Joe Biden has officially announced his bid for president in 2024. I officially announce my prediction that he will lose.
As I predicted Biden decided to launch his reelection campaign last week and I think that is a clear-cut mistake. If he had been honest about his age and approval ratings, and been content with being a one term president, I think chances would have been good that a Democratic candidate would have won in 2024. History would also be kinder to Biden if he came in to stabilise American politics and handing control over to a leader from a younger generation. Voters though will not be kind to Biden, and if there is a grudge match between Biden and Trump in 2024, I think Trump wins.
Biden managed to win in 2020 mainly due to negative partisanship, i.e. dislike of the other party. Biden was the compromise candidate for the Democrats, a candidate so boring and inoffensive as to not have any hard edges which could scare away swing voters or Republicans tired of Trump. In 2020 that was a great strength; the contest was mainly between Trump and anyone else. When Biden is to compete on his own term though, I think he’ll struggle mightily. Here in Europe Biden is mainly covered positively as most Democratic presidents tend to be. He doesn’t have the excited following of Obama, but press consensus seems to be that he is fair and competent, if a little old. European press reflects what I suspect to be the mainstream view of Biden in the Democratic party. Not disliked but not very well liked either. The issue for Biden is that he seems not to have any fans. No one seems excited by a Biden 2024 campaign and I can’t blame them.
As much as Biden has had legislative wins like the ironically named inflation reduction act, and foreign policy wins like visiting Kyiv and meeting Volodymyr Zelensky, it’s not hard to find areas in which his administration has failed or not improved things since taking office. Inflation is running hot, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a hot mess, while at the same time the relationship with China is chillier than ever. There have been several bank failures, and tens of thousands of layoffs in the tech sector. If you want to find issues to highlight what has not been working under Biden’s time in office there’s a veritable cornucopia to pick from. Obviously, that’s nothing new, every administration faces problems but it would be very simple to make the case that sleepy Joe is too old to handle the problems facing America. Obama and Trump would have struggled with inflation and the withdrawal from Afghanistan, but there were no videos of them falling off their bikes. In short, Biden is a uniquely easy person to campaign against with his poor public speaking and the plethora of public instances where he has really shown his age.
Add to that the fact that Trump has a genuine following who didn’t just want a Republican candidate to win, but him specifically and it looks increasingly tricky for Biden to pull off a win in 2024. Voters in the USA are not very good at showing up to vote, and a Trump-Biden rematch would once again force voters to ask themselves if those two are really the best America has to offer. I would never shirk my duty to vote, but I can see where people are coming from when they get discouraged from voting by the calibre of politician Americans have on offer. I suspect a Trump vs Biden election in 2024 would see a lower turnout than in 2020 which in my view would favour Trump has his supporters actually want him specifically to win. Biden’s great mistake is thinking that people wanted him to win in 2020, when in reality they just wanted Trump to lose.
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I've always been interested in politics, economics, and the interplay between. The blog is a place for me to explore different ideas and concepts relating to economics or politics, be that national or international. The goal for the blog is to make you think; to provide new perspectives.
Written by Karl Johansson
Cover photo by Andrew Neel from Pexels, edited by Karl Johansson
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