On Sunday evening, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria offered his take on the 2024 election, and he thinks that Joe Biden’s chances of winning the election in November are slim.
In assessing President Biden’s reelection strategy, Zakaria explained that he initially believed that Biden’s path to victory in 2024 would hinge on the stability he promised he’d provide in 2020 after the turbulence of COVID-19 and the big bad orange man, Donald Trump.
On the flip side, Zakaria anticipated that Trump would divide Republicans, with many longing for alternatives like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis. This division would, in turn, energize Democrats, leaving Biden to target independents and swing states.
However, Zakaria conceded that nothing has played out as he anticipated.
“Trump is now leading in almost all the swing states,” Zakaria acknowledged. “But behind those numbers lie even more troubling details. As someone worried about the prospects of a second Trump term, I think it’s best to be honest about reality. I understand that polls are not always accurate. But in general, they have tended to underestimate Donald Trump’s support, not overestimate it. I doubt that there are many shy Biden voters in the country.”
After going through the usual Biden talking points about how wonderful the economy allegedly is, he admitted, “Biden is getting little credit for it.”
“The shift here is stark,” Zakaria pointed out. “On the question of whom voters trust more to deal with the economy, Trump has a 22-point lead over Biden, according to an NBC poll from January. This marks of a 15-point bump for Trump compared to the same poll in 2020.”
“Perhaps this is because inflation is a far more pervasive problem than unemployment, affecting all Americans every day,” he pondered.
You think?
Zakaria then admitted that even when it comes to cultural issues, Biden still can’t catch a break. Even though he thinks Democrats can benefit from the Republican Party’s position on abortion, Biden lags far behind on the issue of immigration, which polls indicate is a more concerning issue. Zakaria even doubts that abortion will be a significant issue in the race because the issue of regulating abortion has been brought back to the states.
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But Zakaria is most worried about the lack of unity in the Democratic Party over the Israel-Hamas war, while Republicans “seem to be uniting behind Trump.”
“Whatever opposition he faced in the primaries has largely melted away,” he observed.
And then came Zakaria’s most significant admission.
“And the trials against him keep him in the spotlight, infuriate his base who sees him as a martyr, and even may serve to make him the object of some sympathy among people in general who believed that his prosecutors are politically motivated,” he said. “This happens to be true in my opinion. I doubt the New York indictment would have been brought against a defendant whose name was not Donald Trump.”
Zakaria does say that things could change, but he is skeptical that they will. He referred to polls suggesting that if Trump were convicted of a felony, it might sway votes towards Biden, but that is looking increasingly less likely. He suggested that the administration might broker a ceasefire in Gaza and pursue a broader political settlement granting Palestinians political rights and improving Israel’s diplomatic ties, potentially shifting the political winds in his favor, but when have Biden and his team demonstrated any competence in handling the Israel-Hamas war so far? Ceasefire agreements have repeatedly fallen apart, and Biden has denied giving Israel aid, even as Americans remain hostages.
Ultimately, Zakaria conceded that the “trendlines are not working in Biden’s favor.”
“He needs to do something bold and dramatic to seize the initiative, on asylum policy, for example, and reverse these numbers,” he suggests, but in light of the dramatic shift in the numbers since 2020, he believes “there’s very little that Joe Biden can do now to change that perception.”
When the ’24 race began to take shape, I thought Pres. Biden had a strong pitch to voters: a rebounding economy and a return to normalcy after the chaos of Covid & Trump.
Things haven’t played out that way.
My take: pic.twitter.com/WAwifAZjfB
— Fareed Zakaria (@FareedZakaria) May 12, 2024