Democrats keep doing surprisingly well in special elections. The party’s most vulnerable Senate incumbents are running ahead of their rivals in key battleground states. One of Democrats’ signature issues — reproductive rights — has repeatedly proved a winning message.

And yet Joe Biden is struggling to pull even with Donald Trump.

It’s another ominous sign for the president: Even as other Democrats are running strong, the party’s down-ballot successes aren’t translating into momentum at the top of the ticket. Biden trails Trump in many of the states he needs to win to keep the White House. His job approval is underwater. And the coalition of voters that ushered him into office four years ago is fraying.

“Democrats are enthusiastic about trying to win the Senate and trying to win the House,” said Neil Oxman, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist.

And they’re “not enthusiastic about Biden’s reelection,” Oxman said. “Period.”

  • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    5 months ago

    I saw a comment somewhere that can be summarized as “the biggest chance of either party to immediately gain a popular vote lead for presidency is for their own candidate to keel over before the election”, and frankly, I can’t say it’s incorrect. Neither one has any business making decisions for a future they won’t have to live through the consequences of. Biden is basically just running off of “not the other guy”, “business as usual”, and “we’ll totally do (insert predictably broken campaign promise)”.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      Maybe. I don’t really want President Harris either. She’d be in the same boat as NYC mayor Eric Adams: a “tough on crime” Democrat that hurts more than helps.

    • mozz@mbin.grits.dev
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      5 months ago

      I have no idea about the Biden side (although people having no idea what he has to run on is more of a media thing than a what-he’s-done thing). But I’m confident saying that Trump dying before the election would be a catastrophe for the Republicans.

      The GOP rank and file has figured out at this point that most people in Washington don’t represent them. It’s all just weirdos in suits who are making emotionally manipulative commercials and taking their money and health care and jobs and leaving them with nothing. I think a lot of Trump’s appeal was that, whatever his flaws, he definitely wasn’t one of those pod people, so there was quite a lot of appeal to the idea of sending him to Washington and if he wrecks the place like a deer trapped in a subway car then oh well nothing of value was lost.

      I don’t think they were right about the harmlessness of Trump destroying things, but the understanding of Washington that underlay the core calculus wasn’t totally off base. DeSantis has enough authentic stupid meanness to be able to appeal to them a little bit, but he can’t hide that at his core he’s just another scumbag in a suit, and for anyone else (Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz and Matt Gaetz), I think they’re gonna say in record numbers you know what brother man I’m gonna pass.

      Trump dying after he gets in office, and all the machinery of Project 2025 falling into the hands of someone who’s not the world’s most useless and failure prone individual, would on the other hand be an absolute global catastrophe.

    • Addv4@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      And his approach is increasingly flawed, as he has backed an apparent genocide which sounds absolutely like something Trump would do. I keep hearing soooo many whataboutisms when mentioning this, about how Trump would be worse, about how questioning this could put Trump back in office if it causes people to not vote for Biden, etc. But that’s the issue, as Biden was elected largely because he was seen as a pretty nice guy who was pretty decently prepared for the role, and specifically would try to fix the problems Trump created. And to be fair, he has fixed a ton of them and has overall decent track record of recovery for the country. However, it’s pretty clear he’s trying to bow to AIPAC so that they don’t try to tank the democrats in the next election, and in turn it is greatly tarnishing their reputation, more so than I think they’ve realized.

      • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        I mean, Trump has stated he’ll let Russia have Ukraine.

        So It definitely can be worse.

        The Gaza genocide thing is fucking insane, the public is being shown the PR side from Palestinians, and are completely ignoring the military strategic side of things.

        Why the media isn’t discussing the fact that this is a proxy war with Iran. This isn’t conspiracy theory shit either, it’s quite well documented over the last 40 years. Israel is definitely doing harm to the Palestinians, but these people are literally being used, funded, and armed by a foreign government to attack Israel with the actual objective having nothing to do with a Palestinian state.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran–Israel_proxy_conflict

        Iran sent 170 drones, 120 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles in a direct attack against against Israel not two months ago after Israel bombed an Iranian embassy in Syria.

        This is why the US and the entire west is helping Israel, because they’re fighting Iran too.

    • kromem@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I think if Biden dies the Dem debate performance might actually get worse.

      The entire ticket falling into the Bermuda triangle would work out well though.

      • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        Because the prospects of President Cop just weren’t quite enough, she has a “holistic thought advisor”…

        • kromem@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          (well, it’s satire - but the clips of her saying a lot of nothing are real)