Political Landscape Shifts Dramatically Ahead of 2024 Presidential Election

Six weeks ago, it seemed apparent that the nation was uninterested in the Biden-Trump rematch. Even the ratings for the first debate, consequential though it was, were shockingly low. With 51 million viewers, it marked the lowest-rated first general election debate for a presidential race since TV viewership tracking began.

Polling also indicated a decline in interest in this campaign and an extreme distaste for the choices the two major parties were offering. Over 50% of voters were regularly expressing a desire to see alternative candidates for the presidency.

In short, voters were communicating in various ways that this matchup was unappealing and that they were not going to engage until the last possible minute. After all, these two candidates were well-defined. What new information would voters need? The initial post-debate polls did not shift much because the public received the candidates they expected: a slightly manic, fact-free former President Donald Trump versus a barely ambulatory President Joe Biden.

To paraphrase the late, great football coach Dennis Green, “They were who we thought they were.”

There's a reason political reporters often say that a month (or a week) can be a lifetime in politics. Right now, we are experiencing a second or third political lifetime since that June 27 debate.

We are transitioning from a presidential campaign that left the public disinterested and at times disgusted to a campaign that could potentially generate an electorate as interested as in 2008 and 2020, two of the highest-turnout elections in the past 50 years.

The more the public tunes in, the more volatile this election could become.

Before the assassination attempt, there wasn’t a scenario in which I believed Trump could persuade skeptics to give him a second look, let alone win over voters who decided not to support him in 2020 — especially after his actions on January 6, 2021. And perhaps he still won’t be able to win these folks over. But I sense that these skeptics will be curious enough about whether Saturday changed Trump to at least check him out, maybe by tuning into some of Thursday's acceptance speech. That’s an opportunity.

Meanwhile, if the Democrats end up with a new nominee — and it’s looking increasingly likely by the hour — that too could suddenly trigger interest in what the new nominee has to say, engaging the electorate in a way that the pre-debate campaign did not.

Bottom line: We are approaching the moment when it might be fair to say, “Throw out everything you thought you knew about this election.”

The range of scenarios is increasing, not decreasing. I am convinced that the various third-party candidates will start to see their numbers dwindle. Why? The GOP appears more united than it has been since at least 2004 and George W. Bush's re-election. That’s not to say the Trump-skeptic Reagan conservatives aren’t still skeptical, but this convention has done much to unify the party.

Yes, some blue-state Republicans are struggling to support Trump, and they may continue to do so, but it’s a much smaller group of Trump naysayers now than in 2016 or 2020.

I believe the decision to nominate a replacement for Biden would cause some third-party supporters, particularly those of Cornel West and Jill Stein, to give the Democrats a second look. As for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s supporters, his campaign is not serious, and with both the Democrats and the Republicans regrouping, I expect to see the Kennedy vote slowly evaporate. The lack of serious campaign events may indicate that his resources for ballot access are drying up, as the campaign is no longer acting like a fully funded operation.

Before we reach this campaign reset, the Democrats must determine their ticket and, more importantly, how quickly they can get it selected and certified by the party.

As of this writing, my sources indicate that the only people still rationalizing Biden’s staying in the race are those with the last name Biden, with the possible exception of Biden’s longtime chief political strategist, Mike Donilon. Donilon, as the gatekeeper of the data that reaches the president's desk, is starting to be blamed along with Biden and his family for the Democrats’ current position.

Alarmingly, for many Democrats who have spoken with members of Biden’s inner circle, it’s not clear the president has seen any new data about the race since the debate. Instead, he receives memos with cherry-picked numbers based more on "analytics" research using a large sample of respondents across states, coupled with voter file data, to model outcomes.

Such data can often be glorified projections based on historical performance and turnout estimates, which can struggle to capture changes in volatile moments.

This may explain the disconnect between congressional Democrats and the Biden campaign regarding where the president stands with voters.

But the reality is that Democrats have passed the point of no return with Biden. If Biden doesn’t bow to the pressure in the next week, he may start losing support among the delegates he has technically won from the semi-uncontested primaries. Democratic rules mean the delegates are only “pledged” to Biden, not legally bound to him. The likelihood of congressional leaders orchestrating a "stop Biden" movement at the convention is growing stronger by the hour.

I can’t imagine it comes to that. At some point, Biden will realize he wants a positive legacy for his presidency. Does he really want a denial of the nomination to be the coda to his career? The longer this continues, the harder it is to watch. Wednesday night, seeing that split screen with the Republican convention celebrating Trump while Biden was landing in Delaware with Covid, was a reminder that he just doesn’t look like the same person who won four years ago.

Assuming Biden does step down, the cleanest transition for the party would be if he simply endorsed his vice president. If he did that, I suspect many top Democrats would follow suit and support Kamala Harris, including the Obamas, the Clintons, and likely all the potential 2028 aspirants such as Maryland Governor Wes Moore, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

I’m not ruling out a mini-primary of sorts, but I’d be surprised if one develops. It’s very late, and the party needs a ticket in place, money in the bank, and ads on the air. Any delay in determining the nominee hurts, and the necessity to focus on the GOP ticket will most likely make Democrats rally around Harris in a way they might not have had this been a traditional primary that began months ago.

The only real drama then will be about the second slot. The early names being mentioned include Whitmer, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. Three of these four elected officials are fairly popular statewide officeholders in key battleground states, so their inclusion makes Electoral College sense.

As for Beshear, the case for him is more in messaging. He’s a red-state Democratic governor who works with a GOP-controlled legislature to get things done. Beshear also has experience running against a polarizing conservative populist. Beshear won his first term against Matt Bevin, referred to by many in Kentucky as “Trump before Trump,” since he won his lone term as governor in 2015, the year before Trump’s 2016 win. But Bevin was so unpopular in Kentucky, a red state, that Beshear won, and his successes in his first term allowed him to win a second term by nearly six percentage points — a landslide for a Kentucky Democrat.

Ultimately, Harris needs to pick someone she’s truly comfortable with. If it looks like a forced political marriage, voters will sense that.

But let’s not sugarcoat things for Democrats. The last time the party scrambled a ticket this late in a campaign cycle was 1968. While that ticket got closer than many Democrats thought possible after their chaotic convention, they still lost. Building a national campaign this late is not easy, though Harris wouldn’t be starting from scratch.

At this point, Democrats simply want to be competitive. Many congressional leaders believe that merely losing a very narrow race nationally would at least give them a strong chance to win back control of the House and possibly find themselves with only a one- or two-seat deficit in the Senate.

But none of this scramble can begin until Biden bows out. Until that happens, the Democrats will remain in this campaign purgatory. Will it last another weekend, a week, or the rest of the campaign? For now, it’s up to the sitting president to decide.