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.
James Carville (on Joe Biden)
President Biden is in trouble. On Election Day 2020, national polls had him up 7 points on Trump, who lost by only 42,915 votes in three states (out of 160 million cast). Now, thanks to one flop after another, national polls have him tied with Trump and behind Nikki Haley. And, if Bobby Kennedy or Cornel West peel off independent and college-aged voters, he will lose to (even) Trump.
Biden points to GOP under-performance in 2022’s mid-terms, but Cook Political Report disagrees: the mid-terms reflected 112 million civic-minded ballots, including disproportionate numbers of “abortion” voters. Absent were 48 million peripheral voters (only vote in presidential-election years) comprised of independent, non-college, non-white, and the young, who will compare the border, economy, and national safety under Biden to the Trump years.
Start with the Mexican border, where Biden created near anarchy by wholly rejecting Trump’s immigration policies. Voter approval of Biden’s handling of the border is now only 26% (Source: ABC/Ipsos). Even worse, because of chaos in blue cities, several polls show Black and Latino voters have soured on “migrants” since Biden took office. And, these are the Americans whose purchases now cost (on average) 30% more than when Trump was in office.
No wonder CNBC reports Biden’s handling of the economy has only 39% approval from low-income minorities, 35% from the young (18 to 35 years old), and 13% from “undecided” voters. The President claims “Bidenomics” is working, but Morning Consult’s polls found 75% of voters in swing-states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin say the US economy is tanking and their personal finances were better under Trump.
Americans don’t feel safer under Biden. Only 33% approve of his handling of crime (source: ABC/Ipsos). And who won’t link the Afghanistan withdrawal, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s spy balloon, and the Hamas terror attack to Biden’s perceived weakness (at least by our enemies)? He did relax Trump’s trade sanctions on Iran and did pressure Israel to allow daily guest workers from Gaza. By 2024, voters will know who gave Hamas the petrodollars and detailed maps of Israeli neighborhoods (source: The Jerusalem Post).
Those images of Hamas barbarism and Jewish suffering will hurt Joe Biden in 2024 because, as conservative Daniel McCarthy writes, a “single day of horror in Israel” has revived American “memories of the war on terror – the Twin Towers burning, Daniel Pearl’s murder in Pakistan, bombings in London, a massacre in Paris, ISIS cutting the heads off kneeling prisoners.” As an old adage warns, Biden can’t fool voters a second time.
The right-left contrast is election dynamite. That was Ron DeSantis (R) sending jets to fetch Americans in Israel, and closing Florida’s chapters of (pro-Hamas) Students for Justice in Palestine, and that was Karine Jean-Pierre (D) answering a question about rising anti-semitism in the US by claiming that “Muslims have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks.”
I suspect the Biden administration’s waffling deeds and words triggered his 11-point drop with Democrats in the latest Gallup poll, because Black and Jewish Democrats know better. In 2022, 158 anti-Muslim hate crimes were unchanged from 2021, while anti-Black hate crimes rose 4% to 3,424, and anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 36% to 1,124 (source: FBI). The political math is simple: America has 41.6 million Blacks, 7.6 million Jews, and only 3.5 million Muslims.
When KJP withheld the FBI’s data and said there’s “no credible evidence” of rising anti-semitism, she echoed the deceit of Biden’s media allies censoring the New York Post’s story and his CIA-NSA cronies claiming the Hunter laptop story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russia disinformation operation.” No wonder Gallup reports only 32% of voters trust the media – a record low – and CNN reports only 28% have “confidence” in what Biden says.
That’s why Nikki Haley, who’s never lost an election, is running against Biden’s dishonesty: “Let’s be honest with the American people: Hamas and Iran know 6 billion is going to be released…The media needs to stop protecting Biden and tell America the truth.” Her 2024 campaign message is crystal clear: the Biden White House is where truth and solutions go to die.
Within the noise of the GOP debates is a 2024 campaign strategy. Run against what Thomas Sowell (A Conflict of Visions) call’s “unconstrained vision” that leads to the flat-wrong presumption that all crime, inequality, poverty, and war can be solved if we enact the right policies, say the right things, and spend enough money. Now that China’s in the WTO, confederate names have been purged, and Biden’s sent funds to Iran, are voters any better off today?
No, so it’s time for “constrained vision” that sees non-perfectible people and non-solvable problems; meaning bring back Trump’s Remain In Mexico policy, kill Biden’s energy and climate policies, and remind voters that Biden’s weakness invited 10/07, just like Carter’s weakness invited the Iran Hostage Crisis. History repeats itself, and two-thirds of Americans don’t feel safe under Biden (source: Real Clear Politics).
Now that the GOP has its House in order with new speaker Mike Johnson, and the left has rekindled resentment of the Democrat in the White House, it’s Go Time for Republicans. Everyday folks, who have to get their pronouns right at school or work, feel like chumps watching Harvard kids cheering Hamas and The Squad dissing Jews. There is a silent majority that is seething. And they’re bringing an ass-whooping in twelve months.
