Allies of President Joe Biden are encouraging members of the Democratic Party to stop criticizing the president ahead of the 2024 election, according to the Hill.
Less than a year out from the presidential election, Biden has faced pushback from members of his own party for his leadership and concerns that he may not be able to win the 2024 race. Biden allies are urging Democratic party members to stop criticizing the president and instead praise him as he faces slipping poll numbers, the Hill reported.
“He’s running for reelection, people need to understand that and so as a party, everybody should figure out how do we get him reelected. Like, that’s pretty simple. I’m in the Jim Messina, David Plouffe school of, people need to stop bedwetting and focus on how to win,” Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential run, told the Hill.
Most prominently among those publicly criticizing the president is former President Obama’s senior adviser David Axelrod who said that he believes Biden has a “50-50 shot” at winning the presidential election, adding that the president should drop out of the race.
“We gotta pipe down the moaning and groaning and all the whining. There’s too much of that,” former Democratic New York Rep. Joe Crowley told the Hill.“I think that leaches into the psyche of the voters as well. That’s got to stop and I think at that point, you’ll start to see Biden’s numbers improve, certainly amongst Democrats, but I think voter-wide they’ll start to improve.”
U.S. President Joe Biden talks to reporters after meeting with Senate Democrats in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on January 13, 2022 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The calls to step aside in the 2024 election come as Biden faces floundering poll numbers. Biden’s approval rating among Democrats declined 11 points from September to October, falling to 75 percent, the lowest it has ever been, according to a Gallup poll. The president’s overall approval rating also slipped, dropping to 37 percent, the October Gallup poll shows.
Biden is also trailing former President Donald Trump in key swing state polls that pose a hypothetical matchup between the two. In a recent Emerson College poll, Trump is beating Biden 47 percent to 43 percent, an increase from an October poll that showed the former president leading 47 percent to 45 percent. (RELATED: Democrats Hope To Rely On Media Coverage Of Trump To Turn Polls Around)
Though the polls don’t look promising for Biden, allies of the president don’t believe it’s time to panic, the Hill reported.
“You have to be concerned, but you also have to take it with the understanding that a year of politics, especially in an election, is a lifetime,” former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle told the outlet. “Things just change dramatically over that time. We don’t know what the next 12 months will entail. Is it concerning? Of course, but there’s plenty of time for circumstances to change.”