Biden team says election night wins show path to 2024 victory
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[November 09, 2023]
By Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A sense of vindication swept through the White
House and Biden campaign on Wednesday after Democrats' strong showing in
off-year elections, despite a slew of recent polls showing U.S.
President Joe Biden's popularity is low.
"Pollsters, pundits, if I had $1, for every time they've counted Joe
Biden or the Democrats out, I probably wouldn't have to work anymore,"
Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee,
told Reuters. Democrats "won time and again, and we will next November,"
he predicted.
Biden faced questions this week, including from some in his own
Democratic Party, about the wisdom of his 2024 re-election bid after a
series of weak polls. Some segments of the diverse Democratic coalition
have lost faith in Biden, frustrated by his Israel stance, the lack of
movement on climate change, or high prices.
A Sunday New York Times/Siena College poll showed Biden behind
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in five of six battleground states.
Reuters/Ipsos polls show Biden's popularity has fallen to 39%, its
lowest level since April.
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Tuesday's victory by Democratic incumbent Governor Andy Beshear in
Kentucky over a well-regarded Republican opponent, the passage in
Republican-voting Ohio of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing
abortion rights and Democratic wins in the battleground state of
Pennsylvania showed the overall strength of the positions of Biden's
party.
The Ohio result shows abortion rights remain a winning political issue
for Democrats after the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court
ended the constitutional right to an abortion, overriding public
opinion.
Whether victories for Democrats this week are a definitive sign of
strength for Biden's re-election is unclear.
Voters who turned up on Tuesday in state and local elections and those
who will vote in the presidential election in November 2024 could be
vastly different, exit polls suggest. In Ohio, for example, exit polls
from NBC showed voters skewed Democratic on Tuesday, although Trump won
the state by 8 percentage points in 2020.
Republican political strategist Mary Anna Mancuso said polls today offer
little indication of what will happen in 2024 but that Tuesday's results
may spell trouble for her party.
"There's a margin of voters, specifically suburban women, who are
defecting from the Republican Party," she said. "They are protecting
their bodies over their tax cuts."
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U.S. President Joe Biden holds an event to sign an Executive Order
on Artificial Intelligence in the East Room at the White House in
Washington, U.S., October 30, 2023. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
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Vice President Kamala Harris made a sudden appearance on the White
House driveway on Wednesday to highlight the abortion issue and
offer a fresh glimpse of Democrats' coalescing 2024 message - their
party, not the Republican party, will protect Americans' personal
rights.
"Last night, I think the American people made clear that they are
prepared to stand for freedom and for the individual freedoms and
the promise of freedom in America, and by extension, it was good
night for democracy," said Harris.
The election results showed that "the government should not be
telling a woman what to do with her body," Harris said.
Biden, who turns 81 this month, currently faces no serious primary
challengers and has raised tens of millions of dollars for his
re-election campaign. His fundraising has surpassed that of Trump,
77, the current Republican frontrunner, who backed the losing
Kentucky governor candidate.
"At every turn, MAGA Republicans have embraced Donald Trump's agenda
to restrict our freedoms, and voters aren't going to have it,"
Cornale said.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who earlier this
week noted that polls predicting a "red wave" for the Republicans in
the 2020 midterms were misleading, said the latest election results
bolstered Biden's re-election argument that his policies matter
most.
"We don't put much stock in polls," she said.
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Harris, who appeared in the White House driveway so abruptly that
she interrupted Jean-Pierre's scheduled press conference, closed
with an optimistic prediction about next November.
"It was a good night and the president and I obviously have a lot of
work to do to earn our re-election," she said. "But I'm confident
we’re going to win."
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Trevor Hunnicutt. Editing by Heather
Timmons, Rod Nickel, Deepa Babington and Lincoln Feast.)
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