The Democrats are making some uncovered bets

Democrats are making three big bets as they prepare for the 2024 election. None are certain to pay off.

First, Democrats are assuming – or hoping – that Donald Trump, Mr. MAGA himself, will be the Republican nominee. Given the solid 30 percent of GOP voters that back the former president, this calculation isn’t crazy, but it’s hardly a sure thing. Trump’s popularity with Republican voters has fallen, and influential Republican donors, operatives and politicians are turning against him. After stinging losses in 2020 and 2022, Republicans are desperate for a winner.

The uncomfortable fact for Democrats is that other Republican candidates will present a more favorable age contrast to President Biden and, by virtue of not being Trump, will be much harder to depict as unhinged extremists. Partisan Democrats, especially partisan liberals, might well believe that all GOP candidates are exactly the same and exactly as evil. But they should not mistake their own views for those of ordinary voters.

The same goes for down-ballot contests. It is unlikely that the GOP will repeat the mistake it made in the last cycle, when it blew its chances of retaking the Senate by nominating a number of extremists who were backed by and identified with Trump. In 2024, there will be strong pressure on the party to nominate candidates who are less Trumpy and more normal. Again, partisan Democrats might regard all Republicans as “ultra-MAGA,” but persuadable voters might be harder to convince.

Democrats also seem to be operating under the questionable assumption that they don’t need to draw any line against the extremists in their own party. This calculation overlooks the fact that voters think Democrats and Republicans both are equally too tolerant of extremist groups in their ranks.

That means Democrats will need to contend with a burgeoning backlash against lax enforcement on crime and illegal immigration; ideological curriculums in schools; the undermining of academic achievement standards; the introduction of mandatory, politically approved vocabulary; proliferating “diversity, equity and inclusion” bureaucracies; and the unvetted mainstreaming of “gender affirming care.” Republicans are now preferred by voters to Democrats on immigration and crime, have reduced the traditional Democratic advantage on education and are set to take advantage of a conservative turn in the public on transgender issues.

There is a middle ground in all these areas, but Democrats seem to resist it. Witness the fierce intraparty reaction to Biden’s modest attempts to move to the center on crime by supporting an override of the new D.C. law that reduced penalties for carjacking and to his suggestion that he might resume detention of migrant families who enter the United

States illegally.

The third calculation embedded in Democratic strategy is that the accomplishments of Biden’s first two years will deliver enough benefits over the next 18 months that working-class voters, including White working-class voters, will reward the party in November 2024.

Democrats base this hunch on the nearly $1.45 trillion in spending adopted in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the Chips and Science Act and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Democratic hopes are highest for the IRA – really a climate bill despite the name – whose generous spending is intended to provide subsidies and job opportunities that will be quickly felt by American workers.

Arrayed against this hunch are a number of economic head winds. Over the past two years, workers’ wages have actually lost ground relative to inflation. Compared with a year ago, prices are up 28 percent for fuel oil, 27 percent for utility gas, 15 percent for transportation, 12 percent for electricity and 11 percent for groceries. While overall inflation has abated relative to the middle of last year, it remains a large presence in workers’ lives.

Recent Gallup data shows half of the country reporting that they are worse off today than they were a year ago, the highest level since 2009. A recent Post-ABC News poll reports that 41 percent of the public said it is worse off today than it was when Biden took office, the highest level the poll has recorded on analogous questions dating back 37 years. The negative judgment was even more severe among working-class respondents.

The Democrats’ best hope here is that these large public investments will trigger a surge of private investment, something like the “Morning in America” scenario of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 reelection campaign.

But so far, as economist Noah Smith has noted, that hasn’t happened. As Smith and others report, the real barrier to a boom might not be the availability of capital, but rather the ability to get big projects launched because of permitting, regulatory and legal obstacles. In other words, it’s just too damn hard to build stuff here. The Democrats don’t seem too interested in changing this situation – for example, the permitting reforms that Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) were promised as a condition for his support on the IRA died partially because of lack of support from his own party.

These are the bets that undergird the Democrats’ current strategy for 2024. Each is laden with risks that they are making little effort to mitigate and whose potential to derail Democratic plans they seem only dimly aware of.