with pedophiles.
Meanwhile, Quinnipiac’s latest poll was even more rosy for Biden. “The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is also largely unchanged from a month ago,” Quinnipiac announced. “President Joe Biden receives 71 percent support among Democratic and Democratic leaning voters, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist receives 14 percent support and Marianne Williamson, an author, receives 7 percent support.”
Among Democrats, Kennedy is now at 21% favorable, 47% unfavorable in that Q poll. A month ago those numbers were 22-45. Among Republicans he’s at 48-22 favorable, so remember that the next time someone claims his numbers look good. If Republicans love him so much, why isn’t he running in the Republican primary? That’s genuinely where he belongs.
Look where he goes to cry about the DNC:
Biden’s favorability numbers among Democrats are … 82-13. So sure, take that “we need someone else” nonsense narrative and shove it.
At Netroots Nation over this past weekend, I moderated a panel with three strong leaders of the House Progressive Caucus: Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Jan Schakowsky, and Chuy Garcia. At the end, as time ran out, I said, “I was not a Biden supporter in the primary to say the least. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the presidency. I don’t think he gets enough credit.” I then asked the panel what they thought.
Schakowsky: “I agree!”
Garcia: “I was not a big Joe Biden fan. It has been incredible to see what an ally we’ve created in the White House. It’s because of people power, the growth of the progressive caucus as well, and our communities, our rainbow coalition, delivered the key states that enabled us to win the Senate and hold the line.”
Jayapal: “I was a Bernie supporter. I would’ve been thrilled with Elizabeth, and so when Biden was in I was like, ‘Oh man.’ But I got to tell you, having worked with him for the last two years, he’s absolutely following through on the domestic economic policies piece of this.”
These are the most progressive Democrats from the most progressive wing of the Democratic party. If they aren’t feeling discontent over Biden, he really has nothing to fear in any primary. It’s telling that his so-called primary “opposition” isn’t based on ideology, but on a Steve Bannon-fueled attempt to sow discord in the Democratic Party and by whatever it is Marianne Williamson thinks she’s doing. In the end, neither will crack 5% in any state.
Despite their best efforts, Kennedy isn’t sowing discontent. Bannon’s plot has failed. The problem with Kennedy isn’t any political threat to Biden: It’s that he now has an elevated platform to spew his dangerous conspiracy theories.
Although given his performance at yesterday’s congressional hearing, maybe he won’t be so dangerous after all. It’s hard to sell your conspiracies if you deny them while under oath. When your whole schtick is undermining public faith in vaccines, it’s weird to claim, “I have never been anti-vaxx. I have never told the public to avoid vaccination.”
In any case, Kennedy is a joke of a “candidate” and Biden has no threats to his nomination.
Sign the petition: No more wasted taxpayer money on frivolous GOP hearings.
