For the past three years my reading of the Biden presidency has been surprisingly good – but I am starting to wonder now whether Joe Biden may turn out to be a 21st century version of Jimmy Carter, both Democrats. By that I mean Biden might appear to be doing well for the first two years of his presidency but lose after four years to a Republican candidate. Carter performed well at the 1978 midterms, albeit not as spectacularly well as Biden.
Let me remind readers of my opinions in three articles over three years. The first was on 21 April 2020 with the title “Biden will defeat Trump”. The title told readers of my prediction. The second article was on 2 August 2021 in “Biden’s presidency going well” in which I asserted that Donald Trump “was the fifth worst president of the 44 past US presidents.” Another assertion was that such an historical opinion “would only be revised in the (extremely unlikely) event that Trump were elected to a second term in 2024. I can assure readers that won’t happen.”
My third article was “Biden’s presidency still going well” posted on 28 September 2022 in which I predicted that the new Senate would have 51 Democrats and 49 Republicans and that the new House of Representatives would have 233 Republicans and 202 Democrats. My further comment was: “To lose only 20 seats would be seen as a good result for Biden. Of the 20 midterm elections for the US House of Representatives in my lifetime, only two have seen a strengthening of the position of the party in the White House. The average loss by the party in control of the presidency has been 23 seats.”
I can now record that the Senate numbers will be exactly as I predicted and that I correctly predicted the names of all 35 winners. When the House of Representatives first meets on 3 January next year there will be 222 Republicans and 213 Democrats, an exact reversal of the 2020-21 numbers. The Republicans made a net gain of nine seats. I was not quite optimistic enough for Biden, but I did correctly read the extent to which Trump helped Biden. The reality is that the success of Biden’s presidency to date has been significantly due to speculation about the return of Trump.
President Biden will be the Democratic party’s nominee for president in November 2024. Of that I have little doubt. I am also in little doubt that the Republican candidate will be the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. Whereas Biden was born in 1942 DeSantis was born in 1978. In November 2024 Biden will be 82 and DeSantis 46. As a betting man I would put my money on DeSantis.
Where Trump helped Biden the most was in his high-profile endorsement of freakish candidates in primaries leading Republican voters to split their tickets – against Trump’s candidates and in favour of regular candidates. Let me give some examples as to why my 233 to 202 forecast (which was the conventional view at the time) turned out to be 222 to 213.
More than one in five voters for New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu refused to support Trump-backed Republicans in the state’s two congressional districts. Mr. Sununu won by more than 15 points while the Republican House candidates lost by eight and 12. The Democratic incumbents, Christopher Pappas and Ann Kuster expected to lose - but won instead. They are not the only Democrats thanking Trump.
In North Carolina’s First District (northeastern NC) Trump endorsed Sandy Smith. She lost, in large part because she was accused by two previous husbands of domestic abuse. In a major county in the district one in every eight voters split their ticket, voting Democratic for House and Republican for Senate. The same happened in the 13th District (North-Central NC) which rejected a young Trump-endorsed candidate for the House but voted for the Republican in the Senate contest.
The list goes on, but I estimate that the Republican party threw away ten House seats by standing nominees voters thought to be too extreme, too unqualified or too close to Trump. This man is a mountebank and a disaster for his party, and it is surely inconceivable that he would win the primaries against DeSantis. Voters are not mad.
That Trump will not be his opponent is bad news for Biden. But he should enjoy his enhanced Senate position while he can. The easy win by Georgia Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock (so predictable even I predicted it) was the icing on the cake for Biden but it means he no longer needs to rely so heavily on unreliable Democrats like Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
The defeated Republican candidate in Georgia, Herschel Walker, was very much a Trump-backed candidate and typical of the kind of candidates Trump chose. He was a famous black football star with the hide of an elephant and the hypocrisy of a pharisee. Indeed, Trump gave the Senate to Biden by endorsing bad candidates in the two states that mattered the most, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Let Biden enjoy his next two years in the White House but if I were his adviser, I would advise him to retire at the top of his game. Instead of which I expect him to be like Trump, namely decide to be a loser. I hope I am wrong. At least he will not dispute the result.