By Senior Indiana Behr
In the last of our Controversial/Unpopular Opinions post, Indy vouches for President Joe Biden. Indy says, yes, Biden is a viable shot for a second term. Indy is not afraid to stand, possibly, outside popular opinion.
Note: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made an announcement on October 9 that he will be running for President as an Independent due to his opposition to the Democratic National Committee’s public support of Joe Biden. This means Kennedy will likely be on the ballot in the general election in several states. This article was drafted prior to the RFK announcement.
–Indy
Full disclosure: My positions often align with the Democratic Party. As such, given the current field of the Democratic 2024 Presidential Primary, the state of our nation, and the current administration’s performance, I think that Joe Biden is the best option in 2024. However, I think he currently is not doing well in approval ratings and in his primary. I do think he will be reelected, but I think the election will be closer than I would have predicted a few months ago.
Polling shows that I am in the minority. Both Democrats (and most Americans) want younger, newer, candidates. Biden is winning pretty much all primary polls, but the alternatives are Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson. Kennedy is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, and is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist who is only prominent because of his last name. Williamson, who also ran in 2020, is a spiritual guru who once said amidst the peak of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in 1992 that “sickness is an illusion and does not actually exist.”
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans are coalescing around former President Donald Trump. Though at one point it seemed like the primary might be close, it really isn’t looking that way these days. As of September 27, FiveThirtyEight ranks Trump as being in first with 54.7%, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in second with 13.8%, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in third with 6.1%, and Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy with 5.7%. There are a few others also being polled who are below 5%, like former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
On January 7, 2023, DeSantis was at 40.5% and Trump was at 42.4%. That’s a 1.9% margin, which is very close. But now, Trump is up 12.3% from then, and more significantly, DeSantis is down 26.7%. That is a huge drop-off. What happened? Well, DeSantis had some incredibly embarrassing moments. As the New York Times put it, “DeSantis Lost the Internet,” which is hard to come back from in the digital age. DeSantis doesn’t show well digitally. At one point, one of his staffers posted a video promoting DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ policies that had a Nazi symbol in it. Once viewed as the future of the GOP, having won the governorship in 2018 as an underdog in an otherwise bad midterm for Republicans, and then winning reelection by nearly 20 points against a former Florida Governor–his reputation is now in the gutter.
As someone who wants Democrats to be successful, the unity seen on the GOP side lately worries me. An incumbent President only polling in the low-to-mid 60s during their primary reelection campaign is not an amazing look. Right now, RFK Jr. is at 15.1% according to FiveThirtyEight. Trump pretty much never polled that low during his 2020 primary campaign, where his two opponents were former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh and former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld. Ultimately, his challengers received 1.08% and 1.31% of the vote respectively. Trump received 97.14%. I think it is very clear that Biden will win the primary, but clearly not all Democrats are behind him. However, I really do not think that this will affect him much in the general. I think almost all true Democrats will unite behind Biden in the general. I don’t think that this is necessarily the case with former President Trump.
Okay, so I have made it clear that though I think Joe Biden will win reelection; it’s closer than I wish it were. My main point is that I think Joe Biden has so far done well as President, and I think he deserves a second term to finish what he’s started. To be honest, in 2019 during the Democratic primary for the 2020 Presidential Election, I was firmly opposed to then-former Vice President Biden. In fact, he was one of my last choices, and I thought candidates like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, or Pete Buttigieg would be better. With hindsight, I do not think Warren or Buttigieg would have won a general election. I think Sanders probably would have, but I do not think his presidency would be fundamentally different from Biden’s, and I think he would have struggled with reelection even more.
Biden made many commitments in his run, like most candidates do, that have not been put in place as of yet. However, during his first two years, we had a 50-50 Senate, and Democrats had a very narrow House majority, so of course he couldn’t accomplish everything. The Senate has the filibuster which essentially means most major things actually need 60 votes, and even then, there were two Democratic Senators who made it hard for Biden to pass anything: Joe Manchin, a conservative from very red West Virginia, and Kyrsten Sinema, a Senator from Arizona who tried to water down every one of his proposals. After the 2022 midterms, Sinema became an independent but has still caucused with the Democrats and retained Committee seats as a member of the majority.
First of all, many people think that Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is a stain on his legacy. However, I think given his options, that was the best choice. I do not think the US should be the police of the world. I think that the initial invasion of Afghanistan in the 2000s was somewhat justified, but once we accomplished our primary goals, we should have just left. The Taliban are absolutely horrible, but American intelligence was apparently stating that the Taliban taking over almost immediately was pretty much impossible. Besides, if the Afghan military wasn’t able to fight for even a week after over a decade of practice, that’s on them! Nevertheless, Biden’s approval rating dropped by a lot after this withdrawal, and pretty much never recovered.
I also think the student loan debt issue has been handled very well by Biden. Some people think he went too far by giving “handouts” by cancelling debt, but some more progressive activists and politicians think he should go farther. I think he has done fine. I think if Biden were to cancel all of the student debt at once, it would immediately be struck down by a judge and ultimately the Supreme Court. I think therefore that his pragmatic approach of cancelling small amounts of student loan debt and temporarily pausing payments in different ways is the most effective way to accomplish this goal. We spend trillions of dollars on our military. So a few billion to help millions of Americans have an easier life is worth it! Some people say, “But what about those who already paid it back?” That’s cool, but other people shouldn’t have to suffer because you did. That’s not justice; that’s just kinda cruel.
I also think the Biden administration’s signature program, the Build Back Better Plan, might have not been successful in some ways, but none of this was Biden’s fault, and what he did accomplish was very impressive. Like I stated earlier, the filibuster in the Senate meant many bills that passed the House in Biden’s first two years struggled to gain traction in the Senate. But what came in the end was the Inflation Reduction Act, which is essentially a watered-down version of the original Build Back Better Act. Almost all of the social safety net proposals did not make the cut because of the filibuster and conservative Democrats like Sen. Manchin and Sinema opposing many of the proposals. However, major climate change solutions made it in the bill that is now law. Prescription drug prices are being significantly lowered, too. It also will help fund new clean energy plans.
In terms of his electability, many polls are starting to show him slipping against the likely GOP nominee, former President Trump. Personally, I don’t buy it. I think pollsters are screwing up. And even though the electoral college usually favors Republicans, 2024 may be an exception.
If the 2024 election were held today between Biden and Trump, I think it would go like this. The lightest color is Lean, the slightly darker is Likely, and the dark colors are Solid/Safe. Tan indicates a tossup. I think that Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin have a pretty good chance of staying Democratic, and though I think Pennsylvania is a little closer, I’m pretty confident it’ll go blue.
So overall, I am concerned about President Biden’s electability, but nevertheless, I think he will win in 2024. Disagree? Please comment: I’d love to prove you wrong.