Can Biden ignore the vote that was cast on Tuesday?

The State of the Union: Where Joe Biden is at this point in his quest for reelection and what he can do about it

The Democrats seem to lack anyone in the wings to mount a compelling primary challenge and they are restive. A poll taken before the State of the Union found that 32% of Democrats wanted Biden to get a second term, down from 42% last year. Only 25% of those age 18 to 44 think Biden would run again.

Even with unconventional and deeply flawed candidates such as Herschel Walker and Dr. Mehmet Oz running for key Senate seats, recent polls are showing that the GOP is in relatively good shape overall going into the midterm election on Tuesday. Democrats in several seats are scrambling to defend and even some candidates in blue state such as New York are at risk.

If the State of the Union address Tuesday night was the unofficial beginning of Joe Biden’s quest for reelection, Republicans should be worried. For all the talk about how good ol’ Joe has lost a step or two, the President signaled that he’s more adept than ever at wielding his trademark optimism and likability.

How do you rank Biden at this point in his presidency? Using Gallup’s awesome presidential job approval center, we can track where recent Biden’s recent predecessors stood in the final stretch before the midterm election in their first term.

The Superwise of the November 2018 Midterm Election: Why Biden and Kelly Are Both Wrong and Why the President Isn’t

For the past 100 years, the average midterm gain in the House of Representatives for the opposition party is 29 seats. This year, Republicans needed just five seats, a goal that seemed so reachable that practically every pollster predicted the GOP would easily clear it, especially given the high inflation rate and Biden’s relatively low approval. Republicans are struggling to get through that low bar.

But another critical factor is that many of the voter groups that Democrats most rely upon are relatively less focused on the issues where public concerns about Biden’s performance are greatest, and more focused on issues where anxieties are greatest about the intentions of Republicans. Ayres says that the blue team cares about democracy and abortion, while the red team cares about crime and immigration. There is a lot of overlap on the inflation front. The two teams are motivated by different things and care about different things.

Both parties face the temptation of playing it safe. If Biden is able to speak to working class Americans, then Democrats could pull out a victory over his predecessor. According to the Washington Post and ABC News polls, Donald Trump would likely start with an advantage over Biden if the election was held today.

“In large part that’s why this election is super weird,” says Bryan Bennett, lead pollster for Navigator, a Democratic polling consortium. “People are having to make this trade-off between the immediate economic concerns [where]…they might blame the incumbent party in power. They know that the same party that protects the human right on abortion is also going to protect it.

Noble says the Democrat has outspent the Republican, and occupied the center more effectively, which is a good thing for Kelly. But Noble also believes that Kelly is surmounting disenchantment with Biden in part because some voters are already looking past the president as they assess the parties. Noble said the president’s approval was not having as much effect as he wanted it to. You are not seeing the direct connection to the senate vote because people have accepted it is Joe Biden, and patted him on the head.

The four Democrats who won in Trump-favoring states in 2018 show it’s still possible for personal views about Senate candidates to outweigh broad assessments about the country’s direction and the president’s performance. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine provided another example in 2020 when she won reelection in a state where nearly three-fifths of voters disapproved of Trump because roughly one-fourth of those disapproving voters, an incredibly high number, voted for her anyway.

The national NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll released last week offered the latest snapshot of this divergence. Asked what issue they considered most important in 2022, Republicans overwhelmingly chose inflation (52%) and immigration (18%). Democrats picked preserving democracy, abortion, and health care. The priorities of the two parties were inflation and immigration on the one side and democracy and abortion on the other. Voters with at least a four-year college degree leaned relatively more toward democracy and abortion; those without degrees (including Latinos) tended to stress inflation. Crime is not included in this survey, but it has provoked a lot of concern from Republicans and non-college educated voters.

Given these disparities, Democrats everywhere are stressing issues relating to rights and values, particularly abortion, but also warning about the threat to democracy posed by Trump and his movement. Since June, as CNN recently reported, Democratic candidates have spent over $130 million on abortion-themed ads, vastly more than Republicans.

The 2020 Election: Demographic Perspectives on Biden-Leading Economic Impact and Implications for Electorate Insights

The most important of these could be the argument that the incentives for domestic production embedded in the central Biden legislative accomplishments will produce a boom in US employment in the long run.

Some Democrats are emphasizing the possibilities this year, but those openings are mostly still in the future.

More commonly, Democrats are stressing legislation the party has passed that offers families some relief on specific costs, especially the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act allowing Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices. Democratic pollster Geoff Garin says that highlighting such specific initiatives can allow individual candidates to overcome the negative overall judgment on Biden’s economic management. His main concern is that too many Democrats are sublimating any economic message while focusing preponderantly on abortion.

There are many arguments about the coming manufacturing boom, the cost-saving provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, and that Democrats are trying to build a sea wall against the swelling currents of economic discontent. But the campaign’s final weeks will measure whether that current reaches a level that breaches all of the party’s defenses.

Compared with January, there’s been a steeper increase in support for nominating someone other than Biden among Democratic-aligned voters of color (from 43% to 53%) than among White voters (from 57% to 63%) and among independents who lean toward the Democratic Party (from 60% to 77%) than self-identified Democrats (from 48% to 53%). More than a fifth of younger Democrats would prefer to see someone else at top of the ticket than older voters do, suggesting that they’re less supportive of a Biden-led ticket.

College was the dividing line. Among those with a bachelor’s degree, Democrats held a 13-point advantage. Republicans held a 15-point lead among those who did not have one.

The Democrats won the Senate and White House in 2020 because of their large gender gap and because of their winning women by a wide margin.

A month ago the Democrats had a 11 point advantage over the Republicans among women in congressional races, but a new poll shows that has been wiped out.

Less Republicans now believe that Trump is their best bet in the general election. They’re also less inclined to say they like him. His favorable rating among Republicans in a Quinnipiac University poll in October 2021 stood at 86%. The same poll this month had Trump having a favorable rating among Republicans.

In the Post-ABC poll, 79% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they’d feel positively if Trump were elected to the White House in 2024, with 72% of Democrats and Democratic-leaners saying the same about the prospect of Biden being reelected. The Post-ABC survey showed that only 7% of Republicans would be angry to see Trump return to office, and only 3% of Democrats would be angry to see Biden serve a second term.

The nation is not happy right now. A majority of voters, 64 percent, see the nation moving in the wrong direction compared to just 24 percent who think the nation is on the right track. Even the share of Democratic likely voters who believe the nation is headed in the right direction fell by six percentage points since September, though it is above the low point of the summer.

The 48 year old insurance salesman is a Republican in Indianapolis. “Inflation, interest rates, the cost of gas, the cost of food, the cost of my property taxes, my utilities — I mean, everything’s gone up astronomically, and it’s going to collapse.”

Why Do Americans Hate Inflation and Crime? A Survey of the U.S. Senate Races After the 2014 State of the Union

As the Republican presidential primary is heating up, there was a survey conducted after the president’s State of the Union address that was conducted by more than 1,300 adults and 1,200 registered voters. There are clear pictures emerging of who potential Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis voters are and why they wouldn’t vote for Trump.

The long-term trend is for attitudes regarding the sitting president to exert increasing influence over the results, often overshadowing views of the competing candidates. In many ways, Senate (and even more so House races) have become more akin to contests in a parliamentary system, where fewer voters are weighing the relative individual merits of the two contenders and instead are basing their decision more on which party they want to control Congress – a decision shaped heavily by their views about the incumbent president.

“That group of independents in the middle is the real question,” said Paul Maslin, a long-time Democratic pollster. The person says, “I hate Inflation, Crime is ruining this big city I live in”, or the person says, “Mehmil Oz is a clown.” Are they going back to the Democrats because of a joke by Blake Masters? I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

Democratic hopes over the summer that Biden’s approval rating would steadily rise through Election Day, lifting their candidates in the process, have been dashed largely because of the persistence of the highest inflation in 40 years.

Even though Democrats passed legislation and might do better in the future, it hasn’t made a difference to people’s view of things. “If inflation had come down from where it has been, they would be in better shape. But you can’t convince people that things are going better when their own experience tells them that it’s not.”

“Over the past twenty or thirty years, what we’ve seen is a growing nationalization of these congressional races where there is a closer connection between opinions about national issues and national political leaders and how people vote in these House and Senate elections,” says Abramowitz. “It used to be easier for incumbents to run pretty far ahead of a president from their own party’s approval rating based on their reputation in their state or district, their constituency service, name recognition, things that you gain from being an incumbent. Over time that value has decreased.”

Democratic Senate candidates have been shown by public polls meeting that test at varying degrees. In the latest round of CNN state surveys conducted in October, the Democrats won at least 12% of the votes of voters who didn’t approve of them, including their US senators in Arizona and Nevada. Kelly, most strikingly, captured almost one-fifth of voters who disapproved of Biden against Masters in the CNN Arizona poll. The New York Times/SIena polls released Monday showed that the Democrats won over 15% of voters who disapproved of Biden in Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

According to J.B. Poersch, the personal differences of the voters explain their high support for Biden. “I agree with Mitch McConnell on one thing: candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome in Senate races,” Poersch said. Democrats have strong track records of delivering for their states and have demonstrated ability to create their own environment while Republicans have a group of extremists who are totally out of step.

The CNN polls in October showed that while Barnes and Masto were drawing double-digit votes disapproved of Biden, they were still in a close race. Gene Ulm, a Republican pollster, says he believes the final electorate will tilt even more toward Republican voters dissatisfied with Biden than polls now project. In the end, he believes, Biden will boost turnout from Republicans, and depress turnout from Democrats, as a result of the current state of affairs. He says that the electorate is going to crush everything.

Such exceptions have become rare in modern US politics. Democrats will need more of them because Biden is weak in a lot of places, which makes it difficult to hold the Senate.

CNN: The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: The Implications for the Party, the Midterms, and the Future of the GOP

Editor’s Note: Julian Zelizer, a CNN political analyst, is a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. He is the author and editor of 24 books, including, “The Presidency of Donald J. Trump: A First Historical Assessment.” Follow him on his verified account. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

It looks like former President Donald Trump is going to launch another bid for the White House. Sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that top aides have been looking at November 14 as the likely launch date, after Trump told his followers to get ready. It seems that Trump is hoping to be the first person since Cleveland to win two elections in a row.

While Trump has been hinting at another run for months, the news would certainly send shockwaves through the political world. Trump is arguably one of the most controversial and destabilizing political leader in contemporary US history. And as we have seen with recent Supreme Court decisions like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization – as well as the toxic rhetoric and support for conspiracy theories within the GOP – his presidency was enormously consequential.

If the midterm campaigns have shown the Democrats anything, it is that the Republicans remain a strongly united party. Very little can shake that unity. The party didn’t change in substantive ways after President Trump left the White House and the “Never Trump” contingent failed to emerge as a dominant force. The officials such as Liz Cheney were kicked out of the party.

If Republicans do well next week, possibly retaking control of the House and Senate, members of the party will surely feel confident about amping up their culture wars and economic talking points going into 2024. And given the number of election-denying candidates in the midterms, a strong showing will likely create the tailwinds for the GOP to unite behind Trump. Although there has been copious speculation about the rise of other Trump-like Republicans like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, it’s likely they will look “liddle” once the former President formally reenters the political arena – as his formidable opponents learned in the 2016 Republican primaries.

Then came the 2020 midterms. Although Republicans will likely gain control of at least one chamber of Congress, if not both by narrow margins, the GOP will be frustrated. By inserting himself into the race and endorsing a slate of candidates, Trump managed to make the midterms partly a mandate about him rather than the sitting president. Dr. Mehmet Oz was one of the many hand-selected candidates that lost.

The Justice Department was trying to enforce accountability over his election-stealing activity, but Trump signaled that he would use his campaign to stop them.

If Trump gets away with it, he would unleash a fierce assault on the President who could be struggling with a shaky economy and divisions within his party. And if election deniers enter positions of power after the midterms, and Trump escapes any punishment for January 6, it’s likely he will take advantage of the loyalists who have infiltrated state and local election offices to make sure that victory is his. Trump will also come to the race having been to this rodeo before, which will mean he can perfect the technique and rhetoric that put him into office in 2016. Now that Musk has purchased the social network, Trump can be brought back to life and have a larger say in the media conversation once again. (Trump, who founded Truth Social, where he has been active since he was banned from Twitter, has not publicly indicated that he will return).

In retrospect, Biden, who is yet to announce his reelection plans, and Trump, who has been in the race for over a year, seem to face the same challenges.

What Did We Learn About the 2022 Red Wave? A Conversation with CNN World Affairs Editor, Frida Ghitis, Media Relations, and Political Science

Editor’s Note: Frida Ghitis, (@fridaghitis) a former CNN producer and correspondent, is a world affairs columnist. She is an opinion contributor to CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post and a columnist for World Politics Review. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinion on it.

Although votes are still being counted and important races are too early to call, it is not certain which party will control the Senate or the House next year. But it’s clear that the “red wave” wished for by Republicans did not materialize in 2022.

There was no red wave, and only a red tsunami. Predictions of a huge Republican victory at the polls did not materialize. It was not a great day for the GOP. In addition, it was a disastrous day for former President Donald Trump, who had hoped a Republican landslide would place him on a glide path to the nomination to become the party’s presidential candidate in 2024.

That’s because the movement spearheaded by Trump and his election deniers performed much worse than expected. Even some of the most dramatic Republican victories looked like a rebuke of Trump and his band of anti-democratic activists.

GOP hopefuls will see that 38% – the lowest point of three CNN polls on the topic this year – as an opening for an anti-Trump candidate. There could be a splintering of the opposition to the ex-president.

On election night, Trump told an interviewer, “I think if [Republicans] win, I should get all the credit. I shouldn’t be blamed if they lose. The evidence shows that he is responsible for most of the blame.

The Greatest Political Result: Kevin Biden, Josh Shapiro, and Ron DeSantis, Matt Moore, and Brian Kemp

They may well do it. Rep. Kevin McCarthy may replace Nancy Pelosi as House speaker, but even if Republicans take the House, the Democrats’ performance is little short of amazing. Biden presided over the best performance by the party in power since George W. Bush in 2002, the first election after 9/11.

Biden was right to say that democracy is at stake in the elections. The argument resonated. Biden and the Democrats made that case because of help from Trump and the election-denying extremists.

Josh Shapiro trounced Doug Mastriano, who was heavily involved in trying to overturn the 2020 election and ran a campaign rife with antisemitic innuendo against his Jewish opponent. Trump’s far-right election-denying allies were beaten in many contests.

The football star Herschel Walker could still win the runoff in December. Anyone who heard him talk or read about his past knows he should have never been on the ballot. As did Trump, he thought fame would do the trick. So, he also backed TV star Mehmet Oz for the Pennsylvania seat. A key skill for a political candidate is the ability to regain verbal prowess after suffering a stroke.

Donald Trump has tried to prevent Ron DeSantis from running for President in 2020 and the challenge his campaign faces is related to his own mindset.

Trump said that he was in debt to DeSantis for helping him to win the GOP nomination for governor in 2018 and for his job in the governor’s mansion. He implied that DeSantis should pass on a White House bid as a result.

Then there was Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, another Republican who won reelection, in a rematch with Stacey Abrams. Trump despises Kemp because, like other Georgia officials, he refused to overturn the 2020 vote, despite enormous pressure from the then-president.

The candidate plans to declare his candidacy soon despite his poor showing. Most Democrats find it difficult to accept the prospect, but most Republicans would also like him to focus on his golf game. The election showed he is a threat to the party.

Do We Live in the Red Wave? The Legacy of the 2008 Midterm President: A Declaration of Disagreement Against Republican Impeachment

Soon, Americans will have to endure another campaign in which the most disruptive candidate is a man who has shown disdain for democracy. It’s good to know that the country took a step towards sanity this week, and that democracy did well.

Many thought the red wave would happen. Votes are still being counted in key states and districts, but even if Republicans end up with control of one or both chambers, their majority will be extremely narrow. Democrats will not be facing the “shellacking” they experienced in 2010.

The midterms mark the culmination of two difficult years, during which Biden has repeatedly defied expectations. At each stage of his tenure, Biden has achieved what many fellow party members thought impossible.

But things didn’t get easier for Biden once he entered the White House. Covid continued to wreak havoc on the country and the economy. Despite a 50% split in the Senate, Biden was able to push his legislative agenda through Congress despite Republican opposition and even winning some GOP votes. The American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act are just three of the many legislative tracks that have been recorded. According to the Pew Research Center, Biden has appointed more judges than any president since John F. Kennedy in the term since he took office. Biden has also used his executive power to make progress on issues like fighting climate change, bolstering the US’ economic competitiveness, and forgiving student debt.

How old is Barack Biden? Counting the odds that he is losing his influence on the Florida Republican Party and what he should do about it

There are many polls that claim that Trump is losing his hold on the Republican Party. The University of New Hampshire had a poll published last week that showed Florida’s governor leading Trump by 42% to 30% among GOP voters in the state. A CNN/SSRS poll in December found that about 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents wanted their party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024.

But “watch me” alone isn’t going to assuage voters’ doubts, which primarily center on Biden’s age. Nearly two years has passed since we watched Biden in office, and two-thirds of the voters do not think he should run again. There is that.

When Biden will turn 80 in nine days time, he will be 83 years old. That would make him 86 years old at the end of a hypothetical second term. By comparison, Ronald Reagan was 77 years old when he left office in 1989.

There is still doubts about Biden’s ability to serve a second term. Biden’s team needs to figure out how to address this one, beyond simply telling voters to watch him.

The CNN Exit Polls: Who will you vote for? Which 2020 voters would most like to see a candidate nominated in 2024?

Almost 30% of voters said abortion was their top issue after the Supreme Court overturned the abortion rights law. 6 in 10 voters felt negatively about the decision and 4 in 10 expressed anger. Democrats had a 11-point lead over Republicans when it came to which party’s voters would handle issues related to abortion.

In-person interviews with Election Day voters, in-person interviews with early and absentee voters, and online polls measuring the views of voters are part of CNN Exit Polls. They were conducted by Edison Research on behalf of the National Election Pool. Read more here.

There’s little appetite for a 2020 rematch in the coming presidential election, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, as majorities of registered voters within each party say they’d rather see someone new nominated in 2024.

In the recent poll, a majority of Republicans and independents would prefer to see Trump win the party nomination in 2024, while a smaller number of democrats would like to see Biden renominated.

The steepest drops in support for a Trump bid came among older Republican-aligned voters (from 55% of Republicans and Republican-leaners 65 or older supporting a Trump bid in January to 37% in support of one now), White voters with college degrees (from 31% backing Trump in January to 16% now) and those who describe themselves as very conservative (from 65% behind a Trump bid then to 42% now).

A random national sample of 1,408 adults were drawn from a probability-based panel for this CNN Poll. Surveys were conducted by phone or online. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is 3.6 points, larger than for the subgroup.

The Politics of Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and the Future of the Republican Party: How the New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu Isn’t

Even as President Joe Biden and ex-President Donald Trump move toward a rerun of the most turbulent White House race in modern history, many voters are pining for a break from the past – and the present.

But while many Republicans and Democrats would prefer to see someone else nominated, the vague concept of “someone else” isn’t an eligible challenger for the presidency. Different situations exist for Trump and Biden when it comes to viable rivals.

The arguments that Trump’s general election viability is damaged beyond repair are strengthened by the dinner he had with extremists with a record of antisemitism, like Nick Fuentes. Trump’s so-far lackluster campaign, which looks like it was declared to make it easier for him to portray criminal probes into his conduct as persecution, isn’t convincing anyone so far.

And yet, the former president’s allies, like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Jordan of Ohio, will be hugely influential in the new GOP House majority. Paradoxically, the failure of Republicans to do better in November means that a thinner majority will be easier for extremists to manipulate as they seek to turn Republican control of half of the Capitol into a weapon to damage Biden and help Trump in 2024.

Any president is vulnerable to unpredictable events that may cause his approval ratings to fall and his chances of reelection to plummet. The president of the US will have to deal with the age issue every day. Republicans will exploit any slackening of the campaign trail pace, or even a cold, as proof that he isn’t fit for a second term. And while Biden appears healthy, the chances of an adverse event increase for people in their 80s.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu makes one thing clear: His vision for the future of the Republican Party does not include former President Donald Trump.

Taking it a step further, Sununu – who just won a fourth two-year term in the Granite State by 15 percentage points – said it’s “un-American” to “be a country where the best opportunity for our future leadership is the leadership of yesterday.”

What Has the Most Influence on Donald Trump? Why Did Majority of Republicans Think he was the Best Candidate for the White House?

Other polling suggests that these findings may understate Trump’s weakness. There aren’t any polls that show Trump ahead in a two-way race with Ron DeSantis. Marquette University Law School’s poll had Trump down 20 points to the Florida governor a few weeks ago.

Trump announced his latest presidential bid just a week after the midterms last month. But DeSantis has taken a different approach: saying nothing about 2024 and letting speculation swirl. Consultants in Florida say there is no chance that DeSantis will announce his candidacy for governor until after lawmakers meet for their annual legislative session in May or June.

Republicans were clamoring for Donald Trump’s endorsement while Democrats wanted Joe Biden to stay away in the lead up to the election. The picture looks a bit different a month after the election.

Instead, the opposite has happened. It has been made clear by major potential foes that they will not run against Biden. If Biden decides to run again, most power players in the Democratic Party will back him.

It can’t be said for Trump. After he declared his intention to run for the presidency last month, only one senator endorsed his bid for another term. There are potential Republican challengers who will still be in the primary.

One of Trump’s biggest attributes has been that he has convinced his supporters that he is a winner. Three years ago, polls showed that most of the Republicans thought he was the best chance of defeating the Democratic nominee for president. A lot of Republicans did that recently.

The First Two Weeks of Running for the Post-Newtonian Reionization (Rom 2023 Elections): When Trump and Hillary Get Back In The Limb

Biden was spotlighted in the first month of 2023, after some classified documents were discovered at his home in Delaware and office in DC.

Trump’s political standing has taken a small but noticeable hit in the polls, and he seems to have slowed the downward slide in Republican primary surveys after a poor performance in the midterms.

Among those who searched for either Biden or Trump, about 60% of them in the past two weeks searched for Biden. This is the highest percentage Biden has reached when compared with Trump since the late summer and fall of 2021. After the US withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan in early September, searches for Biden peaked.

Both of them are within the poll’s margin of error. Within the average of polls, Biden’s approval rating has fallen 2.5 points from two weeks ago when he was at his highest level since 2021, but they are notable together.

There are a number of people searching for Trump on the internet. This month, fewer people have looked at him than have done in the entire month he’s been running.

In concrete numbers, Trump’s national polling lead of about 30 points over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a hypothetical Republican primary dropped to low double-digits almost overnight.

The question is what happens when Trump gets back into the limelight, as he has been this weekend. Will it remind Republicans of their liking for him? Or will it remind voters of what they don’t like about Trump?

There was also something jarring about a former president who tried to steal the last election – and incited an insurrection to try to cling to power – campaigning and being embraced by supporters as if nothing happened.

There is also a clear sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and feels that certain sections of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his turbulent one-term presidency.

Trump’s musings about loyalty also recall his attack on evangelical leaders earlier this month, whom he said showed “disloyalty” by refusing to support his 2024 bid so far despite his delivery of a generational conservative Supreme Court majority. The comments were a reminder that Trump is transactional in his view of politics and that he tends to see loyalty as a one-way allegiance when he dumps aides, staff and Cabinet members.

DeSantis did shut bars and nightclubs and urged people to follow federal government guidance on limiting gatherings on beaches in March 2020. He cleared them to open again despite federal government health officials telling him not to. The former president is seeking to get to the right of the Florida governor on this issue despite him having spent a lot of time feuding with the Biden administration. But while challenging federal health advice could be a powerful litmus test for a GOP primary, the idea that Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic could be a vote winner in the general election is quite a leap.

He gave a boring speech when he came to New Hampshire. He went away after getting the response that he read his teleprompter and stuck to the talking points. “So he’s not really bringing that fire, that energy, I think, that a lot of folks saw it in ’16. It was a bit disappointing to some people. … So I think a lot of folks understand that he’s going to be a candidate, but he’s also going to have to earn it. And that’s New Hampshire.”

Trump isn’t ready to acknowledge that reality just yet, because of his remarks about the evangelical leaders. Though his decision to visit an ice cream parlor late in the day in South Carolina was an unusual foray into retail politics and first-person contact with voters.

Trump appeared Saturday to understand that his two years of fury over the 2020 election, which he still falsely says was stolen from him, may have turned off voters in 2022, when many of the election-denying candidates he promoted in swing states lost – potentially costing the GOP the Senate.

He has not abandoned his standard rhetoric. On Sunday evening he called into a rally for the candidate who failed to win the governorship in Arizona, and now insists that she did. And earlier on Saturday, in New Hampshire, the former president – who is facing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – could not resist taking aim at institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020.

“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. Trump said that it was all an investigation. And he branded his resistance to such probes as more proof of the very quality that many Republicans embraced in 2016 and that helped propel him to the White House.

“There’s only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington, and with your vote next year, we will do it again and I will do it again,” he said Saturday.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic: When the American Economy is Getting Closer to Normal, and When the America’s Social Security System Gets Closer

Editor’s Note: Patrick T. Brown is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, DC. He is a former policy adviser for the Joint Economic Committee. Follow him on Twitter. The views expressed in this piece are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.

The 1918 flu outbreak caused millions to be dead in a short time and impacted daily life just like our recent coronaviruses outbreak. But in popular culture, it vanished largely without a trace nearly as soon it was over. Americans were ready to move on from war and pestilence in time for the ’20s.

A similar dynamic is what one senses today. With the pandemic almost officially behind us, January 6 a fading memory and the economy beginning to return to normal, many Americans appear ready for a politics that focuses on new challenges rather than rehashing old battles over mask mandates and election integrity.

The State of the Union speech by President Joe Biden offered a forward- looking vision of the Administration’s commitment to rebuilding America’s supply chain and spurring innovation. There was no hiding the fact that our political system was on a collision course and could offer the second election no one was clamoring for.

Republicans who want to push back against the left’s excesses and take the battle to “woke institutions” are aware that the model led to success at the state level.

Other potential challengers, like former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, face an uncertain path to the nomination but also offer a generational shift and a different set of priorities. Many party operatives admit that a Trump campaign that ignores the indignities of the epidemic or the false claims about the election will be seen as detached from the challenges facing working class Americans.

And even if a younger candidate tried to push aside a more seasoned candidate, an explicit age-based argument can backfire. Even if the attack lines focus on the memory or hearing of the older candidate, it doesn’t play well. Any politician trying to campaign against a more senior opponent would have to be careful about not sounding dismissive toward older Americans’ ability to contribute – after all, senior citizens are reliable voters.

Biden’s Legacy and the Future of the United States: a Primer from a Thousand Years of History and an Insight from the Early 2000s

The creation of NATO, the founding of the People’s Republic of China and the state of Israel, as well as the first color TV broadcast and other events are all important to the incumbent President and his predecessor.

Having seen the long sweep of history is a useful perspective in this day and age. The President and the former President should know that there is a need for new voices, ideas and ways of doing things.

Both Trump and Biden fulfilled their stated primary objectives, which were to highlight the plight of the “forgotten men and women of our country” and to raise questions about the logic of globalization that turned a blind eye to the rise of China.

According to many surveys, people in Biden’s own party think he’s too old and they would be better off with someone else in the White House.

It may be a younger nominee exploiting discontent over the Dobbs decision, which impacts abortion rights, or a Republican candidate speaking as a parent of young children about the importance of protecting children from online harms, that allows for a much-needed generation torch passing.

Biden at the State of the Union: Where do we stand? Where are we going? What do we need to know about biden’s 2020 speech?

Bill McGowan is the founder and CEO of Clarity Media Group, a New York-based global communications coaching firm. He is the author of the novel “Pitch Perfect: How to Say It Wrong the First Time, Every Time.” Juliana Silva is a strategic communications adviser at Clarity. The views expressed in this commentary are not of the authors. View more opinion articles on CNN.

The State of the Union jousting between Biden and the Republican caucus perfectly sums up the contrasting styles between the President and his adversaries. The Republicans, with their outrage-driven heckling, are doubling down on their image as brass-knuckled street fighters. What they seemingly haven’t learned from 2020 is that Biden thrives when cast as the gentler, more amiable counterpuncher.

The disarming tactic was on full display during his State of the Union address when he joked that Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill he signed into law would get credit for creating jobs in their districts.

The question heading into the State of the Union address was: Would Biden’s empathy and decency stand out as much without his chaotic and mean-spirited adversary there to accentuate the stark contrast?

The answer was yes thanks to a new breed of House Republicans who were willing to create chaos in the absence of former President Donald Trump.

The members of the GOP can not help themselves. Maybe they thought that shouting “liar” at Biden from the House floor would be a destabilizing surprise.

The President swatted the attacks away and even managed to turn the tables on his critics. Of course, if those GOP rabblerousers had carefully watched videos of his 2020 presidential debates, they would have known that ruffling Biden’s feathers is pretty tough to do. You don’t spend decades in Washington, DC, and still sport a thin skin.

Biden probably wanted to prove that there is still enough fuel left in the old tank when he brought a lot of gusto to his delivery at the State of the Union. For candidates nearly half Bidens age, the campaign trail is a tiring marathon.

Biden made a career out of being underestimated. The political skill with which the State of the Union was delivered made one loud statement as the 2024 election season approaches: Underestimate me at your own peril.

Five facts about the late U.N. Secretary of State, Ms. Haley, and the possibility of running for the presidency in 2024

Haley is the daughter of Haley is the Governor of South Carolina The former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador under Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley has called for “generational change” in the party after three disappointing election cycles for Republicans. But in early surveys, she is polling in single digits. Here are five facts about Ms. Haley.

Mike Pence. The former vice president has stumped for candidates, traveled to several states to sign books, and even recruited staff from his rivals. But his popularity with Republican voters has fallen since he refused to try to block the 2020 election, and he is reluctant to criticize Mr. Trump. Mr. Pence appears in no hurry to make a 2024 decision.

Mike would be the Secretary of State. The secretary of State is a man with an imposing resume: congressman, C.I.A. director. A new memoir allowed him to tour and test out a presidential message. A home-state paper, The Kansas City Star, said the book reads “like a guy at a bar trying to show his toughness.” Mr. Pompeo has said that he would decide on a bid “in the next handful of months.”

Other Republicans are Democrats. The governors of New Hampshire, Maryland, and South Carolina are thought of as considering running for president in 2024. Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, the governor of Virginia, and the woman who lost her seat in the House in the Capitol Riot Inquiry are some of the possible candidates.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/16/us/politics/bidens-physical-doctor.html

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: A Presidential Landscape in the Light of Biden’s 2020 Presidential Presidential Resummation

The White House press secretary said the president always says, “Watch me,” before the doctor’s memo was released. He keeps up with a very long schedule, so you will see that if you watch him.

Dr. O’Connor said the stiffness is the result of “significant spinal arthritis, mild post-fracture foot arthritis and a mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet,” for which the president undergoes physical therapy to regain more flexibility.

Voters’ attitudes toward the two men are very complex and fall well short of either an enthusiastic endorsement or a definitive rejection.

None of the recent survey findings predict how the presidential primary landscape will develop in the months to come, or how public opinion might evolve in response. They help to depict a complete picture of where things are now.

That’s good news for the president. The 46% is his highest mark since March of last year, and he hasn’t been at 49% since the Afghanistan withdrawal in August of 2021. In a hyper-partisan atmosphere, a president needs his base shored up, and that’s why he’s benefiting from a rebound with Democrats.

The biggest shifts are coming from whites without college degrees, those who make less than $50,000 a year, voters under 45 and women who live in small cities or the suburbs. Biden won the 2020 election because of the key target demographic groups. They’re the kinds of voters he peeled away from Trump, who made inroads with these groups in 2016.

Let’s start with the fact that these are Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, so they’re at least open to Biden’s message. There are three possible reasons.

That’s better than the Vice President, the transportation secretary and the Michigan governor, who the poll tested.

Still, the percentage saying they would be better off with someone else hasn’t budged. And there are clear cleavages – voters with college degrees, ones who make more than $50,000 a year and parents with children under 18 are far more likely to say they’d be better off with someone else, by 20 points or more in some cases.

There were 570 Democrats and independents who lean Democratic. Where they are referenced, that is a +/-. The margin was 5.1 percentage point. There were 460 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents interviewed. The margin for this subgroup is +/- 5.7 percentage points.