Democrats face a tough choice: Panic or patience amidst Biden’s early setbacks

Democrats have two choices about how to approach the 2024 presidential election: panic or patience.

Former President Donald Trump leads President Joe Biden in five of six battleground states, according to the latest New York Times-Siena College poll. Trump leads in all seven in the RealClearPolitics polling average, which also has him ahead of Biden nationally.

If Trump’s national lead holds, it would only be the second time since 1988 that Republicans have won the popular vote. This time, that feat could conceivably be achieved by a former president who was voted out of office four years ago who is still viewed unfavorably by an absolute majority of voters in most polls.

The fact that the race is not only competitive but that Biden is losing, and has been losing in many polls for a while now, has to give Democrats pause. Trump is running ahead of Republican Senate candidates in swing states like Nevada and Arizona.

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New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, a bellwether for liberal pundit panic about Biden’s chances, is back to laying the blame at the feet of the president and his reelection campaign. “The point here is that Democrats have a Joe Biden problem, not a partywide problem,” he writes. “Regular, mainstream Democratic candidates are holding up just fine in the purple states.”

This is where you begin to hear talk about whether Democrats should replace the 81-year-old Biden as the nominee.

There is a case for this being crazy talk, however. Trump’s leads are not big, at least not in most places, and by historical standards should not be insurmountable. Trump is up by 1.2 points nationally. The RealClearPolitics average shows him ahead by just 0.6 points in Wisconsin.

Biden and the Democrats have a money advantage over Trump, enhanced by the fact that only one candidate faces staggering legal bills. The Democratic campaign apparatus should be formidable. This is also extremely early in the general election cycle.

Democrats exceeded expectations in the midterm elections. They have added to their coalition higher propensity voters in the Trump era. Biden has dismissed “the polling data” as having been “wrong all along,” although that was as much a comment about the public’s conclusions about the economy as the accuracy of the polls.

This is an argument for trusting the process and the Biden campaign to methodically erode Trump’s leads in the battleground states in the coming months as voters start paying closer attention. It is a safer bet, these Democrats contend, than trying to force out Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in favor of candidates who did not participate in a primary process the incumbent largely dominated.

A key question is whether a rematch between two familiar candidates will feature the vagaries and vicissitudes of a normal campaign. The race has thus far remained close, and tilted slightly in Trump’s favor, despite a slew of outside forces that might be expected to influence it. Trump’s first criminal trial, featuring salacious testimony, and millions of dollars in Democratic advertising in battleground states have had a minimal impact.

The other question is whether the fissures in the Democratic coalition that has been showing up in the polls for over two years can be exploited by Republicans, who may need unfamiliar voters to turn out. Some question, based on midterm and special-election results, whether these Democratic cracks are real.

But if disaffected voters don’t show up, or cast their ballots for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. instead of Trump, it won’t matter how real the discontent is. Republicans will have once again failed to capitalize on Biden’s broad unpopularity.

That’s one plausible scenario. The other is that Trump’s leads, which in places like North Carolina, Arizona, and Georgia aren’t all that slim by post-2000 standards, prove resilient. Or that Trump even outperforms his poll numbers, as he did in both 2016 and 2020.

If Biden is still down after the conventions, the panic could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  “The trajectory remains grim, and one effect of a losing campaign is that various factions start caring less about helping you win and more about exploiting your expected defeat for their own purposes,” Chait writes.

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For some progressives, Biden isn’t worth the risk of another Trump term. Other Democrats worry that relying on yet-to-materialize forces to take down Trump is the mistake made by candidates who have lost to him in the past, ranging from Hillary Clinton to a small army of Republican primary opponents.

The Democratic dilemma becomes more stark with each poll showing Biden behind.