ECONOMIC SUCCESS MAY RESET 2024 RACE
Republicans greeted the stunning January jobs news with utter silence. What’s there for the party to quibble over when the economy generates 517,000 more jobs, unemployment drops to a 50-plus-year low, manufacturing continues to expand and wages increase at a steady pace?
The failure of a long-predicted recession to appear might not just send Republicans scrambling for the next shiny object with which to distract the public; it might shake up the 2024 presidential race.
Biden’s legislative and economic successes have already dampened any serious discussion about his declining to seek a second term. Departing chief of staff Ron Klain seemed to remove any doubt when he declared, “As I did in 1988, 2008 and 2020, I look forward to being on your side when you run for president in 2024.”
Sure, the game of fantasy politics (Whitmer-Buttigieg 2024!) still gets play on Twitter and among bored pundits, but absent some extraordinary development, Biden will run, and no primary challenger will emerge.
Forget the polling showing Biden’s disapproval exceeding his favorables. The days of positive ratings for any president might be a thing of the past, given the persistence of tribal politics and the gloomy cast of news coverage. Elections are choices, in this case between earnest Democrats working on popular economic proposals, and unhinged MAGA extremists. Put differently, if the economy remains strong, Biden’s chances of re-election will be high.
Biden clearly senses that his political fortunes have improved. “For the past two years, we’ve heard a chorus of critics write off my economic plan. They said it’s just not possible to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out,” he said in announcing the January jobs numbers. “And they said we can’t bring back American manufacturing. They said we can’t make things in America anymore, that somehow adding jobs was a bad thing … or that the only way to slow down inflation was to destroy jobs.”
He added with relish, “Well, today’s data makes crystal clear what I’ve always known in my gut: These critics and cynics are wrong.”
On the GOP side, Biden’s economic success deepens their dilemma: If they nominate former president Donald Trump, the subject of multiple criminal probes, many rightly fear he’ll bring political disaster up and down the ticket. If he doesn’t run as the Republican nominee, a thirdparty bid threatens to hopelessly divide the party, with as many as 28% inclined to follow him, according to a recent poll.
And if some other Republicans were to endure a faceoff with Trump and the MAGA cult, the prospect of then taking on an incumbent president with a solid chance of re-election might give them pause. A younger politician with a bright future understandably might wait until both Trump and Biden are in the rearview mirror.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis would barely be 50 in a 2028 presidential contest, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin only 61. Some potential challengers (e.g., Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas) have already decided to sit this one out. Former vice president Mike Pence — with no other real means of staying in the public eye — might be the only contender for whom 2024 is the only shot at the presidency.
Considering that every modern president running for re-election not during an economic downturn won (Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama), Biden’s chances soar should the economy remain strong. That should give some potential candidates second and third thoughts about entering a brutal primary and facing off against a president with economic winds at his back.