… An NBC News poll out just days before his announcement shows that 51 percent of Democrats said they’d prefer Biden not run. A lot of that reflects his age, but his age was a concern in 2020, too.
There is almost zero doubt that Biden will be the 2024 Democratic nominee, barring some type of disaster, so for the sake of primaries, these numbers showing that Democrats would rather have someone else are moot.
Still, the numbers show that Democrats are not overwhelmingly excited about Biden, which could be read in two different ways for the general election. One read is that Biden wasn’t all that popular in 2020, either, but it still worked out—Democrats got behind Biden in the general—so it should work in 2024. The other read is that it shows Biden is a weak incumbent and might not have the electoral advantage that we would expect a sitting president to command. …
The advantage to Biden in both cases is that if Trump is the Republican nominee, he brings a whole host of weaknesses and problems, even more than he did in 2020. CONTINUED
Natalie Jackson, National Journal
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