If you’ve watched much of the NFL, you’ve probably noticed that there’s been a lot of bad football this season. Even the Eagles, at 10-2, with the best record in the league, have played too many sloppy games. After a devastating loss against the 49ers and previously escaping with victories against Kansas City and Buffalo that could have easily thrown swaths of the Delaware Valley into cardiac arrest, analysts told us about the team’s resilience and ability to find ways to win. On the other hand, maybe the Chiefs and Bills found more ways to lose than the Eagles found ways to win.
Eleven months before the 2024 presidential election, both major political parties seem to be trying their best to lose.
It appears the country will endure a sequel of the 2020 election, something practically nobody wants.
Poll after poll shows voter dissatisfaction at the prospects of a Biden – Trump rematch. A November Quinnipiac poll found that a majority of registered voters (52 percent) would like to see other candidates enter the 2024 presidential race, while 42 percent say they are satisfied with the current field. Among Independents, 72 percent want additional choices.
In September, a CNN-SSRS poll asked Democrat and Democrat-leaning voters whom the Party should nominate for president in 2024. Thirty-three percent said Joe Biden, while 67 percent named a different candidate.
When asked: “Is there a specific person you’d like to see the Democratic Party nominate for president in 2024, or do you just want to see somebody other than Joe Biden,” 82 percent answered, “Just someone besides Joe Biden.”
Republicans haven’t been asked similar questions recently.
Here’s free advice for either party to win the White House in 2024: find another standard bearer.
The party that jettisons its 2020 nominee will win in 2024.
But the Democrats aren’t going to ditch Biden any more than Republicans will dump Trump.
So, what would I tell Trump or Biden if (and that’s a monumental if) they would listen?
Trump needs to stop calling Americans vermin and promising to punish his political enemies – of course. He didn’t “lock her up” after winning in 2016, and I don’t think he will start jailing political enemies after winning in 2024, but the rhetoric hands team Biden a powerful argument.
Trump also plunges headfirst into “What about January 6th?” and “Democracy is at stake” arguments when he complains that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Sorry Trump fans, 2020 wasn’t swiped any more than Russia helped steal the 2016 election from Hillary.
Running on a platform of vengeance and revenge over 2020 continues the path that Trump embarked on when he took office in 2017. He has consistently narrowed his appeal to a smaller and smaller but ever more loyal base. It cost him in 2020. It will cost him more in 2024. Trump must expand from his base. For some reason, he never gets this point.
The winning strategy is to compare his pre-Covid record against the Biden record. Even many Democrats agree they were better off under Trumponomics than Bidenomics.
Polling shows that Independents feel crime is worse under Biden and the border was more secure with Trump in office. Biden burnished his foreign policy credentials in 2020, and yet here the U.S. is dragged as a proxy into wars between Ukraine and Russia as well as Israel and Hamas.
The most potent weapon Trump can use is Ronald Reagan’s 1980 line: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
That’s the first problem Biden must address. He has many media accomplices doing their best to help him convince voters that the economy is good. No, really, quit laughing.
My favorite is New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman. Every couple of weeks, this genius writes a column filled with charts and graphs that prove, beyond a doubt, that the economy is on fire.
Maybe if you work for the New York Times, teach at the City University of New York (CUNY), have written a few books, and have a Nobel Prize on your shelf, life is good. But if you don’t recognize how much prices have increased since January 2021, especially compared to wages for the average person, then you can’t understand Biden’s low ratings.
Inflation may have slowed, but that doesn’t mean prices returned to 2020 levels or that wages have caught up. Americans still are forced to make difficult choices at the grocery store, pharmacy, and on payday.
Maybe Biden, his Democrat supporters, and media cheerleaders are unfamiliar with the phrase “the customer is always right”? They insist on telling voters (their customers) that they are wrong and just aren’t smart enough to realize how hot the economy is.
Biden is supposed to have great empathy, but clearly, he’s not getting the message sent to him in polls and, undoubtedly, focus groups. In 1992, when the economy was slumping, Bill Clinton bit his lip, looked a voter right in the eye, and said, “I feel your pain.” It’s a line Biden should have mastered at least eighteen months ago.
Americans have a great capacity for forgiveness and giving people another chance. If Joe Biden doesn’t stop telling voters how good the economy is and refuses to understand how badly most are hurting, Donald Trump will get that second chance, and Biden will lose – and it won’t be close. Because nobody ever won an election by telling voters they were wrong.
Today, both candidates are sending messages that independents are not receptive to. Neither Trump nor Biden can win with just their bases. Will either make the right moves to win, or will both hope the other guy wants to lose more? Or will one of the parties have the courage to nominate anybody else?
Andy Bloom is President of Andy Bloom Communications. He specializes in media training and political communications. He has programmed legendary stations including WIP, WPHT, WYSP/Philadelphia, KLSX, Los Angeles, and WCCO Minneapolis. He was Vice President of Programming for Emmis International, Greater Media Inc., and Coleman Research. Andy also served as communications director for Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio). He can be reached by email at andy@andybloom.com or you can follow him on Twitter @AndyBloomCom.
Andy,
Why do you think Big Media does not run with recent multiple stories of local elections being overturned due to mail-in voting issues? Do you think it is because Trump claims he lost due to mail-in voting issues – which Time magazine literally bragged about entitled, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election,” by Molly Ball?
“After four judges on the Louisiana Supreme Court recused themselves due to their relationship with Nickleson, the case was handed to retired justice E. Joseph Bleich, who ruled ‘It was proven beyond any doubt that there were at least 11 illegal votes cast and counted…It is legally impossible to know what the true vote should have been.”
Why are you writing about this stuff as if regular people have a choice? The vote is going to be flooded with mail-in ballots that won’t be counted until they need to know how many they need to win. The United States is run by corrupt politicians who are tools of oligarchs and big corporations. Most of those executives of those organizations are of what religious affiliation? Wait, I forgot, that’s an impolite question and possibly even a crime depending on what country someone is in these days. As Jordan Peterson says: we have more fat poor people than starving poor people, so I guess things are good. Trump is the wrestling heel put up by the oligarchs and corporations for people to root for (think The Rock.) Elections are all just a show now we have ubiquitous mail-in ballots without a chain of custody. Anyone who says Republicans need to embrace it are still living in the past and think they are competing with decent people and are on level ground.
Wow! And here Michael Sweeney makes the leap to bogus anti-Semitic conspiracy theories! Does anyone at all at B&N monitor these pages?? What say you, Andy Bloom?
Jenn, I never wrote a word about Semities. Semitic people or as hysterical people like to say “Semites” is an obsolete term for an ethnic, cultural or racial group associated with people of the Middle East, including Arabs, Jews, Akkadians, and Phoenicians. The terminology is now largely unused outside the grouping “Semitic languages” in linguistics unless you’re engaged in yellow journalism tactics. I asked about religious affiliation of executives, and it seems weird you did not presume I meant they were Pagans, or Christians, Hindus, or atheists (most of them despite claiming otherwise are atheists btw.)
Andy is too smart to bother to reply: 1) roll around with pigs and you get muddy and 2) he knows what I wrote referencing two separate states’ (Connecticut and Louisiana) judicial branches nullifying recent elections because of mail-in voting problems is correct. Big media will not touch the topic because then they would have to admit Trump has a point about 2020. Oligarchs and Big Corporations own the voting process (World Wrestling Entertainment / WWE) and both Biden and Trump are simply wrestlers/ clowns.
Shapiro will not sign legislation that allows counties to begin tabulating mail ballots before Election Day, a process known as pre-canvassing that is common in states with widespread mail voting, because then the Democrats cannot cheat once they realize they are about to lose. The entire process is corrupt to the core.
Also, in my county, I was able to attend observations at several points of the vote counting process, including machine prep and counting. There is definitely a chain of custody, but you have to choose to educate yourself about it.
“There is no audit whatsoever of any mail-in ballots in Delaware County,” Schwartz said. “None.”
Asked by the Daily Times, Martin said it’s incorrect that there is no audit for mail-in ballots.
Schwartz also questioned election expenses, including outside vendors and equipment, and operations, such as the need for 38 ballot drop boxes and related cameras.
“The pandemic is over, the postage is paid, and (United States Postal Services) still exists,” Schwartz said.
She asked why the county fights public records requests by taking those asking for them to court and asked about the need for leasing the Central Counting Center in Chester and why it’s not in the county seat in Media.
Broad + Liberty and other “news” outlets run away from the stories of both Connecticut and Louisiana throwing out elections results because of mail-in ballots. Because they are part of the problem. The Dom Giordano Program, Dawn Stensland, Rich Zeoli, and their employees are complicit.
“Why are they so easily triggered by citizens’ questions?” Schwartz asked of Martin and Reuther. “And why do they always seem to default to ad hominem attacks? As long as I am able, I will keep acting as a watchdog to expose tyranny and to protect the integrity, security, fairness, and legitimacy of elections, for all Delaware County voters, regardless of party affiliation.”
“There’s no place in the state election code for appeals like this,” Martin [Delco solicitor] said, adding that if a countywide candidate wanted a recount, they need to ask for one for each precinct and pay the $50 fee for each. “Instead (Schwartz)’s picking and choosing to harass the county and harass the election workers.”
I can speak only for Delaware County. If the county kept chain-of-custody logs for any election since 2020, they should produce them. People have requested them and been denied or stonewalled.
The PA Office of Open Records (OOR) has designated ONE and only ONE person as an OOR officer in Delco, Clerk Anne Coogan, who I believe does her best to fulfill Right-to-Know (RTK) requests.
However, any RTK requests involving election records are handled by the Bureau of Elections BoE). Interestingly, the BoE does not have a designated OOR officer. The person fulfilling ( or more accurately, not fulfilling) those election RTKs is Election Director Jim Allen. If the Delco BoE’s public records is not under the purview of Ms. Coogan, who is a designated OOR officer, why doesn’t the BoE have its own designated OOR officer, instead of having all requests for election records filtered through Mr. Allen? He is NOT a designated PA OOR officer, yet he controls public access to those records in Delco. BTW, many times denying access to them and at times even when access is granted on appeal. BTW, ACT 77 grants citizen access to ALL the records I have requested.
Sure, let’s play word games. You are making anti-Jewish comments all over the place and you know it. And honestly, truly, your comments have become bizarre I wish your family would perform a well check.