America, get ready for a terrible shock: ANDREW NEIL's masterful analysis of ... trends now
The Biden White House has had few reasons to celebrate anything this year but after Tuesday's election night they did: Democrats enjoyed a clean sweep in the crucial races that mattered.
Andy Beshear, a centrist Democrat, was comfortably re-elected Governor of Kentucky, a red state, against a Donald Trump-backed Republican. Even though the contest was depicted as a dead heat Beshear won 53 percent to 47 percent.
The Democrats not only kept control of Virginia's state senate but took back the lower house from the Republicans, a slap in the face for Glenn Youngkin, elected Republican governor of this increasingly blue state in 2021. He had invested personal political capital and hard cash in the legislative races to reinforce his position as the poster boy for a post-Trump Republican Party, all to no avail. His presidential ambitions, for 2024 or 2028, have suffered a crushing blow.
Ohio followed the lead of a number of states since the Supreme Court last year overturned the federal constitutional right to an abortion (Roe v Wade) by enshrining it in its own constitution by a convincing 57 percent to 43 percent majority. And that's in a Republican state.
Abortion rights also played a seminal role in Democratic victories in Kentucky (Beshear opposed the state legislature's near total ban) and Virginia (where Democrats campaigned against Youngkin's proposed 15-week limit on abortions).
The Biden White House has had few reasons to celebrate anything this year but after Tuesday's election night they did: Democrats enjoyed a clean sweep in the crucial races that mattered. Andy Beshear, a centrist Democrat, was comfortably re-elected Governor of Kentucky, a red state, against a Donald Trump-backed Republican.
The Democrats not only kept control of Virginia's state senate but took back the lower house from the Republicans, a slap in the face for Glenn Youngkin, elected Republican governor of this increasingly blue state in 2021. His presidential ambitions, for 2024 or 2028, have suffered a crushing blow.
By Wednesday morning the word from the White House and its legions of Democratic spinners in the media was loud and clear. Forget the polls. Democrats outperform the polls in real elections (as they had in last year's November mid-terms, too). Women's reproductive rights and Trumpian extremism will dominate next year's presidential election and that's Joe Biden's winning ticket to re-election.
It is an alluring prospect for Democrats. But when the euphoria has died down and more sober analysis is brought to bear, wiser Democrats are likely to whisper something very different: just think of what we can achieve if Biden is NOT heading the Democratic ticket.
It's two months since I wrote here about the burgeoning 'Dump Biden' movement inside the Democrats. Since then it has grown in momentum and, even if Tuesday's results produce some temporary respite, I expect that momentum to continue into 2024.
Author: Andrew Neil
A recent New York Times/Siena poll was devastating for President Biden. It put Trump ahead in five of the six battleground states, with a 10-point lead in Nevada, six in Georgia, five in Arizona and Michigan and four in Pennsylvania. Biden led only in Wisconsin — and by a paltry two points.
Team Biden quickly dismissed the poll as irrelevant because the election is a year away. True enough. There is plenty of water to flow under the bridge between now and voting day on November 5, 2024. But these naysayers are the very same people who championed a year-out poll in 2019 showing Biden to be the best Democratic bet against Trump for 2020 — which turned out to be right.
The real nightmare for Biden is not in the overall voting intentions, which certainly can change. It's in the details, which are dire for the White House.
Among voters under 30, for example, Biden has the merest one percentage-point lead over Trump, which is statistically even-stevens and quite remarkable given how the young are meant to skew overwhelmingly Democrat.
Among black voters Biden still leads easily, as is to be expected. But Trump has 22 percent support, which even the New York Times points out is a 'level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.' That black support will matter in the swing states, where every vote counts.
Age, it turns out, is undermining Biden in more ways than one: 71
