United States elections 2024
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Yommie
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Yommie
Elite Member
- Oct 2, 2013
- 63,876
- 37,180
- Country of Origin
- Country of Residence
Yommie
Elite Member
- Oct 2, 2013
- 63,876
- 37,180
- Country of Origin
- Country of Residence
Many say Biden and Trump did more harm than good, but for different reasons, AP-NORC poll shows
The poll numbers also show Americans generally think that in the White House, both did more harm than good.
apnews.com
Many say Biden and Trump did more harm than good, but for different reasons, AP-NORC poll shows
Americans generally think that President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump did more harm than good on a range of key issues while holding the White House, according to a new poll from the AP NORC Center for Public Affairs research.
BY SEUNG MIN KIM AND AMELIA THOMSON-DEVEAUX
Updated 5:54 PM EDT, April 12, 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s a reason why President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are spending so much time attacking each other — people don’t think either man has much to brag about when it comes to his own record. Americans generally think that while they were in the White House, both did more harm than good on key issues.
But the two candidates have different weak spots. For Biden, it’s widespread unhappiness on two issues: the economy and immigration. Trump, meanwhile, faces an electorate where substantial shares think he harmed the country on a range of issues.
A new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that more than half of U.S. adults think Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on cost of living and immigration, while nearly half think Trump’s presidency hurt the country on voting rights and election security, relations with foreign countries, abortion laws and climate change.
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“Considering the price of gas, the price of groceries, the economy — I did very well during those four years,” Christina Elliott, 60, a Republican from Texas, said of the Trump presidency. “I didn’t have to worry about filling up my tank or losing half of my paycheck to the grocery store.”
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Elliott wasn’t too keen on Trump’s handling of abortion and said that when it comes to the former president’s rhetoric, “He just needs to learn how to be tactful and shut his mouth.”
“But other than that, like I said, I did very well during the Trump years,” she added.
The polling underscores why certain issues — such as abortion for Biden and immigration for Trump — have been persistent focal points for each of the campaigns. The former president regularly decries the number of asylum-seekers who have arrived in the U.S. under Biden, describing the situation in apocalyptic and dark terms. And Biden has gone on the offensive against Trump on abortion, especially after this week’s ruling from the Arizona Supreme Court that essentially criminalized the procedure in the state.
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When asked which president did more to help people like them, roughly one-third say Donald Trump and about one-quarter say Joe Biden. Yet 30% of adults said neither Biden nor Trump benefitted them. It’s another data point reflecting an electorate that has been largely disappointed with this year’s general election choices, generating little enthusiasm among key parts of the Biden and Trump political coalitions.
Americans rate Biden particularly negatively on a few specific issues. Only about 2 in 10 Americans think Biden’s presidency helped “a lot” or “a little” on cost of living, and 16% say that about immigration and border security. Nearly 6 in 10 say his presidency hurt a lot or a little on these issues. Nearly half, 46%, of Americans, by contrast, say that Trump’s presidency helped a lot or a little on immigration or border security. Four in 10 say it helped on cost of living.
Texas resident Trelicia Mornes, 36, said she feels the Biden presidency has hurt a lot when it comes to everyday expenses.
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“Now that he’s in the office, the cost of living has spiked out of control, and there’s nothing being done about it,” Mornes, a Democrat, said, pointing to rising costs of rent and food. She said she believes Biden can do more, “He just chooses to do other things.”
The pandemic hurt Trump in terms of employment as the economy lost 2.7 million jobs under his watch. But the pandemic lockdowns also dramatically curbed inflation as the consumer price index dipped from an annual rate of 2.3% to as low as 0.1%. At the same time, low interest rates and historic levels of deficit-funded government stimulus left many households feeling better off under Trump.
Coming out of the pandemic, Biden gave the economy a boost with additional aid that helped spur job gains of 15.2 million under his watch. But supply chain issues, Russia’s war in Ukraine and Biden’s aid package are judged by many economists as having contributed to rising inflation, hurting the Democrat’s approval ratings.
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Trump’s advantage on the cost of living and immigration is driven partially by Democrats’ lack of enthusiasm about Biden’s performance. About one-third of Democrats, for example, think Biden’s presidency hurt on cost of living, and another third think Biden neither helped nor hurt. Just one-third of Democrats think Biden’s presidency helped on cost of living. About 3 in 10 Democrats think Biden’s presidency helped on immigration and border security, a similar share think his presidency hurt, and about 4 in 10 think it made no difference.
Nadia Stepicheva, 38, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, is unhappy with how Biden has handled immigration.
“The problem is, I really don’t like illegal type of immigration,” Stepicheva said. She thinks that people who enter the U.S., even if they come in illegally, should be allowed to work so that taxpayer dollars aren’t used to care for them and house them.
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Stepicheva said she has always leaned in favor of Democrats and the party’s policies, “But the last four years, I feel like it’s getting too much in terms of money spent for immigration, forgiving all these student loans.” She said she’s torn in terms of who she will vote for this November.
But independents also rate Biden low on these issues: Nearly 6 in 10 independents say Biden’s presidency has hurt the country on cost of living. About 4 in 10 independents say Biden’s presidency has hurt the country when it comes to the cost of health care and relations with other countries.
Trump has a different problem.
The former president doesn’t have any asked-about issues where more than half of Americans think he did more to hurt things than to help, but the overall sense of harm is somewhat broader. Nearly half of Americans think his presidency did more to hurt than help on climate change, voting rights and election security, abortion laws and relations with foreign countries.
Catherine Scott, a Republican who recently moved to New York from Florida, said she found Trump’s approach to foreign policy particularly concerning.
“I understand that some people really admire Trump’s ability to be a spitfire and just say whatever is at the top of his mind,” said Scott, 30. But, pointing to Trump’s complimentary comments toward autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin, Scott said, “I don’t think he has all the foresight to understand that might not always be the thing to do.”
The best issue for both Biden and Trump overall is job creation. Trump has a small edge here: Nearly half say his presidency helped, while 36% say Biden’s presidency helped. About half of Americans also think Trump’s presidency helped on immigration and 4 in 10 think his presidency helped on cost of living.
On every other issue, the share of Americans who say that Biden or Trump helped the country a lot or a little is around 3 in 10 or less. But Republicans, overall, tend to see more of a benefit from Trump’s presidency than Democrats do from Biden’s — even on issues where Biden has worked to highlight his victories.
For example, only about half of Democrats say that Biden’s presidency has helped on climate change or the cost of health care. On abortion laws, 77% of Democrats think that Trump’s presidency was at least a little harmful, but only about 4 in 10 say that Biden’s presidency helped a lot or a little, and a similar share think Biden’s presidency hasn’t made a difference.
Meanwhile, around 8 in 10 Republicans say that Trump’s presidency helped on immigration and border security, creating jobs and cost of living.
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The poll of 1,204 adults was conducted April 4-8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.—
Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.
Yommie
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Biden Shrinks Trump’s Edge in Latest Times/Siena Poll
The president’s popularity has ticked up slightly, though voters still view Donald J. Trump more favorably and have dour views of the economy.
Yommie
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Trump Boots Anti-Abortion Extremists From His VP Shortlist
Potential running mates like Kristi Noem and Tim Scott may be out now that Trump is embracing “states’ rights” to downplay the issue.
nymag.com
APR. 12, 2024
Trump Boots Anti-Abortion Extremists From His VP Shortlist
By Ed Kilgore, political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
Once a veep front-runner, Kristi Noem’s abortion extremism could eliminate her from contention. Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images
There has been much debate about whether Democrats can succeed in making abortion policy — where they have a big public-opinion advantage — a central issue in the 2024 election. One indicator of their progress on this front is that abortion positioning appears to be having a major effect on Donald Trump’s choice of a running mate, one of the most consequential decisions he will have to make as Republican nominee.
Trump has sought to take the abortion issue off the table in the presidential contest by embracing a strict “states’ rights” position on the subject. That’s very likely to stick. After all, he easily got through a competitive Republican-nomination race without succumbing to pressure to support a national abortion ban, which multiple opponents were touting in an effort to outflank one another on the right. Now that the GOP’s abortion extremism has emerged as one of the strongest cards Joe Biden can play in order to make the election comparative rather than a simple referendum on his presidency, Trump will do everything possible to claim it’s not his issue and not his problem.
It’s not that easy, of course, for Trump and other national GOP figures to distance themselves from the atavistic efforts of their state-level allies to ban as many abortions as possible. For one thing, there’s the inconvenient fact that the ongoing assault on reproductive rights was made possible by Trump’s deliberate shaping of a U.S. Supreme Court willing to reverse Roe v. Wade (an accomplishment he continues to proudly proclaim). But the 2024 Republican nominee must also tread very carefully to avoid too much coziness with the Republicans whose extremism is helping Democrats make abortion an issue in every campaign from the presidential level to state legislative races. And that’s where the veepstakes come into play.
According to reporting from Puck’s Tara Palmeri, Trump is beginning to reassess his veep-prospect list to exclude, or at least downgrade, potential running mates closely associated with extreme state abortion bans:
Palmeri notes that this culling of the field could include Republican governors Kristi Noem of South Dakota — often considered the front-runner for the gig — Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, and Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who have helped enact total or near-total abortion bans in their states. You could add Greg Abbott of Texas to the list of excessively pro-life governors and perhaps Ron DeSantis of Florida, though he has probably never been seriously considered for VP thanks to his failed challenge to Trump in the primaries. So you have the irony that Trump going all states’ rights on abortion means taking a lot of state leaders off his veep list.
But the fear factor on abortion could go even further and taint the veepability of congressional Republicans who have either conspicuously favored highly restrictive policies or are from states with extreme abortion bans they did not oppose. That could be a double whammy for Tim Scott, who vocally favored a national abortion ban on the presidential campaign trail and whose home state, South Carolina, recently enacted a six-week abortion ban.
Which veep prospects could benefit from Trump’s preoccupation with distancing himself from abortion extremism? Palmeri thinks J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio are moving up the list. Both have taken extreme positions on abortion in the past but haven’t really stood out lately on the subject; Ohio voters recently approved a pro-choice constitutional amendment that Vance opposed but didn’t dwell on. Rubio’s Florida residence, meanwhile, is a dual problem: He may not be able to distance himself from his state’s own battle over a pro-choice ballot initiative, and, more important, he might have to give up his Senate seat and move elsewhere to run as veep given the 12th Amendment’s ban on a state giving its electoral votes to two of its own citizens.
Much like Vance, Elise Stefanik has talked up abortion restrictions but isn’t personally identified with them; her recent practice of slavishly saying and doing whatever Trump wants will probably serve her well on this particular topic. Her state of New York is also voting on a pro-choice constitutional amendment in November, but it’s so certain to pass that it won’t get the kind of national attention that ballot initiatives in Arizona, Florida, and possibly Nevada will secure.
Long-shot veep prospects Marjorie Taylor Greene and Katie Britt are from states with extreme abortion bans. At the other end of the spectrum is the even-longer-shot ex-Democrat prospect Tulsi Gabbard. She’s from the very pro-choice state of Hawaii but supported anti-abortion measures early in her career and has recently backed others as she’s evolved toward MAGA-land.
It’s entirely possible that Trump is simply using a strange new Goldilocks abortion litmus test (not too hot, not too cold) to eliminate potential running mates he has decided against for other reasons. But it also reflects his understanding that this fraught issue that is so closely associated with his own conquest of the Republican Party could be a game changer in 2024.
Yommie
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An election for the billionaires
The real decision-makers in American capitalism are the hedge fund bosses, bankers and corporate moguls whose financial backing and political influence will largely determine the outcome of the 2024 election.
www.wsws.org
An election for the billionaires
Patrick Martin
8 April 2024
Former President Donald Trump, left, and President Joe Biden on Wednesday, March 13, 2024. [AP Photo/Associated Press]
There are two presidential elections taking place in the United States in 2024. The voting by the American population, which culminates on Election Day on November 5, will receive the bulk of the media attention.
Far more decisive, however, is the second election, which is going on right now, in which a relative handful of billionaires and corporate oligarchs decides which of the candidates of the two established capitalist parties, Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican ex-President Donald Trump, will better serve their class interests.
As of March 31, the Biden campaign had more than double the cash on hand of Trump and the Republicans, $192 million compared to $93.1 million. The Biden campaign is touting the fact that its war chest is the highest total amount amassed by a Democratic candidate in US history. It includes $26 million raked in two weeks ago in Manhattan, where three Democratic presidents—Biden, Obama and Clinton—and an array of Hollywood and Broadway performers appeared before an audience with ticket prices that topped out at $500,000.
Trump’s efforts were given a boost at a record fundraiser Saturday night, held at the estate of hedge fund billionaire John Paulson in Palm Beach, a short distance from Trump’s own Mar-a-Lago compound. The price of admission ranged up to $800,000, and the 117 guests ponied up a total of $50.5 million in campaign pledges, nearly double Biden’s total at last month’s Radio City Music Hall event.
“Tonight, we raised an historic $50.5 million for the re-election of President Trump,” Paulson wrote in a statement to the media Saturday evening. “This sold-out event has raised the most in a single political fundraiser in history. This overwhelming support demonstrates the enthusiasm for President Trump and his policies.”
The enthusiasm of the assembled billionaires was no doubt fueled by Trump’s 2017 tax cut for the wealthy and by the fact that the exemption for “pass-through” corporations, worth $700 billion to private equity firms and other speculative ventures, will expire in 2025, the first year of the new presidency. Trump’s open embrace of fascist violence is seen by an increasing section of the ruling elite as necessary to crush social opposition to its policies of austerity and war.
If money is any indication, however, there is even more “enthusiasm” among the billionaires for Democrat Joe Biden, whose war against Russia is seen as critical to the global interests of the American ruling elite. Dominant sections of the capitalist class see Trump as too erratic on foreign policy and recognize that Biden’s occasional anti-corporate demagogy is purely for show, a means of deluding the population and defusing popular resistance to the war policies of American imperialism.
Unfortunately for his electoral prospects, however, Biden’s attempts to present himself as a “man of the people” have become increasingly strained. “Middle-class Joe” has been displaced by “Genocide Joe” in public consciousness, as he has become indelibly associated with the war crimes being committed by Israel in Gaza, armed and financed by the Biden administration.
Biden continues to collect multimillion-dollar amounts at closed-door meetings with wealthy supporters on virtually every campaign swing. On Monday, for example, he traveled to Wisconsin to unveil his latest political swindle, a proposed reduction in college student loan repayments, which will provide little actual benefit. Air Force One then touched down at O’Hare Airport in Chicago so Biden could attend a fundraiser that collected $2.5 million from about two dozen individuals (roughly $100,000 apiece).
The co-hosts of this affair were Michael Pratt, who runs GCM Grosvenor, a $77 billion hedge fund specializing in “alternative,” i.e., socially “progressive” investments, and Laura Ricketts, co-owner of the Chicago Cubs and daughter of the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade.
Over the weekend, Politico published a revealing account of the 2024 campaign headlined, “Big-dollar fundraisers are back,” which noted that both parties are relying on small affairs where Trump and Biden schmooze with the super-rich to raise the bulk of their campaign funds. This is particularly important for the Democrats, the website reported, citing the comments of former Obama fundraiser Ami Copeland:
The fundraising for both campaigns seems inversely related to their actual support, given that polls and media accounts generally concede that Biden and Trump are the two most unpopular political figures in America. Small-donor fundraising, which was up substantially in 2016 and 2020, driven initially by support for the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders and later by opposition to (or support for) Trump’s fascist demagogy, has slowed significantly this year.
The massive domination of money is only one aspect of an electoral process that is completely undemocratic and aimed at excluding any opposition to the capitalist two-party system. The Democratic Party, in particular, has taken the lead in waging an “all-out war” on third party and independent candidates, which will focus on challenging their efforts to meet massive signature requirements to gain a place on the ballot.
This is the state of American democracy in 2024: One of the two major parties is controlled by the perpetrator of an attempted fascist coup to overturn the 2020 election, while the other party will renominate the president responsible for an ongoing war against nuclear-armed Russia and the first genocide of the 21st century.
The Socialist Equality Party entered the 2024 elections to provide a genuine choice for the working class, Joe Kishore for president and Jerry White for vice president, running on a socialist and antiwar program.
In a statement posted on X/Twitter Monday responding to the massive domination of money over the election, Kishore wrote:
The central issue in the 2024 elections is to bring the class questions of jobs, living standards, social benefits, democratic rights and war before the widest possible audience and to win the most politically advanced sections of workers and youth to the program of revolutionary Marxism.
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