Talk about buyer’s remorse.
A new poll found a majority of voters who backed Biden in 2020 think he should face debates with other Democratic presidential candidates in the 2024 race.
A Redfield & Wilton Strategies poll tallied on April 30 found that 79% of eligible voters who voted for Biden agree that the Democratic Party should hold televised primary debates, Newsweek reported.
Joe Biden spent most of Campaign 2020 in the basement of his Delaware mansion. While then-President Donald Trump crisscrossed the country, sometimes hitting three states in one day, Biden would hold a backyard gathering of 100 supporters and then go take a nap.
But Biden’s numbers are in the dumper — just 37% of Americans approve of his job performance and 70% don’t want him to run again, including more than half of Democrats.
Already, there are two challengers for the 2024 Democratic nomination, self-help author Marianne Williamson and JFK’s nephew, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. But Biden will not debate them, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has announced it has no plans to sponsor primary debates.
While it’s true that no incumbent president of either party has ever held a debate with those seeking to oust them, podcaster Joe Rogan said the country is “not being run well,” so why not explore possible replacements?
“So you have to go, well, who could do it better? Could it be a Republican? Or it could be a better Democrat?” Rogan said. “And if it’s not a better Democrat, like how are we gonna get a better Democrat if you don’t let the president debate? So they won’t let him debate. … So it’s like, that’s not that democratic, like, that’s not how it’s supposed to do.”
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When Kennedy announced his candidacy last month, USA Today reported its joint poll with Suffolk University showed he immediately had the “support of 14% of voters who backed President Joe Biden in 2020.” Williamson had 5%, and another 13% were undecided.
USA Today noted that “that is surprising strength for a candidate who has a famous political name but is now known mostly as the champion of a debunked conspiracy theory blaming childhood vaccines for autism.”
But the Republicans are in a mess, too. The Republican National Committee wants to move away from the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which has controlled all aspects of the debates since 1987. Top members of the GOP said the debates are often slanted toward Democrats.
In a post on his Truth Social media platform last week, Donald Trump suggested he was weighing plans to bail on the debates. “When you’re leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers, and you have hostile Networks with angry, TRUMP & MAGA hating anchors asking the ‘questions,’ why subject yourself to being libeled and abused,” Trump wrote.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.