One of the strengths of the Democratic Party these days, counterintuitive though it may be, is its unity. Will Rogers’ quote from 100 years ago — “I’m not a member of any organized political party. It’s no longer working. The boogeyman in former President Donald Trump has injected common purpose into the Democratic Party and turned the dominant left into (mostly) team players.
The war in Gaza has reduced the Democratic Party by about half and has long threatened it. And in the wake of last week’s events — the Israeli attack that killed seven World Central Kitchen humanitarian workers — democratic unity is being tested like never before in the Trump era.
In my opinion, this comes at the most inopportune time for President Biden, as he looks to rally his less enthusiastic base for a rematch with President Trump in 2024.
The aid worker’s death interrupted the war’s high civilian death toll. This situation further exposed the rift within the Democratic Party over the war. Biden has sought to combine fairly unequivocal support for Israel with occasional harsh words against the leadership’s war effort, but members of his own party are clearly losing patience with that approach.
- Progressives in Congress are circulating a draft letter asking Biden to halt arms transfers to Israel.
- Leading Democratic lawmakers have balked at the administration’s plan to sell billions of dollars worth of F-15 jets to Israel.
- Former Obama administration officials have publicly criticized Biden for saying tough things about Israel but not backing them up with action.
- Perhaps most shockingly, on Thursday, Biden ally Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware) said that if Israel goes ahead with plans for a major invasion of southern Gaza against the administration’s wishes, the president will He said conditions should be attached to aid. The city of Rafah. “I’ve never said that before,” Coons pointed out on CNN. “I’ve never been here before.”
Far from a full-blown insurrection, Democrats have largely given Biden room to maneuver. But this push is clearly a departure from his chosen policy of “ironclad” support for Israel’s self-defense, as White House national security press secretary John Kirby even said Thursday.
This appears to be having some impact, with Biden saying on Thursday that US policy could change if Israel does not do more to address humanitarian issues and protect aid workers. suggested for the first time.
But Israel has previously defied the administration’s wishes, and Biden’s threats remain vague. A growing number of Israel critics within Biden’s party are likely to think it is not doing enough, especially if they see Israel not doing enough to correct course. .
Meanwhile, the party’s base continues to move away from Israel. A Gallup poll last week found that Democrats disapproved of Israel’s handling of the war, 75% to 18%. A Quinnipiac University poll found that Democrats have more sympathy for Palestinians than Israelis by a 48-21 margin.
The problem is that the American public as a whole and many Democrats remain sympathetic to Israel. Any actions Mr. Biden takes to take a truly tough line with a powerful U.S. ally and strengthen his own support base could come at a price with a wide swath of voters. It could also highlight rifts within his own party.
President Trump seemed similarly at a loss as to how to deal with the difficult issue, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt that Israelis were “losing the PR war” and asking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to He urged them to “end it.” But we have yet to see Republicans raise concerns about his approach, and Biden does not need to make the difficult choices he is making now.
Democratic divisions existed from the moment the war began in October. But aside from efforts to get Democratic voters to register their protests by voting “irresponsibly” for Biden in the recent primaries, they haven’t really been active publicly.
The fact that they haven’t done so yet shows Democrats’ renewed commitment to unity. But just as Trump is arousing great enthusiasm among the Democratic base, he is also arousing the problem of this sleeping giant. And the Giants seem to be back on his feet.
Change your vote (?) moment
One of the biggest challenges in understanding the 2024 election campaign is that our country is so polarized and the candidates are so distinct that it is unlikely that there will be large, statistically significant changes in the polls. I think it’s something that is unlikely to be seen.
But in recent weeks, it’s becoming safer to say that Biden’s support has increased, at least a little, and at least nationally.
The president has the best high-quality results in a while, including a 4-point lead over Trump in the Marquette University Law School poll, a 3-point lead in the Quinnipiac poll, and a 2-point lead in the 2019 poll. I have experience with several national opinion polls. NPR/PBS/Marist College Poll. However, in all three polls, the differences are within the margin of error. Counterpointing this is a Fox News poll showing Trump leading by 5 points.
Biden has had some bad news in battleground states this week, with a new Wall Street Journal poll showing him trailing in six of seven states (3 showed results within the margin of error). But he is gaining ground in Bloomberg’s battleground state polls, and this week he leads in a new poll in the all-important state of Pennsylvania.
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Speaking of partisan divisions, we’ve focused quite a bit in this newsletter on the ongoing protest vote against Trump in the Republican primary. And it continued unabated on Tuesday, when nearly one in five people in four states voted against him, nearly a month after he effectively won the Republican nomination. We thought it was a good time to break everything up.
You can see that part here.
The key points about this dynamic are:
- One is that these protest votes are deep-rooted. The 1-in-5 vote against President Trump is similar to the March 19 primary, and much more similar to the situation immediately after President Trump’s main Republican rival, Nikki Haley, dropped out on March 6. It’s not far. This problem isn’t going away, it doesn’t even seem like it’s really going away. . (And there aren’t that many Democratic protest votes against Biden at this point.)
- Second, Haley tends to do well among non-Republicans, even in states with “closed” primaries (that is, states where only registered Republicans can vote). This is what follows. In closed primaries held in Florida and Kansas on March 19th and in Connecticut and New York on Tuesday, an average of one in five voters voted against Mr. Trump.
As for whether this is Trump’s real responsibility in the general election? The jury has retired. However, as I mentioned in the article, both George W. Bush in 2000 and Biden in 2020 continued to give up roughly the same number of votes as Trump does now, after powerful opponents succumbed.
