When you think of President Joe Biden, you likely don't think of President Ronald Reagan, one of our nation's greatest presidents, right? It's almost laughable. Well, last week, Axios reported that someone described as “a top confidant” of President Joe Biden told the outlet that “We are Reagan,” adding “We had a big plan. We are getting it in place.”
Such remarks speak to how truly clueless the Biden administration and those close to it are, but it also calls to mind what may be coming next after Biden leaves office, hopefully by January 20, 2025, when a Republican president will be inaugurated.
For context, that Axios report references a Washington Post-ABC News poll from August 1982, which revealed at the time that 59 percent of respondents didn't want Reagan to run for a second term. That included one-third of Republicans.
Of course, Reagan went on to run again. He not only won, but he won 49 states, losing only Minnesota and Washington, D.C, winning a total of 525 electoral votes. The Axios report notes this was “the most electoral votes of any presidential candidate ever.”
Back to the present day, the Axios report refers to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll that points to 65 percent of registered voters who don’t want Biden to run. It’s worth emphasizing that that includes half of Democrats, a far cry from the one-third of Republicans who didn’t want Reagan to run again.
That’s just one poll, though. There’s more bad news for Biden, in the form of many more polls, with even higher numbers of Democrats who don’t want him to run again. Much was made about a poll last month from The New York Times/Siena College, and for good reason; 64 percent of Democrats want someone else to run.
The New York Times and The Washington Post, what one would consider mainstream media outlets friendly to the Democratic cause, have been regularly publishing op-eds and articles for months now about how Democrats want someone other than Biden.
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If you thought this was confined to that one “confidant,” think again. Last week, John Feehery, whose resume includes working for Republican members of Congress, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill that “Biden is no Reagan, but he can win like him.”
While Feehery gets it right that Biden isn’t Reagan, though he still goes on to argue that any certain number of things can happen for Biden to win re-election. While he isn’t making the argument that Biden can win re-election with the numbers that Reagan did, such stunningly impressive electoral victory from 1984 is too contextually important to leave out.
As mind blowingly absurd as it would be that this “confidant” would mention Biden and Reagan in the same sentence, let alone equate them, I too have thought of Biden and Reagan together.
Dealing with the results of the 2020 election was rough. Our country has suffered so much with a catastrophic transformation, and not for the better. Surely many Americans are feeling buyer’s remorse, as they should. At least we don’t have to deal with those mean tweets anymore though, right?
Many have, for a year now, made the comparison to Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden when it comes to sheer incompetence, especially when it comes to the energy crisis. Carter alumn spoke to POLITICO last September, concurring on the comparisons and making grim predictions. Jimmy Carter was at least a nice man, though, and one could argue he was in over his head during his one term.
The similarities are sound when it comes to not only the incompetence level, but the electoral history. A Republican president (Donald Trump and Gerald Ford) lost to a Democratic one (Joe Biden and Jimmy Carter), with voters looking for something new. Realizing they screwed up, royally, voters made sure that that Democratic president ought not to be rewarded with the chance to screw it up so much more. We blissfully were rewarded with Reagan.
You see, the reason I think of Biden and Reagan together is the hope that we needed to elect Biden in to get to our Reagan. That’s what gets me through this Biden administration. The upcoming November midterms are now just three months away, and Democrats will almost surely no longer control both chambers in addition to the White House. It’s also the half-way mark of how we’ll then get to elect a new president in just two years.
Who that person will be I don’t know for sure. I do know it’ll be worth supporting whomever the Republican nominee is, whether that’s Trump or someone else.
Speaking of Trump, Reagan isn’t the only president that comes to mind. If Trump runs again and pulls off a non-consecutive second term, he won’t be the only president to do so. Grover Cleveland won in 1884, but lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888. He promised he’d be back in four years, and he was, winning even more electoral votes in 1892 than he did in 1884.
Perhaps history won’t just be repeating itself when it comes to the 1980 election, when Reagan was first elected as president. It wasn’t his 1984 win, but it came pretty close, even more astounding since Reagan was running against an incumbent. He won 44 states and 489 electoral votes.
With all the madness that’s been going on in our world right now, it wouldn’t shock me that this would be the time for us to experience the 1892 election all over again.
Will Biden’s popularity and/or approval ratings change now that the U.S. Senate on Sunday night passed the so-called Inflation Reduction Act? It’s hard to say. He’ll likely get a boost among his fellow Democrats for what the party is sure to celebrate as a legislative win, but that just may not be enough.
Our Ronald Reagan is still yet to come, and with any hope and prayer, we’ll see him (or her) inaugurated on January 20, 2025.
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