Trump is Now Favored to Win Next Year

President Donald Trump (R-FL)

Election prognosticating, especially so far out from the election, is about knowing the difference between what is real and what is just noise.  If you follow any given election, unless it's something like a blowout (i.e. think an Idaho or Hawaii Senate race), you'll find that there are moments in the campaign where the other side would win.  In virtually every presidential election since 1996, there were moments that the losing candidate would've won, had the election been held when favorable.  The thing about elections is that elections are not held the day you want them to be, they are held on a specific day, and both campaigns (if they're smart) will time their advertisements, speeches, & strategy around that specific day.

So I've been somewhat reluctant to say the provocative thing that is the title to this article because, quite frankly, I'd been chalking up the polls as being wrong, and they still could be.  Democrats have over-performed in every special election, and have consistently beaten fundamentals in 2022 & 2023.  But even a year out, the polls are rarely this wrong, they rarely change this much, and it's clear to me at this point that while the presidential race is very close, it's no longer a case where I'd say "Biden would lose today, but will win next year."  I think, at this point, Donald Trump is the favorite to win the presidential election next year.

To see why Biden is now the underdog, you have to look at a few specific factors.  First is public polling.  Biden's approval ratings are low, and while that is bad, I don't think it's the death knell that you'd think it would be.  We are entering a political stage in the United States soon where all presidents are unpopular, similar to what we've seen in countries like France in the past couple of decades.  The scarier proposition is that, over-and-over again, Biden is losing in head-to-head matchups with Donald Trump, both nationally & in the six major swing states (Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, & Wisconsin).  When you're seeing Biden down by 5-points in Georgia in a CNN poll or down in Michigan by 5-points in an Epic-MRA poll...any excuse other than "we're losing" is coping.  And the longer Democrats sit around pretending there's not a problem, and most importantly that there's not a fixable problem (cause as you'll see in this article, it's still fixable, though that is a ticking clock), the worse off they'll be.

The reasons that Biden is unpopular come down to a few key issues.  First-and-foremost is Biden's age.  I think if Biden was 65, we wouldn't be having this conversation.  It doesn't matter that Trump is only a couple of years younger than Biden, and by-and-large has shown more cognitive decline than Biden on the campaign trail (if Biden did half of the stuff that Trump did in stump speeches, like literally confusing Biden & former President Barack Obama, he'd have had to resign by now); people think Biden is too old and not Trump.  Biden can't get less old, and as a result he has to prove that he's not that old by doing things that the media isn't currently expecting from Trump (no one said politics is fair).  He has to campaign heavily in swing states, he has to go on media circles & do more press, and he has to be seen as being active.  Having Kamala Harris or Barack Obama out as a surrogate can help to a degree, but the age issue is weirdly personal to Biden-he has to fight it by proving it wrong.  The big question is...is it an actual issue?  Because if it is (and if Biden is, in fact, showing his age, which I think charitably he is even if it doesn't appear to be impacting his ability to run the country), a gaffe could be catastrophic.  Look at Bob Dole or Bill Roth, both of whom also fought age-related criticisms in their final campaigns, who lost those races after falling onstage, never recovering from the attacks saying they were too old.

There are other issues that are a problem for Biden, though.  The economy continues to be a problem Biden doesn't know how to crack.  On the surface, the economy is in very good shape.  We talked about this at length here, so I'm not going to go too hard on this, but economically Americans do not seem to understand that, while prices are higher than in 2019, we are in better shape than virtually every other country in the world & inflation has started to normalize, hopefully to come back to comity with wages.  Bidenomics was a terrible campaign strategy even if it makes sense academically (Biden has been, objectively, better for the economy in terms of public policy than Trump was, particularly in the Republican's final year in office).  Combined with criticisms from Gen Z, which feels much more fluid s a demographic in 2024 even if it's hard to see Trump making significant gains in this age group (it's more likely they won't vote than they'll vote Republican, though both will do the same thing) regarding Biden's handling of Palestine and the administration's inability to move student loans during the first two years of the Biden presidency (that's Joe Manchin's fault more than Joe Biden's, but I digress), it's clear that Biden is not popular.  And I think it's worth admitting-it's probably too late to fix that.

I must say that I don't enjoy writing this article.  Some people seem to revel in giving people bad news and saying "I told you so" when it comes true.  I still believe Biden can win, but I no longer think it's the most likely scenario, and I find that petrifying, and would love nothing more to be writing virtually any other article right now.  Biden's loss could well destroy American democracy, and put world peace at risk.  Trump has actively said he wants a dictatorship (in those exact words), and while the media treats this as a joke...I think based on his first term that you'd be wise to be serious.  Trump winning would ensure the Senate & the House go to the Republicans, and with that, you'll see a generation of gains for progressives wiped away.  Abortion rights will be gone for every woman in America.  Gay marriage, probably on life support.  Voting rights will be attacked to the point where African-Americans will struggle to be able to legally vote in some Southern states.

President Joe Biden (D-DE)

The Supreme Court will be history for generations.  The main thing stopping the Supreme Court from going red for the next fifty years instead of just the next ten is that Samuel Alito & Clarence Thomas are so old-if Trump wins, they'll both retire, and no one over thirty will see a progressive Supreme Court for the rest of their lives.  The Senate will likely be gone for at least six years, probably more than a decade.  Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, Ruben Gallego, Elissa Slotkin, Jacky Rosen, and maybe Tammy Baldwin-all out the door.  And with them, we'll say goodbye to the filibuster (jokes on you Joe Manchin & Kyrsten Sinema-the Republicans will gut that thing the second it's opportunistic, and you'll have protected nothing).  Even institutions as storied as NATO would be threatened, and Trump would probably give Taiwan to China and Ukraine to Russia to send a message to the west that the post-WWII order is no longer viable.

This is not a scare tactic (even though the Andrea Mitchell class of pundits would call it that to make their both sides-ism less unforgivable).  This is reality.  Sometimes, reality is scary, and sometimes there are elections that you have to win-and this is an election Democrats have to win...and right now, they're losing it.  There are no paths forward other than electing Joe Biden, for the record.  Nikki Haley might be a more palatable option (democracy would stay intact under Haley, as would NATO, though those rights I just listed are still history, as is the Supreme Court & the Senate), but she's not beating Donald Trump.  Dean Phillips is a joke candidate, one who is running more for a speaking spot on Fox News than anything else, and it's too late for someone else to mount a serious challenge to Biden in the primaries-those take years, not weeks, and that's where we're at.  And no third party candidate is going to do anything but spoil the election (and let's be honest-Kennedy, West, & Stein are not serious options to lead the free world).

So, what would have to change for me to consider this race a Tossup or Biden-favored again?  Well, poll numbers for one-Biden's going to be stuck in a self-fulfilling prophecy if he can't get his poll numbers into a better spot, and part of that is going to be running a different kind of campaign.  Biden needs to give up on the same thing his former boss Barack Obama had to give up on: he needs to stop caring if he is well-liked.

Joe Biden will not win this election-not enough people like him, and I don't think there's a way to change that.  But Donald Trump can lose this election, and Biden needs to run a campaign that focuses on that.  Biden has been reluctant to attack Trump, particularly because of his indictments, but that has to stop.  The only real path for Biden to win is to become the "lesser of two evils" in the general public's eye, and that will require him demonizing Trump.  Saying things like "Trump will make abortion illegal for every woman in America" or "Trump tried to destroy America on January 6th-don't let him finish the job" or "Would you trust a man who's facing 91indictments into your home?...Then don't let him into the White House."  Biden needs to give sound bytes, easy ones, that will attack Trump relentlessly.  He needs to get mean, which is not his forte, but it is Trump's...and that's why he's winning.  And he can't wait until next summer to do it-he has to do it now.

Running on abortion, book bans, voting rights, & the fear of the Republicans destroying America is not the kind of campaign that Democrats want.  They accomplished a lot, they fixed the economy in a way most western countries haven't been able to.  But running another race saying "we did a good job" when people disagree is just going to piss people off.  Saying "Trump will make cuts to Medicare & Social Security"...that might work.  And it has to be focused.  People made fun of "but her emails" for all of 2016...until three words managed to win Trump the White House.  Biden needs to find a "but her emails" for Trump, and he needs to stop giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt.  Running a "lesser of two evils" campaign means you have to say the other side is the greater evil (in so many words...or at this rate, in those exact words).

And lesser-than-two-evils campaigns have won Democrats elections before.  Nevada in 2010 is the best example, when Harry Reid was in a polling position similar to Biden is now...but managed to make his opponent look insane enough that he won despite record low approval ratings.  The same can be said for Minnesota Senate in 2008 or Virginia Senate in 1994...sometimes you win because of your opponent, and the one thing going for Biden is that his opponent is someone he can frame as the lesser-of-two-evils because he managed to do that in 2020.  But the clock is ticking, and it's time to admit that Biden has to make up ground, not just hold it.