Do Democrats want Joe Biden or not?: Most Democrats say they want a non-Biden presidential candidate in 2024, but it’s highly likely that Biden will be the party’s nominee anyway.
Polls don’t have to be consistent. And that’s because many voters aren’t consistent in their opinions.
For instance, as pointed out this week by The Atlantic, most Democratic voters would prefer the party nominate someone other than President Joe Biden for president in 2024.
Why Joe Biden Won’t Fade Away for Democrats
But Biden remains, by far, the most likely presidential nominee for the party.
An AP/NORC poll last week said that only 37 percent of Democrats want Biden to run again, with other polls showing even less support.
It appears that Biden’s age — he’s now 80, and would be 82 at the time of his second inauguration — is the major factor for those wishing for another candidate.
However, a new poll taken this week found that support for another Joe Biden term has increased among Democrats, to over 50 percent.
The same poll has 54 percent of Republicans wishing for President Trump to run again.
Joe Biden has not officially announced that he’s running in 2024, but all indications are that he is and plans to announce his re-election campaign in the next couple of months.
In addition, there have been no indications that any other prominent Democrat is planning to challenge him.
None of the major candidates from 2020, for instance, have emerged as regular foils or critics of Biden’s presidency, with most of them either in his administration (Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg) or serving as Congressional allies (Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar.)
There just aren’t any plausible challengers for Biden within the Democratic Party, and it appears likely that the next generation of leadership in the party (governors like Gretchen Whitmer, Jared Polis, and Josh Shapiro) will have to wait for 2028 for their shot at the presidency.
“Biden has a few reasons for running: He seems to enjoy being president. His administration has already been more successful than many people expected, though this also gives him a reason to retire gracefully,” The Atlantic wrote. “But nothing motivates Biden more these days than turning back the threat to American democracy that he sees posed by Donald Trump and his heirs, and Biden worries that there is no Democrat who could marshal the same coalition he led in 2020 to defeat Trump.”
And that’s at the crux of what’s happening with the Democratic race in 2024: “Biden will run as long as he doesn’t see any plausible alternative, but as long as he’s running, it’s impossible for any alternative to arise.”
In large part, that’s because Biden has mostly kept his electoral coalition together.
“Biden has managed to stare down sectors of the Democratic base on key issues without losing them,” The Atlantic writes. “Environmentalists have been frustrated by his compromises, but they haven’t mobilized behind an alternative. Organized labor was infuriated by his decision to block railroad workers from striking, but the unions haven’t abandoned Joe from Scranton.”
Reuters this week looked at how Biden’s team is approaching 2024.
“Joe Biden, his aides and his Democratic allies are shrugging off polls showing doubts about his age and leadership as they plot his expected re-election campaign, and point instead to the U.S. president’s flinty State of the Union speech to Congress this week as a sign of his political resiliency,” the Reuters report said.
Biden addressed the polling him in an interview with Noticias Telemundo, as cited by Reuters.
“Look, do you know any polling that’s accurate these days? You all told me that there was no way we were going to do well in this off-year election. I told you from the beginning we’re going to do well,” the president said in the interview. “I feel good about where we are. I feel good about the way things are, and I feel good about the reception I get.”
BONUS: The Fall of Joe Biden Has Started
BONUS: Donald Trump Looks At His End
BONUS: Kamala Harris Should Quit
BONUS: A Nuclear War over Ukraine?
BONUS: Donald Trump Looks Desperate
Expertise and Experience: Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
