Joe Biden is desperate to run against Donald Trump in 2024. His campaign team imagines that the current president is likely to beat the former president, as he did in 2020. The corollary is that they’re not at all convinced he could win over anybody else.
Hence, the indictment of Donald Trump on charges of mishandling classified information, which inevitably fuels Trump’s grievance agenda, raises money for his campaign, and appears to have further solidified his standing as front-runner in the crowded GOP primary field. The charges are meant to make his nomination inevitable but weaken his appeal in the general election.
Biden’s apparatchiks may have overplayed their hand. According to a CBS News poll taken between June 7 and June 10, half the country thinks Trump’s indictment was politically motivated. The responses are partisan, with 69% of Republicans judging the charges political and only 8% of Democrats. But a plurality of Independents – the fastest-growing and now largest political group in the country –side with GOP respondents in the matter.
Asked if they would be voting in a primary, 37% of those polled said they would participate in a Democrat primary while 39% indicated they would vote in a GOP contest. Remember, there are an estimated 10 million more registered Democrats than Republicans in the U.S.
President Joe Biden speaks during an event at the Nash Community College in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on June 9, 2023. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
But Biden is not any normal incumbent. He won the election in 2020 because COVID wrecked a booming economy and because his handlers cleverly concealed from the public the extent of Biden’s age-related incapacity. He also won because voters were tired of the endless dramas of the Trump presidency and longed for what Biden promised – a dialing down of the harsh political rhetoric and greater harmony.
Biden has not delivered on that promise. His 2024 campaign strategy depends on furthering our divides. Everything wrong with the nation, according to Biden, is the fault of his predecessor and MAGA Republicans. At every opportunity, Biden blasts the MAGA GOP, hoping that voters will tie Republican candidates – and especially Trump – to the disgraceful events of Jan. 6. Boy, have Democrats mined Jan. 6.
But perhaps the most devastating reveal of the CBS News poll for Biden’s re-election prospects is that Republicans turn out to be quite moderate, after all. Asked to list their top three criteria for the 2024 Republican nominee, voters likely to participate in GOP primaries prioritized:
Yes, Republicans want to spur economic growth by cutting taxes, and they want their candidate to articulate a plan for reducing inflation, which has caused real incomes in the U.S. to decline for 25 straight months. Those ambitions top culture war issues that Democrats have focused on. Note to Democrats, when Americans tell pollsters that Joe Biden does not care about people like me, they should pay attention.
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Indicting a former president who is also your most likely political opponent in an upcoming race is risky, especially when Joe Biden is also being investigated for taking and storing privileged information. And, when Hillary Clinton received a mere rebuke from FBI chief James Comey for similarly “careless” handling of secrets and also failing to comply with a subpoena. Americans might be more ready to condemn Trump for his missteps had Special Counsel John Durham, in his Russiagate report, not shown Democrats and their FBI allies guilty of bending the law to undermine Trump.