The establishment media are lukewarm on a potential second term of President Joe Biden.
Over the weekend, the Hill published a story about potential Democrat presidential candidates if Biden retracts his statements and decides not to run for a second term. The story promoted Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as legitimate contenders.
“There are doubts he will follow through on his plans because of his age — Biden would be 81 in November 2024 — and because of the brutal political headwinds he and his party are now facing,” the article noted. “Biden’s approval ratings have sunk to the mid-30s in some polls.”
Ranking the five Democrats most likely to win party nod if Biden doesn’t run USE_REAL_LINKjwO4uSchFW pic.twitter.com/Ixc9X4LzgZ
— The Hill (@thehill) June 5, 2022
FiveThirtyEight titled a story on Friday, “Americans Are Unusually Lukewarm About A Second Biden Term,” which claimed “some Americans don’t believe” Biden will seek a second term, citing polling data:
And a Wall Street Journal poll conducted from March 2-7 found that more than half (52 percent) of registered voters don’t think he’ll run again in 2024, while only 29 percent think he will run again. (Nineteen percent were unsure.) A second Biden run isn’t that popular, either. According to an AP/NORC poll conducted from Jan. 13-18, 70 percent of Americans don’t want the president to run in 2024. Even Democrats are lukewarm about the idea.
FiveThirtyEight also said an alternative candidate to Biden should be more diverse and someone perceived strong enough to defeat a Republican nominee:
Perhaps they’d prefer someone who better represents the party’s growing diversity, or someone who is perceived as having a better shot at defeating the Republican nominee in 2024. After all, Biden’s approval ratings are low and his support has eroded among young voters, Latinos, and Black voters in particular. Those voters might be dissatisfied with Biden’s inability to deliver on the sweeping promises he made at the beginning of his term. Or they might just be afraid he can’t win.
AC