US President Joe Biden holds an executive order signing ceremony on artificial intelligence in the East Room of the White House on October 30, 2023 in Washington, US. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo Get license rights
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (Reuters) – A sense of fairness pervaded the White House and the Biden campaign on Wednesday after Democrats made strong showings in elections earlier in the year, despite recent polls showing U.S. President Joe Biden’s popularity is low.
“The pollsters, the pundits, if I had $1, every time they counted Joe Biden or the Democrats, I wouldn’t have to work anymore,” Sam Cornell, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, told Reuters. Democrats “won over and over again,” he predicted, “and we’ll win next November.”
Biden faced questions this week, including from some in his own Democratic Party, about the wisdom of a 2024 re-election bid after a series of weak polls. Some sections of the diverse Democratic coalition have lost faith in Biden, frustrated by his Israel stance, lack of action on climate change or high prices.
A New York Times/Siena College poll on Sunday showed Biden trailing Republican front-runner Donald Trump in five of six battleground states. A Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Biden’s approval rating dropping to 39%, the lowest level since April.
Incumbent Democratic Governor Andy Beshear’s victory in Kentucky on Tuesday over a well-respected Republican challenger, passage of a constitutional amendment affirming abortion rights in Republican-voted Ohio and Democratic victories in battleground Pennsylvania show the overall strength of Biden’s positions. Party.
The Ohio decision shows that abortion rights are a winning political issue for Democrats, as the conservative majority on the US Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, defying public opinion.
It’s unclear whether the Democrats’ wins this week are a sure sign of Biden’s re-election.
Voters in state and local elections on Tuesday and those who will vote in the November 2024 presidential election could be very different, according to polls. In Ohio, for example, where Trump won the state by 8 percentage points in 2020, NBC’s exit polls showed voters leaning Democratic on Tuesday.
Mary Anna Mancuso, a Republican political strategist, said today’s polls offer little indication of what will happen in 2024, but Tuesday’s results could spell trouble for her party.
“Voters are turning away from the Republican Party, especially suburban women,” she said. “They’re protecting their bodies with tax cuts.”
Vice President Kamala Harris made a surprise appearance at the White House on Wednesday to highlight the issue of abortion and offer a new vision of the 2024 message that will unite Democrats — that their party, not the Republican Party, will protect Americans’ individual rights.
“Last night, I think the American people were ready to stand up for freedom and individual liberty and the promise of freedom in America, and it was a good night for democracy,” Harris said.
The election results, Harris said, “should not tell the government what to do with a woman’s body.”
Biden, who turns 81 this month, currently faces no serious primary challengers and has raised millions of dollars for his re-election campaign. His fundraising has outstripped that of the current Republican front-runner for the 77-year-old Trump, who backed the failed Kentucky gubernatorial bid.
“At every turn, MAGA Republicans have embraced Donald Trump’s agenda to curtail our freedoms, and voters aren’t going to get it,” Cornell said.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said earlier this week that polls predicting a “red tide” for Republicans in the 2020 midterms were misleading, and said the latest election results bolstered Biden’s re-election case.
“We don’t put much stock in polls,” he said.
Interrupting Jean-Pierre’s scheduled press conference and suddenly appearing in the White House driveway, Harris concluded with an optimistic prediction for the following November.
“It’s a good night, and the president and I have a lot of work to do to earn our re-election,” he said. “But I believe we will win.”
Reporting by Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt. Editing by Heather Timmons, Rod Nickell, Deepa Babington and Lincoln Feist.
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