CAN BIDEN MAKE THE ELECTION ABOUT JAN. 6? If you’re a Democrat, there’s a very alarming line in a new Axios report about the Biden campaign. The story is about what reporter Alex Thompson calls President Joe Biden’s “faith-based campaign,” and the faith is Biden’s belief that he will win reelection in November based on “voter concerns about Jan. 6, political violence, democracy, and Donald Trump’s character.”
It’s not hard to find fault with that belief — what about the issues voters themselves say are most important to them, such as inflation and the border, and what about international affairs, crime, and those matters highly important to Democrats, such as abortion and healthcare? There’s a lot more that voters worry about beyond Jan. 6.
That’s where the alarming line comes in. “People close to the president told Axios they worry about raising concerns in meetings because Biden’s group of longtime loyal aides can exile dissenters,” Thompson wrote. “‘Even for those close to the center, there is a hesitance to raise skepticism or doubt about the current path, for fear of being viewed as disloyal,’ a person in Biden’s orbit told Axios, speaking on condition of anonymity because of those dynamics.”
There are two big problems with Biden’s approach. One, it’s a bad idea for a leader to confine himself to a small, insular group in which membership is so prized that participants are afraid of disagreeing with the leader lest they be exiled from the group. And two, it’s even worse when that small, insular group that does not brook dissent picks the wrong path. It won’t allow outsiders to suggest corrections. If Biden says the election will be about Jan. 6, there’s nothing in it for anyone to argue otherwise.
Biden’s top strategist, Mike Donilon, has made it clear that he believes Jan. 6 will be the main issue in the 2024 election. A few months ago, Donilon talked to the New Yorker, which reported: “In 2020 [Donilon] and his campaign team had to decide whether to emphasize the economy or the more abstract idea that Trump imperiled the essence of America. ‘We bet on the latter,’ Donilon said, even though ‘our own pollsters told us that talking about ‘the soul of the nation’ was nutty.’ That experience fortified his belief that this year’s campaign should center on what he calls ‘the freedom agenda.’ By November, he predicted, ‘the focus will become overwhelming on democracy. I think the biggest images in people’s minds are going to be of Jan. 6.’”
Donilon was expressing a common sentiment in politics. If we won the first election doing A, then we will win the next election doing A. And if you suggest something different — well, how many elections have you won? In the last election, there was no Jan. 6. But Biden argued that Trump was a threat to American democracy. Now, he and Donilon intend to stoke memories of Jan. 6 to argue that Trump is an even greater threat to American democracy than before. It doesn’t matter what the top issues are. Biden and Donilon are dead-set on making this election about Jan. 6.
Maybe they’ll be able to do it. Who knows what might happen between now and November? But to win with his present strategy, Biden will have to convince the voters that the decision whether to reelect Biden should not be made on the basis of Biden’s performance as president of the United States.
It can be hard to determine to what degree voters believe the future of democracy is a top issue, or the top issue, in this election. The problem is that of course voters think democracy is important. But do they think it is so endangered at this moment that it is the primary issue in the 2024 election?
When pollsters ask voters what the most important issue facing the country is or what the country’s biggest problem is, the pollsters will receive different responses if they supply the voter with a list of issues and ask him to choose his top issue or if they ask an open-ended question, allowing the voter to tell the pollster what he or she thinks is most important.
So we have a number of polls asking voters whether “democracy,” as in “threats to democracy” or “the future of democracy” or some other phrase, is one of the most important issues facing the country. Many of those polls show that democracy ranks pretty high, although not as high as economic issues.
But then we have polls that ask voters an open-ended question: What is the most important problem facing the country today? The Gallup poll has been asking that question for a long time, then collecting and categorizing the various answers. The results are a little messier than a poll that limits a voter’s choices, but they are probably more accurate.
In May, Gallup divided voter responses into economic and noneconomic problems. In the first category, 17% said the economy in general is the nation’s most important problem, while 12% said it was high cost of living/inflation, 5% said federal budget deficit/federal debt, 2% unemployment/jobs, and 2% said the gap between rich and poor.
Of noneconomic problems, 21% said the government/poor leadership is the nation’s most important problem, while 18% said immigration, 6% said poverty/hunger/homelessness, 4% said abortion, and 4% said elections/election reform/democracy.
In both major categories, there were many, many additional answers. When you ask the nation’s most important problem, voters will give you a lot of different responses.
On the issue of what Gallup called elections/election reform/democracy, it seems clear that the 4% of voters who said it was the nation’s most important problem could include Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was stolen and Biden supporters who believe Trump undermines democracy. Gallup did not provide any insight on the breakdown within that 4%. But in any event, it is not a huge number of people.
Still, it is apparently Biden’s and Donilon’s intention to use Jan. 6 to push the “democracy” issue to the top of voter lists by Nov. 5. “I want to say it as clearly as I can: Democracy is on the ballot this year,” Biden said at a private fundraiser in McLean, Virginia, on June 18. “The future of democracy and freedom is at stake. These brave soldiers who gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy and other places in that invasion did their part. Now, we got to do ours.”
In fact, Biden and Trump will be on the ballot this year. Both men have been president. Voters can assess their records as president. Will Biden be able to convince them that voting for him is somehow analogous to mounting an invasion to stop Adolf Hitler in 1944? Or will voters see the 2024 election as they have seen reelection contests in the past, as a judgment on the president’s performance in his first term and a decision on whether he deserves another? That, apparently, is the last thing Biden and his insular election team want to be on the ballot.
