AP Photo/Alex Brandon
If the Presidential election were held on May 7, 2024, Republican Donald Trump would probably repeat the feat of Democrat Grover Cleveland – over 100 years ago – to become only the second President ousted from the White House to return four years later.
Trump is currently leading in virtually all of the national and state polling. The RealClearPolitics polling average has him up by 1.3 points nationally, and he has been leading by around two points for almost a year now. To keep this in perspective, during 2016 and 2020, Trump rarely led in any polling, and never led in the average. Also, Trump is leading by an average of 3.2 points in the battleground states, which include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. And for Biden to win these battleground states, and thus the electoral college, he will almost certainly have to win the popular vote by at least three points, a five-point swing from where we currently are.
Joe Biden is also facing some huge electoral problems that make things even worse for him. Let’s re-examine the five old problems still facing Biden, and one new (sixth) one, as well. Here they are, in order of their importance:
Joe Biden Is Old and Senile
First, Joe Biden continues to age and is increasingly senile. Axios has reported that Biden’s aides have introduced a change to his White House departure and return routine so that instead of walking across the lawn alone, he's now surrounded by aides. This is clearly meant to disguise his halting and stiff gate. Further, Biden is rarely allowed to speak before cameras — because he clearly can’t, as some of these clips show. As a result, he will almost certainly not participate in any debates.
It's the Economy, Stupid
Second, the economy and inflation continue to be horrible, and Biden was the president when they went sour. Let’s look at the specifics:
The Bureau of Economic Analysis released its advance estimate for 2024’s first-quarter real GDP growth. At 1.6 percent, it is the worst quarterly performance since the economy contracted by 0.6 percent almost two years ago in the second quarter of 2022. This was a growth level one-third below economists’ expectations of 2.4 percent. It is also a precipitous drop from 2023’s fourth-quarter rate of 3.4 percent and 2023’s third-quarter rate of 4.9 percent.
This slower growth comes on the heels of higher inflation. The March report on overall prices showed the Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers rose 3.5 percent over the last year — 3.8 percent when core inflation (minus food and energy) was considered. That figure was higher than any since September 2023 and marked the third consecutive monthly increase.
Then, on Friday, came more bad inflation news, this time on personal consumer expenditures excluding food and energy. This is the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, and in March, it rose 2.8 percent compared to a year ago — the same as in February and above expectations.
Inflation is still well above the Fed’s 2 percent annual target, and many Americans have been feeling the frustration of rising prices since Biden took office. Even worse for Biden, most Americans believe Trump was better on the economy – prior to COVID 19, which Trump is not blamed for – than Biden. And they are right to think so.
The Border Is Wide Open
Third, the Southern U.S. border continues to be wide open and out of control. Since President Biden took office, the U.S. Border Patrol has encountered or observed approximately ten million illegal border crossers between ports of entry. Many of these people are military-aged men, of a variety of nationalities, including Mexican, Venezuelan, Chinese, Russian, Afghani, Turkish, Arab, etc.
There is plenty of polling to show that the American public is very concerned with the border problem, and that the public holds Joe Biden personally responsible for it. Which is the correct assumption, because, contrary to what Biden has claimed, the Biden administration does not need the Congress to give them any new legislation to enforce the border.
The Pro-Hamas Democrats Are Rioting
Fourth, the Gaza situation continues to heat up, pitting the pro-Hamas Democrats against the pro-Israel Democrats, and the pro-Hamas faction is growing more violent and out of control as time moves on. They have taken over or trashed a multitude of college campuses, including elite universities like Columbia, Yale, and MIT. Because of the Democrat divide, we have Biden (usually) verbally supporting Israel while, behind the scenes — and occasionally in front of the cameras — he and his administration attempt to undermine it. But this is not going to be enough. Biden needs the war to end and to punish Israel to cater to his pro-Hamas base. And if he does, the pro-Israel Democrats could be picked off by Donald Trump. And the DNC convention is coming up – does anyone really doubt that pro-Hamas radicals will riot/protest in Chicago? And does anyone doubt that this will go over as well as it did in 1968, when, also in Chicago, the leftwing rioters helped Richard Nixon, (presumably) Donald Trump’s favorite president, win that year’s presidential election?
Joe Biden Is Clearly Corrupt
Fifth, the Biden influence-peddling scandal continues to undermine Joe Biden’s reputation. We know that Joe Biden, as a sitting vice president from 2009 through 2017 (and after), used his ne'er-do-well, alcoholic, drug-addicted, sex-crazed son, Hunter Biden, and also his lobbyist brother, to serve as the bagmen for the Biden family influence operation, which involved taking money from foreign nations, like China, Qatar, and Ukraine. The unbelievable part is we still have no alternate explanation offered as to why Hunter Biden was being paid all this money. Was it for Hunter Biden’s legal acumen, his expertise in hookers or drugs, or to influence Joe? I think we all know the answer to this supposed conundrum. This Biden corruption scandal is totally new from 2020 because it was suppressed by the MSM back then. A retroactive poll showed that, had the scandal come out in 2020, Joe Biden would have lost. This is perhaps the easiest of all scandals to understand, as everyone thinks bribery is a serious crime.
The Biden Campaign Is Becoming Unglued and Has Bad Campaign Instincts
Sixth, the Biden campaign is panicking because of Biden’s electoral freefall and making campaign mistakes galore. They keep sheltering Biden from tough questions and hiding him away from the press in Delaware, which is so obvious and troubling that it has been noticed by the New York Times. And when Biden has a supposedly “safe” interview, he still manages to screw things up, promising to debate Trump when he clearly can’t and won’t.
The campaign spends millions on an advertising blitz to play up “Bidenomics,” only to give up when they realize the American voters can’t be bamboozled into thinking Biden is performing well on the economy. Biden promises action on the border, only to give Obamacare to illegals so as to better win their votes. Biden also maligns Japan and India while seeking to defend his open border.
The Biden campaign keeps pushing to reward pro-Hamas supporters, who it agrees with on the issue, and fears will desert the Democrats. For example, Biden announces a pier offshore in Gaza to bring in more aid, which makes the U.S. troops/workers manning it sitting ducks for terrorist groups. Also, the administration considers bringing Palestinian (radical Muslim) Arabs from Gaza into the U.S., despite that population’s hatred for the U.S., for non-Muslims, including Christians and Jews, and despite its documented willingness to resort to terrorism and violence.
And the Biden campaign is directing the NY prosecution against Trump (plus the other cases), where there is no actual crime, and where, even if there was a crime, it would still be all about sex. This is despite the fact that American voters believe the case is partisan lawfare and are more likely to support Trump based on this (as seen by the Trump polling bumps when he was indicted).
Conclusion
We now have about six months to go until the 2024 election. The polling negatives from these six huge Biden problems continue to accelerate and aggregate – Biden is getting older; the economy is getting worse; the border continues to bleed; the Gaza protesting chaos is increasing; and the Biden corruption scandal continues to grow; and campaign mistakes will keep being made. And all these issues will certainly be more publicized as Republican/conservative forces increasingly get their paid message out.
All in all, things are not looking good for Joe Biden. In my view, a campaign crash seems far more likely than a rebound.
