President Joe Biden told reporters in December that “probably 50” Democrats could beat former President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election.
Biden currently trails Trump by more than 3 points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, and his approval rating is once again ticking down after hovering around 38% over the past year. Biden will head into his fourth year in office with the lowest approvals of any president at this point in their term, dating back to Jimmy Carter.
OATH OF OFFICE: BIDEN RAN ON FIXING THE IMMIGRATION SYSTEM, BUT BORDER CRISIS BURGEONS
It’s certainly possible, though highly improbable, that Biden doesn’t end up being Democrats’ presidential nominee in the coming cycle, but whoever takes up that mantle must hit the ground running in order to take down Trump. That requires national name recognition, institutional support, and a great deal of political infrastructure from the get-go.
And while nearly a dozen Democratic lawmakers, to greater and lesser extents, fit the bill, the number falls far short of the 50 claimed by Biden.
That short list includes Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), and Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA).
All of these candidates, save Phillips, who is opposing Biden in the Democratic primary, are backing Biden’s 2024 run but have some type of infrastructure that could make them attractive to unpledged delegates at the convention.
Harris has been the natural choice to succeed Biden dating back to 2021 despite some public stumbles over the past three years, yet Newsom, Whitmer, and Pritzker have all stood up super PACS over the past year capable of supporting future runs.
Newsom has boosted his national name recognition ever further after squaring off with Republican presidential primary hopeful Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) in late November.
Booker, a presidential primary candidate in 2020, still has more than $10 million cash on hand from his previous run, while Khanna, who chaired the 2020 presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has the strongest progressive bona fides of the bunch and recently debated Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.
Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) are both aligned more closely with the progressive wing of the party than the president and could counter a major enthusiasm problem Biden is currently saddled with regarding his handling of the war in Israel.
Sanders has past campaign experience, and pundits heavily attribute his supporters’ decision not to turn out to vote in 2016 with handing Trump his first term in office. Meanwhile, Ocasio-Cortez would turn 35 just weeks before the general election, easing any doubts about having an octogenarian in the White House.
However, both could have trouble earning independent votes in a head-to-head matchup with Trump.
Finally, since Trump entered office, Democrats have openly speculated that former first lady Michelle Obama might opt to run for the presidency. However, she has directly denied considering a bid for higher office.
“There is zero chance. There are many ways to improve this country and build a better world, and I continue to do many of them, from working with young people to helping families lead healthier lives,” she said in 2020. “But sitting behind the Oval Office desk will never be one of them. It’s not for me.”
Ultimately, Biden, despite his unpopularity, is still believed to be Democrats’ best chance to retain the White House, given his track record.
The president made defeating Trump and restoring the “soul of the nation” the focus of his 2020 campaign, and his reelection effort has recently shifted its core message away from “Bidenomics” and back to Trump. Biden continues to highlight both the alleged economic impact the former president’s policies will have on American households in addition to the “threat” to democracy Democrats say Trump poses.
“The guy who thinks we’re polluting the blood of Americans these days. He cut taxes for the wealthy and big corporations, shipped good paying jobs overseas, shrank public investment in infrastructure,” Biden said of Trump’s recent rhetoric on immigrants at a campaign event in Milwaukee. “Decades of discrimination and trickle-down economics have left communities like this one behind, but today, we’re making sure Milwaukee is coming back and all the way coming back.”
And multiple veteran Democratic operatives tell the Washington Examiner that, under no circumstances, will Biden drop out of the race, leading to a delegate free-for-all at the convention.
“It’s an interesting thought experiment, and one that very possibly previews our party heading into 2028, but this just isn’t going to happen,” one operative stated flatly. “President Biden will be our nominee, and I expect the full party, regardless of disagreements about Israel, to rally around him to defeat Trump.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“Biden will be the nominee because we’ve seen this story before,” a second operative added. “We saw what happened in 2016 when some people weren’t jazzed about Secretary Clinton, and that let Trump walk in the front door of the White House. We won’t make that mistake again.”
“If it isn’t Biden, we lose. It’s just flat out too late to jump ship, simple as that,” a third operative bemoaned.
