How Biden Is Shaping the 2024 Battlefield

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President Joe Biden is following a strategy of asymmetrical warfare as the 2024 presidential race takes shape. Through the early maneuvering, the leading Republican candidates, particularly former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are trying to ignite a procession of culture-war firefights against what DeSantis calls “the woke mind virus.”

With the exception of abortion rights, Biden, by contrast, is working to downplay or defuse almost all cultural issues. Instead Biden is targeting his communication with the public almost exclusively on delivering tangible economic benefits to working-class families, such as lower costs for insulin, the protection of Social Security and Medicare, and the creation of more manufacturing jobs.

While the leading Republican presidential contenders are effectively asking voters “Who shares your values?” or, in the harshest versions, “Who shares your resentments?,” Biden wants voters to ask “Who is on your side?” CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

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At Year Three, Americans Split on Whether Pandemic Is Over

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Three years after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and much of the U.S. went into lockdown, Americans are evenly divided about whether the coronavirus pandemic is over in the U.S. Forty-nine percent say it is, while 51% say it is not. …

Fifty-two percent of Americans currently report that they have ever tested positive for COVID-19, and another 13% say they have not tested positive but believe they have had it. Self-reported infection is up significantly from last fall, when 44% said they had ever tested positive. CONTINUED

Lydia Saad, Gallup

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The Republican Presidential Primary: Still Early, but Maybe Getting Late

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Key Points
• The calendar year before the presidential primary voting begins is often defined by winnowing, as contenders emerge and then fade.
• But Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are taking up so much oxygen that we may already have the top contenders, with everyone else who runs essentially an afterthought.
• DeSantis is polling well for a non-candidate, but we need to see how he actually performs before assuming that his support is solid.
• If another candidate supplants DeSantis (or Trump), or at least vaults into their stratosphere, don’t necessarily assume it will be someone who is currently well-known now or has a lot of formal political experience. CONTINUED

Kyle Kondik & J. Miles Coleman, Sabato’s Crystal Ball

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National Swing Women Voters Executive Summary

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Funded by Horizon Strategies and directed entirely by the two companies, we took an in-depth look at two small, but consequential groups in the electorate: Republican women who did not vote straight party in 2022 and Independent women who voted for candidates of both parties. CONTINUED

Nicole McCleskey (Public Opinion Strategies) & Jessica Pacheco (Horizon Strategies)

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Examining how U.S. politics became intertwined with personal identity

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America’s divisions often go beyond disputes over policy, regularly spilling into clashes over identity and culture and pitting friends and family against one another. Judy Woodruff explores how that came to be and what it means for our shared future in her latest installment of “America at a Crossroads.”

PBS NewsHour

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Republicans are leaving votes on the table

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The Beltway hosted a dueling set of Republican conferences this past weekend, which perfectly highlighted the party’s struggles: the Conservative Political Action Conference, taken over by former President Trump; versus Principles First, put on by center-right and never-Trump organizations.

Trump triumphantly declared his takeover of the party complete, saying things like “We will never go back to the party of Paul Ryan, Karl Rove, and Jeb Bush.” Reports say Principles First featured a defeated tone, with attendees wondering if the party will even survive.

And yet, among all registered Republicans, it is far from clear that Trump has irreversibly taken over. My estimates, along with surveys asking whether voters are more loyal to Trump or the Republican Party, show that roughly 30 percent of the potential Republican electorate falls into the Trumpian non-cons camp, who are more concerned with power and control than policy. They seek to win votes by stoking anger and using bigger government to protect existing power structures. That leaves two-thirds of Republicans as possibly moveable. CONTINUED

Natalie Jackson, National Journal

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