President Joe Biden has become the Rodney Dangerfield of politics: He don’t get no respect.
Less than four months before Election Day, Biden is at one of the lowest moments of his long political career. In a new poll, 65% of Democrats think the 81-year-old Biden should drop his reelection bid. Party insiders are reportedly pleading with him to withdraw, fearful that the whole party will get shellacked in November. Biden continues to flub his lines, self-advancing a narrative of decline. As if in cosmic conspiracy, the COVID virus infected Biden this week.
If Biden does leave the presidential race, as seems increasingly likely, he might settle into a kind of elder statesman role, finally rising above the hurly-burly of electoral politics. As a candidate, though, Biden is beginning to seem like a lame-duck president who’s in his final months but simply doesn’t know it yet.
The political world is increasingly treating Biden as irrelevant. Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters labor union, showed up at the Republican convention on July 16 to praise Donald Trump as “one tough SOB.” That raised eyebrows because the Teamsters union, one of the nation’s most influential, normally aligns with Democrats. The group endorsed Biden in 2020, and Biden has returned the favor by pushing a variety of laws and policies friendly to unions.
O’Brien said he wasn’t at the GOP convention to endorse Trump, yet his appearance there and his flattering words clearly signaled to the union’s 1.3 million members that a vote for Trump would be fine. Biden won 56% of the union vote in 2020, and given his fraying coalition, he may need more than that this year. Yet polls show he’s doing worse with union members than in 2020, and O’Brien’s dalliance with Trump could push Biden’s union support even lower.
The economic news continues to be solid, with inflation on the run as the job market remains strong. Investors now think it’s very likely the Federal Reserve will start cutting interest rates in September, lowering borrowing costs for consumers while they’re getting ahead of inflation and retaining their purchasing power.
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The economic backdrop ought to be extremely bullish for Biden, given that an incumbent president running for reelection normally wins, as long as there’s no recession. Yet Biden’s reelection prospects seem to be cratering.
Since Biden bombed in the presidential debate on June 27, Trump has jumped in the polls and the prediction markets. Betting averages compiled by RealClearPolitics give Trump 60% odds of winning the White House, and Biden just 6% odds. Vice President Kamala Harris trumps Biden with 21% odds of winning the White House, which means the prevailing wisdom is that Biden is a goner.
Financial markets are beginning to price in not just a Trump win, but a Republican sweep that would give Trump's party full control of Congress and the ability to pass partisan legislation. The "Trump trade" could be good for cryptocurrencies and energy stocks, but more troubling for semiconductors and companies that would suffer from intensified trade wars.
Trump is no doubt enjoying an image bump following his survival of the July 13 assassination attempt and the conclusion of the Republican convention in Milwaukee. In his acceptance speech, Trump borrowed a Biden line when he said, “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America.” Then he said Biden has been the worst president in history, deriding Biden’s handling of inflation and immigration with his usual mix of hyperbole and falsehoods.
Biden will get his turn for a rebuttal, of course, when the Democrats hold their convention during the third week of August — if he’s still in the race. Biden says he’s not going anywhere, but he has to say that until the very moment he chooses to pull out. And it’s hard to see how a president who seems to get older by the day can regain momentum when the people whose votes he needs don’t even want him to run.
There may be no Comeback Kid in 2024, or even a Comeback Grandpa.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X at @rickjnewman.
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