Biden is Running in ’24: Top 3 Reasons he’ll Likely win by a Landslide

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – President Joe Biden is planning to declare next week that he will seek a second term as president according to Jeff Zeleny, Phil Mattingly, Kevin Liptak and Arlette Saenz at CNN. The overwhelming likelihood is that he will win that second term.

There are many reasons to come to this conclusion, though it is one that cable news anchors will resist because their ratings and advertising dollars depend on covering politics as though it were a horse race or a boxing match. You need a close race and uncertainty to generate dramatic tension. It isn’t close, folks. Biden doesn’t poll well, but 2022 showed us that it doesn’t matter when people go to cast their ballots.

1. The most important reason that Biden is likely a shoo-in is that the Republican Party is a hot mess and voters showed in 2020 that they don’t like their messes hot. There are really only two possibilities. If Trump wins the Republican nomination, and if nothing catastrophic happens to the economy or geopolitics in 2024, then he will lose in the generals. Even a substantial number of Republicans don’t like Trump, and he is actively disliked by most independents. Some 60% of Americans were happy to see him indicted. In purple states like Michigan, the ones that really matter for the election, Trump’s name is mud. While a lot of Democrats also don’t want Biden to run again, they will close ranks behind him if the alternative is Trump, as will independents. The likelihood is that educated Republicans, 40% of whom intensely dislike the former president, will stay home if he is their standard bearer.

If Trump loses to a contender such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Trump is very unlikely to concede defeat. He almost certainly would run as a third party candidate. He is clearly congenitally unable to respect the will of the voters and step aside. He is a cult leader, and his cult will be heard. If Trump splits the Republican vote, he throws the election to Biden by a margin not seen since LBJ’s smashing victory in 1964. Moreover, DeSantis, who is campaigning on a Draconian abortion ban and being mean to gay people and to corporations such as Disney that are nice to gay people, likely couldn’t win the general election even if Trump wasn’t running. Some 60% Americans support abortion rights under most circumstances. And 71% of Americans support gay marriage and only 28% oppose it.

2. For another thing, the abolition of Roe v. Wade put the wind at Democrats’ backs. It likely accounts for them keeping the Senate and limiting losses in the House last year. It likely accounts for the Democratic dominance of Michigan and for the fact that Arizona has a Democratic governor and Republicans only control the lower and upper houses there by one seat in each case.

That and other developments have caused women to vote in unusual numbers and for more of them to vote Democratic than had earlier been the case. The political situation is also clearly frustrating for the country’s youth, who came out to vote in both 2020 and 2022, and who overwhelmingly favored the Democrats.

3. Finally, incumbents frequently win reelection. Franklin Delano Roosevelt won four terms before the constitution was amended to permit only two. Harry Truman became the incumbent when Roosevelt died in office, and won a second term. Eisenhower served two terms. JFK of course did not have the opportunity to run a second time. But Lyndon Johnson became the incumbent on Kennedy’s assassination and won a resounding victory in 1964. Even Nixon, hobbled by the Vietnam War and what we might call severe character issues, won two terms.

Gerald Ford, who was never elected vice president, succeeded Nixon on Tricky Dick’s resignation and was saddled with the US withdrawal from Vietnam, which made him look weak. He lost to Jimmy Carter. Carter had the misfortune to be president during Stagflation, a huge spike in petroleum prices, gasoline shortages, the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and the Hostage Crisis, which made him and the U.S. look weak and in decline. So Ford and Carter were victims of the 1970s.

But Ronald Reagan won two terms before George H.W. Bush just served one. The Republicans had been in the White House for 12 years, and the patrician Bush just did not come across as likeable or sympathetic. Bill Clinton served two terms. Even the mediocre disaster George W. Bush won reelection, despite his catastrophic Iraq War. Barack Obama served two terms. Then Trump stumbled into the presidency, alienated most of the country with his manic antics, and lost to Biden by seven million votes.

Biden has had a string of substantial legislative victories that will reshape the United States, bringing back some industry and moving the country toward green energy and electrification of transport. His policies will bring thousands of jobs to states such as Michigan, which is solidly blue for the first time in 13 years. Barring a sudden nosedive of the economy in 2024 or an international development that makes the president seem hamstrung, Biden has an excellent shot at reelection.