We're less than a month out from the first GOP primary debate, and former President Donald Trump has already cleared the field — setting up a Biden vs. Trump rematch for 2024.
For months, Democrats have argued they want to run against Trump, claiming Biden can beat him and land a second term in the White House. But things are starting to change, and the polling, including in swing states, is favoring Trump. As a result, Biden's previous backers and Democratic voters are starting to crack, looking frantically for other options as the election inches closer. They're also starting to acknowledge Biden family scandals that were previously taboo.
"An Echelon Insights survey of 1,020 likely voters show that 48 percent of those in battleground states said they would definitely or probably vote for the Republican who is the favorite to clinch the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, compared to 41 percent who said they would back Biden," Newsweek reports.
"The president can't defend Hunter Biden on all his other messes and draw the line at accepting one little girl. You can't punish her for something she had no choice about. The Bidens should embrace the life Hunter Biden brought into the world, even if he didn't consider her mother 'the dating type,'" reliable liberal Maureen Dowd recently wrote in The New York Times. "The president's cold shoulder — and heart — is counter to every message he has sent for decades, and it's out of sync with the America he wants to continue to lead."
Dowd's revelation of Biden's deadbeat grandfather status is four years overdue, but it is telling given it destroys his claims of being a loving grandfather who "always answers a call" from his grandkids.
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In addition, stories from inside Biden's White House are starting to leak. And they aren't flattering. Instead of being patient and kind, Biden has a hot temper and regularly violates his own edict of treating co-workers with respect.
"Biden has such a quick-trigger temper that some aides try to avoid meeting alone with him. Some take a colleague, almost as a shield against a solo blast," Axios reports. "The private eruptions paint a more complicated picture of Biden as a manager and president than his carefully cultivated image as a kindly uncle who loves Aviator sunglasses and ice cream."
Biden's facade is coming down. That, combined with the potential he could lose to Trump and the fact that he isn't really campaigning for reelection, have Democrats looking for alternatives.
"The conversations keep happening – quiet whispers on the sidelines of events, texts, emails, furtive phone calls – as top Democrats and donors reach out to those seen as possible replacement presidential candidates," CNN reports. "In a race that many expect will likely come down to a few hundred thousand votes in a few states, the doubters argue that every day without a packed schedule on the stump will prove to voters that Biden's age is as big a worry as they believe it is. Or that the president and people around him aren't taking the threat of losing to Donald Trump or another Republican seriously enough, and they're setting up for Election Night next year to be 2016 déjà vu."
Biden stepping aside now would be the most democratic thing to do by giving voters, who Democrats claim to hold in high regard, a choice about who could be the next president – a much better alternative than handing the reigns to current Vice President Kamala Harris. As an unpopular presidential candidate in 2020, she couldn't even make it to the first round of voting among the left.
Through it all, California Governor Gavin Newsom has been patiently circling the Oval Office since last year. Now, there's real blood in the water, and his national campaign is already ready to go.
