A former communications director of Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that President Biden could face a Democratic primary challenger in 2024 amid his failure to defend his economic proposals and develop efficient communication with the American people, Fox News reported on Friday.
No Excuses PAC founder Corbin Trent believes that the US is not in as bad a shape as is being portrayed and this is partly due to the unsuccessful communicative strategy of President Biden.
"One thing – polling – is behind that. We’re seeing with my version of the midterm outcome is not just my version. We’re seeing that the polls show the Republicans have a slight edge. That may be getting worse," he said. "We see Biden’s approval ratings going down and moving in the wrong direction."
According to Trent, the “Democratic Party that has done a lot for the American people and has largely been unable to articulate what it's doing and what it’s done.” He claimed that the current president fails to convey the message about his projects. This is happening, AOC's former staffer told Politico, because Biden “is deeply unpopular, he's old as sh*t… ineffective -- unless we’re counting judges or whatever the hell inside baseball scorecard we’re using."
This may prompt Democrats to introduce another candidate for the 2024 elections, which is a rare case since Biden reportedly plans to seek re-election. An incumbent Democratic president was last challenged in a primary in 1980, when Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., filed to run against President Carter.
Among those Democrats who could potentially participate in the upcoming presidential cycle, challenging, are the often mentioned Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, California Governor Gavin Newsom, ex-New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Vice President Kamala Harris. Some have even speculated about former candidate Hillary Clinton.
"If anybody sort of traditional were to pop up, then it's going to be a wide variety of people," Trent said." "You have a guy that is pushing 80, right? There wasn’t even certainty that he would run for a second term when he first ran."
According to him, if Republicans would manage to gain the majority in both Houses of Congress, the scenario of a Democratic challenger would signal the party would like “to go in a different direction and sort of truncate its losses.”
"Right now the American people are divided in how they feel about the economy, divided about how we’re handling the COVID pandemic,” Trent said. “We have to do a better job uniting the country. For whatever reason, President Biden has not been able to do that to this point."
He also noted that the GOP has “very little vision, very little agenda,” with only 13 of 212 their Congressmen voting for the $1.2 Infrastructure Bill, as they couldn’t "get behind roads, bridges, internet.”
On the other hand, the possibility of Biden facing a primary challenger is far-fetched, according to former DNC chair candidate Jehmu Greene.
Meanwhile, despite the fact that there was no official confirmation from the White House, many reports speculated that Biden plans to run for a second term in 2024. Not all Democrats believe that Biden will ultimately put forward his candidacy due to his falling approval rating.
Apart from that, Biden will be 81 years old by 2024 and some Democratic officials are skeptical about his candidacy. Kamala Harris, who was believed to be one of Biden's likeliest successors and who also struggles with record low ratings, said that she hadn’t talked about future elections with the president, as they “haven't completed our first year and we're in the middle of a pandemic.”
According to a recent poll from NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist College, only 41 percent of Americans approve of Biden's performance, which is 20 percent lower than at the beginning of his presidency.
The most worrisome sign was said to be the fact that support among independent voters has fallen by eight percent in just one week to 29 percent. Moreover, independent voters often determine the outcome of elections. This is worrying for many Democrats ahead of the midterm congressional elections.
According to the director of the Institute for Public Opinion Research at Marist College Lee Miringoff, such results can be explained by inflation, which is approaching a 40-year high, the emergence of the Omicron strain that threatens to lead to new unpopular restrictive measures, and the fact that part of Biden’s economic agenda has stalled in Congress.
“There’s lots of uncertainty out there,” Miringoff said. “He’s being hit for lack of leadership. He’s being hit for the fatigue of the pandemic and concerns about inflation.”
Nevertheless, Biden’s position is still stronger in comparison with ex-President Donald Trump’s. According to RealClearPolitics, an electoral poll aggregator, the current head of the White House is 4.5 percent ahead of Trump, and If the elections were held today, more than 51 percent of the respondents would vote for the current president.