Let’s be honest here: things haven’t been looking great for Joe Biden for a while now. Months into his term, the media was already speculating who in the Democratic Party might take over as its 2024 nominee. But the latest NYT/Sienna poll certainly must have Democrats panicking, as it not only shows that Trump is beating Biden in five of the six battleground states that will determine the outcome of the 2024 election, but it also shows that Biden’s disastrous presidency is causing the Democratic coalition to fall apart.
Hispanic, black, and young voters – typically reliable voting blocs for the Democrats — are shifting to the GOP as they see Biden and his policies directly hurting them. And naturally, there are growing calls for Biden to drop out to give the Democratic Party a fighting chance next November.
“I’m looking at polling data, and I’m looking at all of it. The president’s numbers are just not good — and they’re not getting any better,” famed Democrat strategist James Carville observed last month. “I talk to a lot of people who do a lot of congressional-level polling and state polling, and they’re all saying the same thing. There’s not an outlier; there’s not another opinion … The question is, has the country made up its mind?”
But the biggest problem is that, according to Carville, Democrats feel they can’t publicly acknowledge the truth.
“Nobody is saying, ‘James, you’re wrong,’” he added. “They’re saying, ‘James, you can’t say that.’”
Well, it looks like the NYT/Siena poll has changed things, as more Democrat voices are saying there’s a problem.
"Only Joe Biden can make this decision. If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it's in his best interest or the country's?” former Obama adviser David Axelrod said in response to the poll.
Joe Biden has long maintained that he is the only Democrat who can beat Trump, and that’s presumably why he chose to run again even though few people expected him to. His candidacy in 2020 was seen as a means to an end: getting Trump out, and letting someone younger eventually take over — all while Biden gets credit for being the hero who ousted Trump.
But Biden was too convinced of his superiority above all possible alternatives to entertain the idea of not running again, and as Democrat hopes of holding onto the White House diminish, it naturally has us asking the question of whether Biden can even drop out at this point. It’s true that there are plenty of Democrats essentially waiting to run the second he drops out, but the longer Biden stays in, the window of opportunity for alternative Democrats to get on the primary ballots in various states is closing.
The deadlines to appear on the Nevada and New Hampshire primary ballots have already passed, and other states are fast approaching. The longer Biden stays in, the less likely alternative candidates can legally get on the ballot in these states, which makes accumulating the necessary number of delegates to secure the nomination problematic, potentially resulting in a brokered convention, which means that Democrats could end up not knowing who their nominee is until the final weeks of the campaign, giving them little time to coalesce behind their new torchbearer.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Biden’s inner circle knew exactly what it was doing and forced the Democratic Party into a situation where they have no choice but to go forward with Biden. That grave miscalculation about Joe Biden’s chances of victory may have doomed the party.
