Why Is Biden Likely to Lose?

Maybe just because he’s in power

U.S. President Joe Biden takes some questions from members of the press before departing in Marine One from the South Lawn of the White House on January 18, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

If there’s a core question that guides most of what I write here, it’s this one:

Why is this happening?

The “this” could be any aspect of our politics. Why did Brexit prevail at the polls in the UK? Why did Trump succeed in taking over the Republican Party and winning the presidency? Why has a party with fascist roots taken charge in Italy? Why is the far-right AfD surging in popularity across Germany? Why are parallel movements gaining ground in so many other countries in Europe and beyond?

Returning closer to home: Why has Donald Trump managed to maintain his hold on the GOP, even after the events of January 6, 2021? Why have multiple indictments, 91 felony counts, and a couple of civil trials not only failed to slow but actually enhanced his momentum in the race for his party’s nomination in 2024?

And beyond those questions lurks the most ominous one of all, at least for the months to come:

Why is President Joe Biden on track to lose his bid for re-election this year?

So Many Reasons to Vote Against Biden

Yes, it’s true: If the election were held today, Biden would probably lose to Trump. Trump is coming in narrowly ahead in nearly every national poll and often more solidly ahead in swing-state polls. His negatives are lower than Biden’s. His support is higher than it was in either 2016 or 2020. And as the Iowa caucuses demonstrated most recently, polling is pretty darn accurate, especially when multiple polls are combined into an aggregate.

All of which means that Biden is losing. This doesn’t mean he will lose. The election is ten months away, which is an eternity in political time these days. It’s possible that something could change the dynamic enough to put Biden into the lead, whether it’s related to Trump’s legal struggles or a health event or the economy or something we can’t anticipate. On the other hand, Biden has been underwater in the polls since the late summer of 2021 and the long-term trend has him sinking slowly lower over time. (His approval first drifted below 40 percent at FiveThirtyEight at the beginning of November, and he hasn’t risen above that level since.) How likely is it that Biden will be able to reverse that trend to bounce back by 5 or 7 points, which is the minimum we’d expect to see from a frontrunner, by November? Your guess is as good as mine, but mine is that it won’t happen. I’m steeling myself for the worst possible news on the night of Election Day.  

But this isn’t a horserace post. (I’ll have one of those for you next Wednesday, at least on the Republican side, after the New Hampshire primary.) It’s a post about why Biden is likely to lose.

There are lots of possible answers floating around in the media. Among them:

• Most voters think Biden is too old to be president.

• The economy might be chugging along nicely, with the rate of price increases slowing down to a level that voters can accept, but the surge in prices (and interest rates) over the last two years has so far surpassed wage increases, and that’s left many people feeling comparatively poor, and they’re angry about it.

• The hapless withdrawal from Afghanistan, Ukraine’s stalemate in its war with Russia, and a general rise in disorder around the world, very much including at the southern border of the United States, makes Biden and his team seem overmatched by the job.

• Biden’s strong support for Israel since Hamas’ terrorist invasion on October 7 has alienated the left wing of the Democratic Party, making his bid for re-election even more challenging than it already was.

• Hunter Biden’s legal troubles undermine the president’s attempts to differentiate himself and his family from allegations of corruption swirling around Trump and his family.

• Kamala Harris is an unpopular Vice President.

• Republican intransigence and the resulting dysfunction in Congress make voters angry and some of that anger gets directed at the president, especially because Biden ran in 2020 on a promise to improve the tone in Washington.

• A lot of Americans hate anything that smells of “wokeness,” so any story that points to evidence of social-justice progressivism at work in institutions controlled by Democrats makes voters mad at Biden.

• Rampant homelessness in Democratic-controlled cities (along with persistent violent crime in some of them) reflects badly on the president at the head of the party.

Believe me, I could go on. And also, please note: I am not trying to justify the validity of any of the above statements in any kind of objective sense. I think strong arguments and evidence can be marshaled to dispel many of them, and plenty of center-left-leaning pundits, along with leading Democrats and the Biden campaign, do it on a regular basis. They will undoubtedly do much more of it as we head into the summer and fall. My point is simply that these and other criticisms of the Biden administration are widespread, which means that a Biden loss in November is already to some extent overdetermined.

But why? Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that a good portion of this indictment is valid, how bad is it, really? Especially when it looks very much like the alternative will be a second term of Donald Trump? That’s the way I look at it, honestly. I think Biden has done pretty well as president in most respects, though I recognize he’s also made some blunders and responded to events imperfectly. But … when has that not been true of a president?

What I’m trying to suggest is that there’s something bigger going on than Joe Biden and his faults, whatever they are.

Don’t Look Too Close, You Might Not Like What You See