A newly released Wall Street Journal (WSJ) poll revealed a majority 52% of Americans polled do not believe Joe Biden will run for re-election in 2024. Think about that. More than half of the respondents didn’t expect the sitting president to run in an election that’s a mere twenty months away in a political environment that normally begins campaigns two years out.
Furthermore, only 29% of respondents expected Biden to pursue a second term. And 19% of respondents were undecided.
Even among Democratic respondents, the numbers were dismal: only 41% said they thought Biden will run again, while 32% said they do not think he would run, and more than a quarter (26%) were unsure whether he would run. We knew people out there in Real America were already thinking this, but to see many Democrats finally say it out loud truly is stunning.
For his part, “Biden and the White House have said he intends to run for re-election,” but of course they’d say that now. It’s likely a decision won’t be made until after either the 2022 midterm election is over or some event forces his hand.
So, what reasons do Americans have for these doubts about Biden? To begin with, many respondents were concerned “about his age and energy level.” As the WSJ pointed out, Biden would be 82 years old if he won re-election. That would make him “nearly a decade older than former President Ronald Reagan when he started his second term in 1985 at the age of 73.” I’m old enough to remember the leftist media losing their collective hive mind over Reagan’s advanced age for his first term, let alone his second term, and yet we hear not a peep from them today over Biden’s obvious decrepitude.
Next, as Democratic strategist James Carville quipped in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Americans are concerned about the economy and how it’s impacting their families. They’re feeling the pinch of the failed Biden economic policies that have inflation at a 40-year high, causing consumer prices to skyrocket.
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In the end, inflation is essentially a tax on everyone, but it’s especially damaging to America’s poor and middle-class who can least afford it. As I wrote earlier this week, “inflation decreases the purchasing power of consumers. Higher prices mean fewer goods can be purchased, so even as Americans return to work after the economic disruptions of the pandemic, their wages, savings, and investments buy less and less the more inflation rises.”
This scenario doesn’t bode well for the Democrats in 2024, as Biden and his administration continue to blame everyone and everything — except themselves and their failed economic policies — for the soaring cost of living. And as Biden doubles down, energy prices soar ever higher, causing goods and services to cost more, ultimately making inflation even worse. America’s poor and middle class probably won’t forget that in the voting booth, even as the president “remains popular within his party,” but it remains unclear who Americans would want to replace him in the Oval Office. Many respondents mentioned Kamala Harris as a possible successor to Biden; however, she was far from the only option.
Democrats interviewed frequently cited [Vice President] Harris as a logical successor to [President] Biden, but many pointed to other Democratic candidates who sought the nomination in 2020. Mr. Biden’s cabinet included Pete Buttigieg, a former presidential rival now serving as Transportation secretary, and the president has maintained close ties to several Democratic senators who could mount a future presidential bid, including Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey.
In any event, it seems likely the relentless push by the left to make gasoline and other fossil fuels too expensive for average Americans to afford coupled with their cult-like embrace of the Green New Deal may backfire spectacularly on them in both 2022 and 2024. Being oblivious to or purposely dismissive of the pain of Real America in order to push The Agenda while blatantly disregarding the needs of the majority isn’t exactly a winning strategy for the Democratic Party or Biden himself.
Source: PJ Media
