There’s a gathering sense that President Biden’s response to the war in Gaza may cost him the 2024 election. A recent Gallup poll showed that his support among Democrats has slipped 11 points in the past month to 75 percent, the lowest of his presidency. On Friday my colleagues in the newsroom reported on a growing backlash against Biden coming from young and left-leaning voters.
Does this mean that standing with Israel could be politically fatal for Biden? I don’t think so, and to understand why, it’s important to understand the core responsibilities of an American president.
In 2012, when I was a partisan supporter of Mitt Romney, there was one message from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that I thought made the most succinct and persuasive case for his second term. It was delivered most memorably by then-Vice President Biden, of all people, at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. He said that Obama had “courage in his soul, compassion in his heart and a spine of steel,” and then Biden delivered the key line: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”
I admit that I have been surprised by Biden’s strong leadership since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but part of the reason I’m surprised is that I don’t think it will help him much politically - I think he sees how important these things are right now and he prioritizes them over his own longer-term political prospects.
Exactly.
Dude is old. This next election will be the last of his career. He knows that. Doing what he thinks is “right” is way more important to him than the approval rating.
I’m not sure he even wants a second term (as opposed to doing it out of a sense of duty). I know that the sort of person who becomes president isn’t like normal people, but I still can’t see him eager for one of the most stressful jobs in the world up until he’s 86 years old.