Democrats have entered the hand-wringing phase of the election season, fretting about Joe Biden and poised to leap from their windows. But everyone needs to chill. I foresee many reasons why Uncle Joe is likely to defeat the worst excuse for a human being to ever fail upward.
Wow, deja vu! I wrote that opening paragraph way back on April 12, 2020.
The conventional wisdom at that time, the mainstream media’s big meme, was that Biden was a shaky candidate with shaky prospects of beating Donald Trump. But I said that the old guy was being vastly underestimated – and I was proven right in November when he won all the swing states, plus Georgia and Arizona, and racked up more votes than any presidential candidate in history.
What I said in that April ’20 opening paragraph is just as true now. I wouldn’t change a word, for these three reasons:
Biden is the anti-fascism candidate. Trump’s 2020 coup plot, his Jan. 6 incitements, and his current vows to end democracy as we know it, obviously play well with duh dolts in duh Republican base, but the majority of the electorate refuses to swallow his criminal swill. President Biden says, “Our message (in 2024) is clear, and it is simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does.”
And Biden has the wind at his back. According to a newly-released national poll, most Americans, by a decisive margin of 56 to 33 percent, say that Trump is “definitely” or “probably” guilty of a crime in connection with the “illegal effort to overturn the 2020 election.” Most Americans, by an even more decisive margin of 63 to 33 percent, say that Trump’s Jan. 6 insurrection actions should either “disqualify” him from the presidency or, at minimum, “cast doubts on his fitness for the job.” Indeed, according to a national poll last summer, even 45% of Republicans said they wouldn’t vote for Trump if he’s convicted of a crime prior to the election.
Biden is the abortion rights candidate. Trump committed political suicide by rigging the US Supreme Court with an anti-Roe majority, and Biden will relentlessly twist the knife. No other issue has inflamed the American mainstream more than the MAGA war on women’s reproductive rights and privacy. Democrats reaped the rewards in the ’22 midterm elections (despite conventional wisdom predictions of a “red wave,” Republicans barely won the US House), and in a slew of ’23 contests (including the Democrats’ sweep of both Virginia state chambers, a solid Democratic gubernatorial win in Kentucky, and the decisive defeat of a six-week abortion ban on the ballot in red Ohio).
This year, Biden will rightly warn women voters that if Republicans win the presidency and both congressional chambers, they’ll push for a national abortion ban. Trump has cut and run on the national ban plan, but the forced-birth movement within the Republican base wants it bad. In a post-election memo, one vocal pressure group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, declared: “It is long past due for the GOP to define where it stands on the issue nationally … The party must put real advertising dollars behind (a ban), going toe-to-toe with the Democrats.” Keep it up, zealots. Biden will appreciate it.
Biden is the healthy economy candidate. Yeah, I know, millions of Americans don’t think things are all that great, and Fox News in particular continues to feed the fiction that Biden is ruining us. But this year he’ll have ample opportunities to share key facts with the majority of Americans who presumably still believe in facts. Like, the fact that gas prices at the pump continue to plunge. Like, the fact that the Dow is hitting record highs. Like, the fact that GDP growth hit 5.2% in the last quarter. Like, the fact that interest rates are projected to drop this year (thus helping more people to buy houses). Like, the fact that real wage growth is now higher than inflation. Like, the fact that the rate of Americans with health coverage is now (thanks to Obamacare) the highest ever recorded. Like, the fact that consumer confidence has been spiking lately. Like, the fact that Biden’s numerous legislative achievements have created jobs, protected labor pensions, and generally improved millions of lives in real ways; starting this week, for instance, all the major insulin manufacturers are offering $35-a-month caps on their products – an expansion of the caps that were previously reserved only for Medicare recipients, as mandated by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
This is called governing. It’s not as exciting, as, say, threatening the lives of judges or smearing feces on Capitol walls, but governing for the common good still seems to me like a campaign asset.
Yeah, I know, the polls continue to claim that Biden and Trump are virtually tied. But as I recently detailed, it’s a waste of time to take the public’s pulse far in advance of election day. Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama were all deemed to be in deep trouble on the eve of their re-election bids, and Democrats in particular are notorious for peeing their pants. What I see this year (barring some unforeseen event), is a president with a solid record of accomplishment facing off against a craven fascist with 91 felony changes and a track record as an adjudicated rapist, adjudicated fraudster, and adjudicated insurrectionist.
So get a grip, people. Skip the woe for Uncle Joe. (I also wrote that sentence in April ’20.) Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who virtually stood alone in 2022 when he presciently mocked the “red wave” meme, wisely wrote the other day that we ended 2023 “on an upbeat, optimistic note … with momentum, in my view in a far better place than Republicans, who are, in just about every imaginable way, an historic sh*t show.” And if, as I anticipate, the majority of voters in swing states cast their ballots for sanity, the forecast for America will be sunnier in ’25.
Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes at DickPolman.net and is distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Email him at dickpolman7@gmail.com.
See the online version, with links, at https://www.dickpolman.net/2024/01/03/happy-new-year-three-big-reasons-why-we-can-plausibly-hope-for-a-sunny-24-election/
From The Progressive Populist, February 1, 2024
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