A stronger-than-expected Democratic showing in the U.S. midterms has taken pressure off President Biden as his party looks to the 2024 presidential race.
Republican antipathy toward Donald Trump, who intends to run for president again, has also quieted Democrats’ anxiety over Biden’s poor approval ratings.
Now, as the president mulls whether to seek a second term, interviews with more than two dozen Democratic elected officials and strategists suggest that, whatever misgivings some Democrats may harbor about another Biden candidacy, his party is more inclined for now to defer to him than to try to force a frontal clash with a sitting president.
Younger Democratic operatives have begun considering what a Biden re-election campaign might look like. Lawmakers have lauded the president for the party’s history-defying midterm performance, crediting him with the major legislative accomplishments they were able to run on and with pressing a message that cast Republican candidates as extremists who threatened democracy.
By the numbers: A recent poll found that 71 percent of Democrats surveyed believed he could win in 2024, up from 60 percent who said the same in August, though they were evenly divided on whether he should be the 2024 nominee.
Trump: Jewish supporters of the former president have balked at his recent meetings with outspoken antisemites. “He legitimizes Jew hatred and Jew haters,” says one. “And this scares me.”
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