President Joe Biden and the runup to the 2024 election

I can see the Biden campaign moving slow at this point but the democratic party really needs to get into gear with the down ballot campaigns and see those are chugging along.

A big part of down ballot campaigns is riding on the coattails of the president’s campaign and getting his endorsement. Biden should be working diligently at helping those candidates.

The presidential campaign is kinda the band leader for all the others and they can’t get fully up to steam until Biden does (and that matters).

Biden is an anti-abortion Catholic. Has been forever. He’s only switched within the past few years.

I wouldn’t be surprised if that did indeed represent a sizable number of Catholics.

It would be nice to be able to vote in a primary that mattered once in my life. A topic for another time but I’m a firm believer in having all primaries on the same day but the parties don’t want to have to spread their money around that much.

There’s a good discussion happening currently on the SDMB on whether we should have primaries on one day. I think the reasons not to are more persuasive. YMMV

I read through it. The disenfranchisement of half of the country outweighs the other arguments. If I ever want to get a true say in who gets to be president I have to move to a different state. There are no arguments that beat that.

According to several major publications, inflation is cooling. Question: is Biden going to get any credit for that as he heads into 2024? Or is this going to be another example of Democrats not tooting their own horn loudly enough when they should (cf. Obamacare)?

Answer to ThelmaLou’s first question is – some. If the economy keeps going at least this well, Biden has a real possibility of re-election.

Regarding the second question, I am a big Affordable Care Act fan. However, I haven’t personally found it easy to increase that fan base.

I doubt it. The economy was better after Obama but Clinton didn’t seem to get much benefit from it.

I think the problem is most Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Also, despite inflation and a tight labor market, wages simply are not rising. But costs to live are and housing is getting worse.

So, few voters are feeling the “better” economy is benefitting them and will not be seeing Biden as having helped.

Also, the current president gets blamed for everything from the price of food and gasoline to my dog’s fleas.

I’ve seen the “Biden did that” sticker on gas pumps (never mind that Biden didn’t do that):

The cost of living isn’t going down. It’s not going up as fast. It the voting public does not feel they are better off now than how they were when he took over. No amount of tooting will change that.

Nobody cares what “publications” say .
They care about their own household expenses.

Nobody knows what the inflation rate is over the past couple months.
Everybody knows how much their gas pump displayed today.

The only people who care about “inflation rates cooling”, are the people who aren’t affected by it. (i.e. The bankers and the pundits-- who don’t know what their gas pump displayed today because it’s just chump change to them.)

No.
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Trump has a very, very good chance to win the election.

If Biden was up against a normal GOP candidate, I’d agree with you. But he’s likely going to be going up against a candidate who gave us this nugget of wisedom 5 YEARS AGO, and has not improved in brain power since then:

“I have broken more Elton John records, he seems to have a lot of records. And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No, we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully, the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

ROFL, in no way was I comparing Biden to Trump, and I can’t see how anything I said can be construed that way at all.

That would be like commenting that I went to a high-end steakhouse and really enjoyed my dinner, but I was disappointed that the steak was a bit overdone from what I’d ordered, and then someone else points out that it’s still better than the microwave burrito I had last week. Of course it is, but it doesn’t make the observation any less true.

Yes I understand, but it still boils down to the fact there will be a choice looming; Between an older guy who looks and acts tired because he’s trying to do a very difficult job, and is doing it pretty well and is prepared to keep doing it…

And a complete buffoon who is only three years younger, has no concept of how government works, illegally retains sensitive defense documents for unknown purposes, proven to sexually assault women and cannot form a coherent sentence.

I’ll take the “tired guy”.

Absolutely. It’s also a very effective counter when someone says that someone should vote for Trump instead of Biden, because Biden is prone to gaffes, is very old, and seems to be tired at times. There are countless examples of Trump rambling incoherently, lying outrageously, and so on. Going by what you can put together from media recordings, Biden seems overall much more coherent.

He has, IMHO zero vs Biden.

Now against someone else? maybe. And trump may not even be the candidate.

And to me, he acts and look more like dementia has set in.

Yeah, attacking Biden due to being old by trumpists is damn silly.

DARVO “deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender”

Trump is pretty clearly mentally not all there. Even his supporters can see this. They must have some kind of defense to this - the only one that they can use effectively is DARVO.

Yeah. And if they claim the Dems are doing it, then you know they are.

I mean, I can see desantis going on about “old joe”.

But next year we may all be going to a restaurant where the only items on the menu are a less than optimally cooked steak and a microwave burrito. Assuming both items survive until then.