Democrats Left With No Good Options Against Trump

With less than a year until the November 2024 election, Democrats appear to be in a bind to choose a candidate with enough support to topple former President Donald Trump.

President Joe Biden, who announced his reelection bid in April, has faced little challenge for the Democratic Party's next presidential nomination. But with Trump holding a healthy lead over the crowded pool of GOP hopefuls, and recent polling showing the former president winning in a few key swing states, it's unclear if Biden would be victorious in a rematch of the 2020 election.

According to a survey released by Stack Data Strategy, which polled 15,000 American voters, as it stands now, Trump would beat Biden in the Electoral College 292 to 246. As Politico noted in its report of the survey's results, the poll showed Trump winning in the four states that were decided by the closest margins in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The former president was given a narrow margin of victory in the four swing states, and Biden was projected to win the popular vote by just under 2 million votes. But Monday's polling is not the first time Democrats have been handed bad news. On November 5, a poll published by The New York Times/Siena College projected Trump beating Biden by four to 10 percentage points in five important swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Only Wisconsin, the sixth battleground state included in the surveys, swung blue.

Newsweek reached out to the White House's press office via email on Monday for comment.

Political strategist David Axelrod, who worked on former President Barack Obama's campaigns in 2008 and 2012, noted in a post to X, formerly Twitter, at the time that the polling numbers should spark "legitimate concern" within the DNC, adding, "this will send tremors of doubt thru the party."

"Only @JoeBiden can make this decision," Axelrod added in a separate post to X. "If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it's in HIS best interest or the country's?"

Axelrod later told Politico that his post did not mean to say that Biden should drop out of the 2024 race, and allies of the president quickly pushed back on his statement, including Biden's former White House Chief of Staff Ronald Klain.

A handful of other powerful Democrats have also been touted in polls as a potential 2024 pick, including Biden's running mate Vice President Kamala Harris. But in a hypothetical matchup between Harris and Trump, according to Stack Data Strategy's survey, the former president wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College 311 to 227.

California Governor Gavin Newsom, a prominent Democratic voice across the country, fares even worse if placed against Trump in 2024, losing 319 to 219 in the Electoral College, Stack Data Strategy found. Newsom has also said that it is time for Democrats to "move on" from looking for another nominee besides Biden and expressed his full support for the president's reelection campaign in September.

GOP strategist John Feehery told Newsweek that "Biden, Harris and Newsom share one important trait: They are terrible."

Feehery added "a real centrist" might beat Trump "but not those three." He suggested Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who recently announced he will not seek reelection for his seat in West Virginia next year, could stand a chance against Trump.

Independent candidates in the mix for 2024 also don't appear to change Trump's chances next fall. According to a poll by Morning Consult published on November 9, when third-party candidates Cornel West and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are added to the ballot, Trump leads Biden in six of seven swing states, including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden only led the former president, by 1 percentage point, in Michigan.

Removing West and Kennedy from the ballot only hurt Biden further, with the president losing Michigan in a hypothetical two-way race between him and Trump, according to Morning Consult.

Jay Townshend, non-partisan political consultant, told Newsweek that one should be "careful" about reading too much into the polls.

"They may be right, they may be wrong. Their methodologies may be sound. Maybe not," Townshend said. "Regardless, even if correct, they measure voters where they are today, and are useless predictors of where the electorate will be a year from now."

Townshend added: "All this said, right now the race is even according to surveys. We know only the starting point in a race where billions will be spent that may affect the outcome."

Democrats have not lost hope for 2024, however, and last week's elections at the state and local level proved promising for the DNC. Issues like abortion rights prevailed in Ohio, a state that turned red in the last few elections, and Democratic Governor Andy Beshear pulled out a second-term victory in Kentucky. Democrats in Virginia also gained control of both chambers of the state's legislature, and in Pennsylvania, Democrats increased their majority on the state's Supreme Court.

"Pollsters, pundits, if I had $1, for every time they've counted Joe Biden or the Democrats out, I probably wouldn't have to work anymore," Sam Cornale, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, told Reuters after last week's election, adding Democrats "won time and again, and we will next November."