Winning in 2024, Part II

In my previous entry on this subject, my basic thesis was that all the Republicans need to do to win the White House in 2024 is nominate someone other than Donald Trump, hence to avoid a sideshow about January 6 and other flotsam from the past, and keep voters’ undivided attention on the clueless, flailing and massively unpopular incumbent administration.

Today, I’m happy to report, the New York Times seems to have jumped on my bandwagon.

The Times’ story is here. For once, the Times isn’t hiding the ball in the fiftieth paragraph, and instead starts right off with the big news (emphasis added):

President Biden is facing an alarming level of doubt from inside his own party, with 64 percent of Democratic voters saying they would prefer a new standard-bearer in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll, as voters nationwide have soured on his leadership, giving him a meager 33 percent job-approval rating.

Question: When is the last time an incumbent administration has been returned to power with an approval rating of 33%?

Very good, class! The correct answer is never.

Widespread concerns about the economy and inflation have helped turn the national mood decidedly dark, both on Mr. Biden and the trajectory of the nation. More than three-quarters of registered voters see the United States moving in the wrong direction, a pervasive sense of pessimism that spans every corner of the country, every age range and racial group, cities, suburbs and rural areas, as well as both political parties.

My previous view was that if the Republicans nominate any reasonably formidable and credentialed candidate, they will very likely win. I may now need to amend that. With Biden so far underwater with so many segments of the electorate, the Republicans would very likely win with you, me or the man behind the tree.

For Mr. Biden, that bleak national outlook has pushed his job approval rating to a perilously low point. Republican opposition is predictably overwhelming, but more than two-thirds of independents also now disapprove of the president’s performance, and nearly half disapprove strongly.

The overwhelming disapproval among independents is probably terminal per se in a closely divided nation.

From the President’s point of view, the news doesn’t get any better:

Mr. Biden has said repeatedly that he intends to run for re-election in 2024. At 79, he is already the oldest president in American history, and concerns about his age ranked at the top of the list for Democratic voters who want the party to find an alternative.

The backlash against Mr. Biden and desire to move in a new direction were particularly acute among younger voters. In the survey, 94 percent of Democrats under the age of 30 said they would prefer a different presidential nominee.

So much for the idea that younger voters’ enthusiasm and energy would drag the Democrats over the finish line. Such dragging as will get done would appear to be in a different direction.

Jobs and the economy were the most important problem facing the country according to 20 percent of voters, with inflation and the cost of living (15 percent) close behind as prices are rising at the fastest rate in a generation. One in 10 voters named the state of American democracy and political division as the most pressing issue, about the same share who named gun policies...

More than 75 percent of voters in the poll said the economy was “extremely important” to them. And yet only 1 percent rated economic conditions as excellent.

We now know that 1 percent of Americans are on LSD.

Still, the Times is the Times, so it added this:

One glimmer of good news for Mr. Biden is that the survey showed him with a narrow edge in a hypothetical rematch in 2024 with former President Donald J. Trump: 44 percent to 41 percent.

What it neglected to add is that incumbents polling less than 50% are generally considered by experts to be in big trouble. And what it added way down at the end of the story was that the margin of error in its poll is 4.1% — meaning that Trump and Biden are statistically tied.

I also thought this was revealing:

The Times/Siena survey of 849 registered voters nationwide was conducted from July 5 to 7, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, which had been protected for half a century. The ruling sent Democrats into the streets and unleashed an outpouring of political contributions.

The Court’s decision in Dobbs was handed down on June 24, eleven days before the Times’ polling started — enough time fully to capture public reaction to the ruling. So it would appear, at least on this admittedly fragmentary evidence, that the supposed groundswell against Republicans on account of the Dobbs case is going to count for very little.

One other musing. Many of us have thought for some time that the NYT is less what we used to think of as journalism than it is the leading trumpet of the Ruling Class of the Democratic Party. So the question presents itself: Why is the Times running a story like this? I don’t know for sure, but I have a strong hunch that the honchos in the Party have concluded they’re going to lose if Biden is the candidate, and might lose big, so they are paving the way for his exit.