Susan Walsh/AP Photo
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris arrive to speak in the Rose Garden of the White House, May 13, 2024, in Washington.
The chief effect of The New York Times’ release yesterday of its latest swing-state poll has been to raise Democrats’ already high anxiety levels about their presumptive presidential nominee. Not about his achievements in office or his policies; the support for those is evident in voters’ support for down-ticket Democrats who’ve consistently voted to approve Joe Biden’s legislative initiatives. If this fish stinks, it’s only at the head.
What the Times/Siena poll of seven swing states made clear was that every Democratic senator up for re-election in those states had a clear lead over their Republican opponents, while the president was trailing Trump in six of those seven.
It’s among those groups of Americans who’ve long been part of the Democratic base—Blacks, Latinos, and the young—that Biden has hemorrhaged support. These groups make up a disproportionate share of the financially strapped, which highlights the need for Biden to highlight much more than he has his initiatives to bring down the costs of medicines and the junk fees that corporations inflict on consumers.
And yet these are themes that Biden regularly sounds. Part of his problem is that this message has yet to penetrate to low-information voters. But part of his problem is also that he’s frequently on mute, stepping on his own delivery, coming across predominantly as old. As a result, the quantity of his public announcements is restricted by his handlers’ concern for the quality of them. As my colleague Bob Kuttner has noted, Biden announced his decision to stop the provision of the most destructive offensive weapons to Israel (which could have begun the process of his recapturing some of the Democratic base) in a somewhat halting interview on CNN. Major policy; minor delivery.
The Financial Times’ Janan Ganesh, generally the most grumpy of columnists, recently noted a striking contextual similarity between Biden and Lyndon Johnson. Both their presidencies followed those of far more charismatic and articulate leaders of their own parties: Johnson’s after JFK’s, Biden’s after Barack Obama’s. Both Johnson and Biden, however, were far more effective in office, devising and getting through Congress landmark legislation that had eluded their predecessors. The Johnson-Biden skill set, Ganesh concluded, was quite different from the Kennedy-Obama one; those two onetime veeps knew how to play the inside game and used that skill to enact major progressive legislation.
Unfortunately, that skill set may have little to do with a president’s public presence and identity. (The last Democratic president to have both skill sets was FDR.) Biden’s most important legislative achievements—a recovery act that saved the nation from a recession, a revival of American manufacturing, and a huge boost to renewable energy—came as a consequence of his legislative legerdemain and of the widespread agreement within Democratic ranks as to their necessity. But they also came without any memorable Biden speeches or events on their behalf that would have identified him with these achievements outside of the circles of activists and political elites.
The new Times polls don’t spell inevitable doom for Biden’s (and the nation’s) prospects. Some of those traditional Democratic base voters who have strayed can doubtless be persuaded to extend their still-active support for Democratic candidates to the top of the ticket once the case is made for Biden’s economic populism, his support for pro-choice judges, his commitment to democracy, and his alternativeness to Donald Trump. That case, though, will have to be made chiefly by surrogates and advertising. It’s by no means clear that Biden himself is up to it.
