Despite his apparent mounting legal woes, Democratic leaders have warned their Party that a Trump victory in 2024 remains a very real threat!
The fear comes from a recently released NBC poll which showed Biden with a relatively narrow 49% to 45% lead over Trump — which falls within the survey’s margin of error and is far lower than the 10-percentage point edge Biden held in NBC’s last poll before the 2020 election. The new survey shows DeSantis, who is less known than Trump, tied with Biden at 47% each.
Despite a perhaps misplaced air of confidence from Biden and his team, there are some leading Democrats who say they believe Trump has a very serious shot at winning back the Oval Office.
“If you think otherwise, you have literally had your head buried in the sand,” said former Rep. Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, who fell short in his bid to woo Trump-friendly voters to his side in a 2022 Senate race against JD Vance. “You’re living in a world of delusion. And it’s dangerous.”
Mandela Barnes, who lost by 25,000 votes to Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, in 2022 and has since launched a political action committee, said he’d like to see Democrats in battleground states “go on the offensive” and tout Biden’s accomplishments.
“The president has a done a lot to help working people, and the threat of a Donald Trump presidency is very real,” he said, adding, “It was Wisconsin that put Trump over the top in 2016. … We take the threat very seriously.”
Most of the Democrats who spoke to NBC News said they believe Trump is an easier draw for Biden than some of the other Republican challengers — if only because Trump is a known quantity.
Faiz Shakir, who ran Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, said the familiarity factor means it’s easier for Biden to remind voters of the reasons they rejected Trump three years ago than it is to build a new argument against DeSantis or another lesser-known candidate.
But, he said, Trump’s strengths and proven political agility should not be overlooked.
Shakir pointed specifically to Trump’s maneuvering on abortion rights after the GOP’s disappointing results in the 2022 midterm elections. Trump once said women should be punished for having abortions and appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn federal abortion protections. But now, Trump says Republicans should ensure abortion prohibitions include exemptions in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the life of the pregnant person.
While Dems are banking on Trump’s legal troubles to put them over the finish line, in reality, Trump’s trials and tribulations have only served to have solidified his position as the favorite for the Republican nomination. The NBC News poll shows his lead over DeSantis has expanded from 15 points to 29 points since April. Trump support is now at 51%, compared with 46% then, while DeSantis’ support among Republicans has fallen from 31% to 22%. Former Vice President Mike Pence leads the rest of the crowded field with 7% in the latest survey.
On the other hand, Biden’s approval rating, which fell to 35% in a Pew Research survey released last week, has been in the same territory as Trump’s during the run-up to the 2020 election. Coupled with a series of head-to-head polls that show Biden and Trump within the margin of error, that has given some Democratic strategists reason to believe Trump remains a very viable challenger to Biden.