Alas, the political reality that existed before yesterday’s elections remains largely unchanged: Biden is extremely unpopular, and the biggest drags on his candidacy—his age and the economy—will still be potent a year from now.
The vast majority of voters think Biden is too old, and he’s not getting any younger. A majority is also pessimistic about the economy—a perception that, given the slowness of the economic recovery, will be hard to reverse over the next year. (Prices are no longer going up, but they’re not going down.) Younger voters and Muslim Americans are deeply critical of the administration’s support for Israel’s brutal bombing campaign of Gaza. In Ohio exit polls, 72 percent of voters said that Biden shouldn’t run for reelection (versus 64 percent who felt the same way about Trump). Democrats, it seems, are stuck with a candidate who is heading into an election year with the worst approval rating since Jimmy Carter—and we all know how that turned out.
Yes, much of the 2024 election will revolve around abortion, and it seems clear at this point that it will benefit Democrats, perhaps decisively. For Biden, it will allow him to make the case that a Democrat must reelect him so he can fill a Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise. (The Court’s two oldest justices, 75-year-old Clarence Thomas and 73-year-old Samuel Alito, almost certainly won’t retire under his watch, but things happen.) It is possible he’ll benefit from Democrats turning out to back state-level amendments enshrining abortion rights.