The Case For 2024 Optimism

Biden's got a lot of upside potential, Trump's got a lot of downside risk.

The short version is that over the past couple weeks President Biden has caught up with Donald Trump, as depicted in the Economist’s polling average above.  

Now that’s not the whole story, or even an entirely good story, as I’ll detail momentarily. But deeper in the tea leaves, most recent developments are also pretty favorable to Biden and (thus) bad for Trump. 

Consistent with the head-to-head polls, Biden’s approval ratings have ticked up (or, for copium abstainers, his disapproval rating has ticked down) while Trump, who has been more popular of late than in many years, has seen his numbers fall.

But to me, the best case for optimism lies outside the realm of survey data. It’s better for Biden to be slightly ahead than slightly behind, but what he needs more than anything is upside potential to open a large lead. And as mainstream-media fixation on his age has faded, his real long-run advantages have become clearer.

BUCKET LISTS

Since American elections are zero-sum, you can spot Biden’s upside potential in two buckets. Anything that’s good news for Biden is good news for Biden (QED); but anything that’s bad news for Trump is also good news for Biden.

There’s good news for Biden in both buckets. 

• The economy is bullish and charging, with growth driven by productivity while inflation falls—a recipe for election-year interest-rate cuts, which should keep the economy humming and improve economic sentiment. 

• Because this boom really is, to a large extent, a product of Biden’s economic policies, it feeds dream retail-politics coups like this: announcing an $8.5 billion grant to build an Intel microchip plant in Arizona. 

• Relatedly, we’ve reached the point where “are you better off than you were four years ago” comparisons are insanely favorable to Biden. Congratulations, you’ve made it four years since Trump lied about and (thus) exacerbated the COVID-19 pandemic.

  

• Biden and Democratic leaders have detached themselves from Bibi Netanyahu, even making clear they believe Israelis should oust him. 

• He and the party are on sound financial footing.

The good news for Biden in Trump’s misfortune is much less theoretical. 

• Trump’s small-dollar fundraising numbers suck.

• His desperation for cash is driving him into the arms of Republican billionaires who expect him to deliver (and thus not pretend to oppose) toxically unpopular policies. 

• The money he and the RNC raise will cover Trump’s legal and campaign bills before the party as a whole gets a cut, driving dissension and deprivation through his already fractured party.

• Barring an act of unexpected mercy, he’s also about to either lose tons of marquee properties—a consequence of committing serial financial fraud—or receive some kind of politically toxic bailout. 

• To the extent he’s campaigning at all, rather than simply trying to dodge accountability under the law, Trump’s campaigning on insurrection, and inviting known crooks back into his inner circle.

• Relatedly, a critical number of Republican and independent voters still don’t want Trump to be the GOP nominee, including the almost 20 percent of Arizona GOP primary voters who cast ballots for Nikki Haley, a candidate who suspended her campaign weeks ago. 

• This is all before factoring in the electoral consequences Trump will face for raping E. Jean Carroll, overturning Roe v. Wade, losing the endorsements of his former vice president, former national security adviser, and former chief of staff among others, and possibly facing multiple felony convictions before election day.

There’s plenty to quibble with here. I personally wish Biden et al would simply assert that people are better off than they were four years ago instead of relying on wry implication. We in the media have become so focused on whether Trump will secure a bailout that we’ve lost sight of the outrageous fraud he actually committed—something voters deserve to know more about. But if a campaign is like a construction project, Biden’s got real brick and mortar, while Trump’s got a water-warped set of Jenga blocks.

THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS

On the other hand, we can stipulate to all of the above and still wonder, with good reason, why Biden isn’t running away with the election already.

We should also remind ourselves that Biden doesn’t just have to take the lead in national polls. He needs to lead by enough to overcome the pro-GOP bias of the electoral college, too. In a tied race, you can typically expect Biden to be down two-to-four percent in tipping-point states, which means there’s no breathing easy until Biden’s up four or five nationally, and even that’s too close for comfort. If the election were held today, Biden might win the national popular vote, but he’d probably lose the presidency. That’s why for now I’m fixed on Biden’s upside potential rather than any snapshot of the day-to-day race.

To that end, we have to be mindful of dirty tricks. One of Trump’s only advantages is a big one: his total indifference to the rules. He is the patron saint of grifters, bigots, and the greedy. A large number of wealthy and influential people of low character thus stand ready to lie, manipulate, and abuse power to help Trump regain the presidency. I listed the return of Paul Manafort and other degenerate figures among Trump’s liabilities, but they could also prove to be assets.

Trump has already commandeered U.S. foreign policy to starve Ukraine of military assistance, a favor to Russia we should expect to see returned in the form of cash bribes, election subversion, or both. 

His son-in-law Jared Kushner has raised billions of dollars in investment funds from Saudi Arabia and other foreign interests and has started funneling that money into sweetheart development projects abroad, creating a vast network of wealthy foreign actors who will go to great lengths to help Trump return to power. Watch gas prices in September and October. 

Far-right billionaires like Elon Musk, along with less-fascistic but equally-greedy billionaires, have made their preference for Trump clear, financing billions of dollars in propaganda, whether through dark money expenditures or algorithmic dissemination of xenophobic agitprop.  

Trump might not only make it to the election without ever facing criminal trial, it’s easy to imagine his handpicked judge, Aileen Cannon, dismissing his Espionage Act indictment in the days before the election, prefiguring a corrupt free-media bonanza for Trump, and no time for Jack Smith to appeal. 

And all of that ratfucking exists quite apart from contingencies outside of Biden’s control, including unexpected global or economic turbulence, terrorist violence, sickness, or injury—stupid as it is that this matters, Biden does appear sadly prone to falling down.

To coin a man from the ash heap, the unscrupulousness of the Trump-era GOP means liberals and Democrats must contend with myriad known and unknown unknowns. If god could grant me one wish, it’d for the Democratic Party to dedicate at least some strategic energy to anticipating and pre-empting Republican schemes. But all my familiar complaints with the party leadership notwithstanding, we’re near the point at which, in terms of pure odds, I’d rather be the Democrats than the Republicans.