Eighteen months is an eternity in politics.
But the fast-moving, high-profile events of the past week have set the tone and sharpened the stakes in a nascent presidential race with a sitting president and a Republican front-runner that many Americans, according to polls, do not want. as headquarters options, but may feel resigned to accept.
The week began with a surprising poll, likely an outlier, showing President Biden losing to both former President Donald J. Trump and his presumed closest primary challenger, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
Then, in quick succession, came the verdict of a jury that found Mr. Trump guilty of sexual abuse, a raucous New Hampshire town hall that once again put the falsehoods and bluster of the former president, the lifting of pandemic-era controls at the US-Mexico border, and a series of endorsements for Mr. DeSantis – and an unscheduled visit to present Mr. Trump – in Iowa that showed many Republican leaders are open to an alternative to Trump.
All of this left leaders, strategists and voters in both parties exceptionally uneasy.
“We’re in the middle of a primary that hasn’t really formed yet, and meanwhile the opportunity to smear Biden with his incompetence is slipping away,” said Dave Carney, a longtime Republican consultant in New Hampshire, where he was the first republican. primary ballots will be cast in February. “It’s scattered right now.”
Democrats, who are expected to rally around their standard-bearer, have spent the week expressing a split over border security and questioning the president on key policy issues.
Strategists have urged Democratic voters to get over their discontent and accept the president as the best they’ll get.
“Live in the real world,” exhorted Stuart Stevens, the longtime Republican political consultant who left the party when Mr. Trump rose to power, after the New Hampshire town hall. “If you saw Donald Trump tonight and you’re not supporting Biden, you’re helping elect Trump. It’s not complicated.”
Rep. Ro Khanna of California, a liberal Democrat who is often willing to say openly what other rank-and-file Democrats won’t, laid out a vision for economic renewal in a speech Friday in New Hampshire that contrasted with more modest ambitions of the president with his failure. to secure the loyalty of white working-class voters that Mr. Biden has said he is uniquely qualified to win back.
“People are so desperate for healing, for leadership that can unify,” Khanna told Democrats at a dinner in Nashua. “We don’t have to compromise who we are to find common cause.”
In an interview Saturday, she said she didn’t mean to be a critic. But it was “a call for a bolder platform that captures and inspires the imagination of working-class Americans.”
There is no doubt that political predictions so far from an election are unreliable. Mr. DeSantis has yet to declare his candidacy for the White House, although he and Mr. Trump have been going around and competing in a shadow contest in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first contests for the presidential nomination republican Even Iowa voters tend not to tune into the race until later in the year, noted David Kochel, a longtime Iowa Republican consultant.
Even so, the question of the moment remains: where are we?
Simon Rosenberg, who correctly predicted that a surge in Democratic activism would defuse the promised “red tide” of the 2022 legislatures, said the “fear of MAGA” that fueled Democratic victories in 2018, 2020 and 2022 had not decreased by 2024. Either way, state-by-state abortion bans, a chilling increase in mass shootings, and a Republican assault on educational freedom will only heighten those fears, he said. to say.
Mr. Trump’s performance at a CNN town hall on Wednesday evening, in which the former president repeatedly lied about the 2020 election; he made fun of E. Jean Carroll, whose allegations of sexual abuse and defamation resulted in a $5 million judgment against him; and promised to return to some of his less popular policies, only reiterating why Democrats, independents and disgruntled Republicans have drifted away from the GOP in the key states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Biden’s re-election campaign, now in full swing after his formal announcement last month, made the case to reporters after the town hall, noting the pride of Mr. Trump overturning Roe v. Wade; his downbeat view of the economic catastrophe that could ensue if the federal government defaults on its outstanding debt; his reference to January 6, 2021 as “a beautiful day”; and their refusal to commit to accepting the 2024 election results.
A Biden campaign adviser suggested that Mr Trump had supplied plenty of material for the attack ads. The campaign began publication videos almost immediately The super PAC of Mr. Never Back Down’s DeSantis called the 70-minute performance “over an hour of nonsense.”
The crucial question for both parties in 2024 is how to retain the voters they have and win back the ones they’ve lost.
“It’s hard to see how anyone could vote for Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024, given that Trump is only going to get more Trumpy,” Mr. Rosenberg, adding, “I’d still rather be us than them.”
The assessment of Mr. Rosenberg may be why 37 Republican officials in Iowa, including state Senate President Amy Sinclair and House Majority Leader Matt Windschitlendorsed Mr. DeSantis last week, as did the New Hampshire House Majority Leader Jason Osborne.
Republican consultants in both states said the universal recognition of Mr. Trump might give him the highest floor for Republican support, but the same factors lower the ceiling of that support, giving Mr. DeSantis and other rivals a real chance to topple him. , if they are willing to take it.
Trump’s campaign appeared to be aware of that dynamic last week as it attacked potential challengers, not only those who were clearly preparing to enter the race, but also some who were moving away from it. Saturday, Mr. Trump he put on Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kempfor being disloyal, a few days later an article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggested the governor keep his options open.
Mr. DeSantis has had his own stumbles out of the gate. His war with Disney has provided fodder for rivals who have questioned a Republican’s meddling in the free market. His signing of a six-week abortion ban and his state’s aggressive censorship of school textbooks have raised questions among potential Republican donors and swing voters. But Florida’s governor also has plenty of time to make his case.
“There’s a lot of game left to play, and I don’t see anything going away yet,” Kochel said. “There’s still plenty of room for candidates who aren’t named Trump.”
What Republicans seem most surprised by is the Democrats’ docility to Mr. Biden’s obvious weaknesses. Age and disease are real issues, not Republican talking points, consultants say.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll released Monday showed Biden losing head-to-head races against Trump and DeSantis by five to six percentage points. Democratic pollsters have dismissed those results, pointing to anomalies such as the poll showing Mr. Trump wins young voters head-on as he dramatically closes the gap with Biden for black and Hispanic votes.
Still, there was plenty in the poll to undermine Mr. Biden’s claim that he, more than any other Democrat, can beat a Republican comeback the way he defeated Mr. Trump in 2020.
Republicans say that’s not possible.
Mr. Carney said the dynamic would get worse, not better, as the 2024 campaign took shape. The chaotic scenes at the Southwest border in the coming weeks will inflame Republican voters’ fears of an “invasion” of illegal immigrants; The Republican National Committee on Friday held the president accountable for 1.4 million “escaping” migrants it said had crossed the border and disappeared into the interior since he took office.
More importantly, the situation at the border could crystallize the feeling among swing voters that Mr. Biden is simply not in control. With former allies like New York Mayor Eric Adams and outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot pleading for help with a flood of migrants, that conclusion will not be contained to Republican voters.
The showdown over how to raise the federal government’s debt limit threatens to spark a catastrophic financial crisis as soon as next month. And while voters might blame Republicans in Congress at first, the economic turmoil ultimately lands in the president’s lap.
Mr. Biden’s voters may not return to Mr. Trump, Republicans agree, but they might simply stay home on Election Day.
“Democrats keep saying, ‘Oh, Trump is so bad it doesn’t matter,'” Kochel said. “I don’t know. I think it matters.”
