OPINION: This article contains commentary which may reflect the author’s opinion
Biden’s chances of being challenged are rising since he has devastating polling numbers among Democrats, especially young voters.
As negative headlines have increased, he has had a hard time defending himself. There are those who say he inherited a mess left by his predecessor and some lawmakers have failed to assist him.
People have grown tired of supporting a sinking president. Democratic Party leaders are considering the possibility of challenging the current president in 2024.
Once Biden’s popularity plummeted to the low 30’s, some of his former supporters began to think about what the next two years might bring. Although he has made public or private assertions to the contrary, the tacit pact in which others in the party implied they would step aside for him is in the process of eroding.
Indeed, activist Jerome Segal said in an interview with Newsweek that he will run for president in 2024 after finishing ninth out of ten Democratic candidates seeking the governorship in Maryland.
Segal is a long shot, though.
So, there could be bigger names that may challenge Biden.
Independents and members of the opposing party are crucial to the political survival of both Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
They literally have to reach out to the middle and the right in order to be elected each time.
According to NewsMax, “a group of white female suburban swing voters recently sat for a political focus group.”
The research firm that runs the group intentionally segregates the sessions, figuring participants among their own kind will feel comfortable enough to be candid about their views.
The suburban women were the sort you used to read about as carpool-driving soccer moms — they made the difference for Obama, went for Trump in 2016, then swung back to Biden in 2020. Like a lot of Americans, they aren’t party loyalists. They are independents, centrist Democrats or Main Street Republicans.
“While there are plenty of other coveted demographics in American politics, the behavior of this particular subgroup of voters varies considerably from election to election. As a result, political consultants pay them extra attention. So should you, if you are wondering, or worried, about what will happen in the midterm elections or in the 2024 presidential race,” the outlet continued.
There was little enthusiasm among these voters for either the Republican or Democratic parties, or for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
As the Republicans stormed the Capitol, refused to accept the election results, denied climate change, refused even commonsense gun safety laws, declined COVID-19 vaccinations, criminalized abortion, they seemed “crazy”.
Democratic lawmakers, meanwhile, are “preachy.” Everyone who does not use progressive terminology – “pronouns,” “Latinx” – is ridiculed.
Anyone who doesn’t buy into every element of the progressive agenda — ban private health insurance, defund the police, every billionaire is a policy failure, full student-loan forgiveness, reparations for slavery, begin each public event with an indigenous land acknowledgment ceremony, slash military spending, double the minimum wage, ban fossil fuels, eliminate the internal combustion engine, whatever Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s most recent tweet demands — is complicit in perpetuating systemic racism, imperialism, settler colonialism, white supremacy, species extinction.
As the language used to describe the offense changes rapidly, one constant remains: condescension. The details of the policy are irrelevant – they won’t get the support they need for their plans to be realized.
In the end, it’s about conveying an air of smug moral superiority from those who dictate the agenda. It is not hard to detect, and voters are looking askance at it.
There are some Democrats who have taken note of the problem and attempted to adjust their messaging as a result. Ro Khanna, a congressman from Silicon Valley, told NPR, “Preachy is just go on TV and say, well, if you’re not for Medicare for All, then you must be evil. And you must want people to die. And you must be wrong — right? — as opposed to saying, here is why.”
“That “preachy” is now a term of disparagement speaks uncomfortably to the decline in religious belief and practice in much of America. It was not that long ago, after all, that religious leaders appealing to moral goodness championed the Civil Rights movement that ended the genuine evils of state-mandated racial segregation,” NewsMax asserts.
Perhaps what so grates on the voters is not so much the preaching, but that it’s coming from politicians rather than actual preachers.
When forced to choose between a vote for crazy and a vote for preachy, one focus group participant that people are still talking about said she’d go with crazy.
It is important to note that Democrats are not rushing to abandon preachy, as evidenced by the popularity of figures like AOC and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, at least among core Democrats. Are there any Democrats who are less preachy? That would be Manchin and Sinema according to the findings.
A total of 34% of registered voters in Arizona identify as “other” or “Republican”, while 31% identify as Democrat. There are 39% Republicans in Manchin’s West Virginia, 34% Democrats, and 23% “no party.”
“It could be that America’s best path out of the “crazy versus preachy” bind is a Manchin-Sinema 2024 ticket,” argues NewsMax.
Of course, we may see a Trump-Desantis ticket on the other side.
Source: The Republic Brief