I don’t know that we can afford to be ecstatically optimistic but it is important to hear the positive case for the Democrats. It’s demoralizing to watch the news and constantly be told that Biden is toast. So here’s Simon Rosenberg’s final 2023 Hopium Chronicle. It’s New Year’s Eve. Enjoy it. The hard work starts day after tomorrow:
A Positive, Upbeat End to 2023 – Dow in record territory. Inflation running below the Fed target rate. Interest rates coming down next year. GDP growth 4.9% last quarter, looking close to 3% for this one. Best job market since the 1960s. The lowest uninsured rate in history. Crime has fallen across the US this year, rents are coming down too. Consumer sentiment is spiking. Wage growth, prime age worker participation rate and new business formation are all in historically elevated territory. Best recovery in the G7. US setting records for domestic oil and renewable production. $130b in student debt forgiven. The good news just keeps coming.
Democrats are also seeing improvement in national polling. A majority of the independent polls taken in recent weeks have Biden tied or ahead. The influential NYT poll, which had Biden trailing Trump two months ago, now has Biden up 47%-45% with likely voters. Dems have picked up 3 points in 538’s Congressional Generic tracker in recent months, and Navigator’s recent House battleground tracker polling found Republicans losing ground, and Democrats now with a clear advantage. The two most recent large sample Hispanic poll and youth polls found Biden running at or above his 2020 numbers – 57%-33% (+24) with 18-29 year olds in the Harvard/IOP poll, and 58%-31% (+27) in the bi-partisan Univision poll. The Economist/YouGov weekly tracker this week found Biden’s approval on the Israel-Hamas war 37%-32% (+5) approve w/18-29 year olds, the best of any age cohort, and 59%-23% (+36) w/Democrats – so no clear, sustained backlash there.
Here are the 16 recent polls showing Biden ahead or tied (via 538):
47-45 NYT/Siena (LVs)
49-48 Monmouth
49-48 NPR/Marist
47-46 Quinnipiac
42-41 YouGov/Economist 12/2
44-42 YouGov/Economist 11/25
39-37 YouGov
40-36 and 37-35 Leger
Reuters had Biden +4 in the battleground Presidential states
45-45 Clarity
44-44 Yahoo/YouGov
41-41 Cygnal
43-43 Economist/YouGov 12/6 and 12/20
43-43 Morning Consult 12/2It can no longer be said Trump leads in the 2024 election, and in the polling which helped create the “Trump is ahead” take, Biden now leads.
2023 has been a blue wave electoral year for Democrats, a very good year. Now the economy, consumer sentiment and polling are all ending the year on an upbeat, optimistic note. Congratulations everyone. While we have a long way to go in the 2024 election, we are ending 2023 strong, with momentum, in my view in a far better place than Republicans, who are, in just about every imaginable way, an historic shitshow – full stop.
Remember our basic take on 2024 – Joe Biden is a good President. The country is better off. The Democratic Party is strong and winning elections across the US. And they have Trump.
The Biden-Harris Campaign’s New 2024 Memo – A Must Read – The campaign just released a memo, Why Biden Will Win in 2024. It begins:
As 2023 comes to a close, the choice before the American people in November 2024 is coming into sharper focus.
With less than a month before GOP primary voters begin casting ballots in Iowa, former President Donald Trump’s extreme and dangerous agenda once again looks poised to define the Republican Party in the 2024 election.
With that reality comes a stark and sobering fact: The choice for voters next year will not simply be between competing philosophies of governing. The choice for the American people in November 2024 will be about protecting American democracy and the very individual freedoms we enjoy as Americans.
Ever since white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched on Charlottesville with the support of Donald Trump in 2017, President Biden has warned of Trump’s ability to incite political violence and wage attacks on our democracy and freedom.
President Biden wrote in The Atlantic in August 2017 that “We have an American president who has emboldened white supremacists with messages of comfort.”
When he launched his campaign for president in April 2019, Joe Biden told the nation that Donald Trump and his actions posed “a threat to this nation unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my lifetime.” That the soul of America itself was on the line.
He made the same case when he accepted his party’s nomination in August 2020, and again in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, shortly before more Americans voted for him than for any candidate in history, and again last year at Independence Hall before the 2022 midterms – which yielded the best results for a sitting president since FDR. And, when he announced his reelection bid in April, his message was the same.
Make no mistake: The stakes next year are higher than they ever have been. But voters have been clear. They will not accept the existential threat to democracy that Donald Trump represents. They will not vote for his extreme policies and “dictator on day one” approach to control their daily lives.
They’ll be clear again next November.
Reading the whole memo is our Hopium homework tonight.
I’m very worried as we should all be. But I don’t want to feel demoralized when there really is good news.
Anyway, try not to get too depressed. You’re hearing a lot of nay-saying but remember, they aren’t always right. Red tsunami anyone?