We really should stop and talk about this
Donald Trump tends to get the most coverage because, well, he makes the most news. These days most of that news is negative for Trump, but he’s still making the most news. President Joe Biden chooses to make news less often, a choice that doesn’t always work out for him coverage-wise on a day to day basis, but always seems to work out quite well for him in the big picture. That’s why it’s important that we stop and take a moment to talk about Biden’s latest accomplishment – and it’s in the 2024 Democratic primary race.
This week’s news that Biden clinched the nomination feels inevitable in hindsight. But let’s keep in mind what all Biden was supposedly going to be up against. The media spent years insisting that everyone from Gavin Newsom on down would end up challenging Biden. None of that was ever going to happen, of course. But when well funded House Democrat Dean Phillips entered the Democratic primary race, we heard endless narratives about he was going to at least compete enough to “damage” Biden’s 2024 prospects. But that didn’t happen either.
Even with recognizable names in the Democratic primary race such as Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, President Biden won the primary in utterly dominant fashion. We’re talking ninety-something percent of the vote in most states. There wasn’t a single state in which Biden was seriously challenged, or even remotely challenged. He dominated like he was running unopposed.
So let’s take a moment to remind ourselves that in spite of what we keep hearing, we have a 2024 presidential candidate whose party is overwhelmingly united behind him, in almost unanimous fashion. The same can’t be said at all for the guy on the other side, who’s still struggling to get much more than about 50% of his party’s primary vote.
Joe Biden is now firmly in the driver’s seat for 2024. Of course he always was all along. Biden hasn’t stopped every day to give the media a ratings-friendly narrative, so instead the media has invented ratings-friendly narratives about how much trouble he’s supposedly in. But that “trouble” just never does seem to materialize. Winning in 2024 will require a lot of work on our part, because it always does. But Joe Biden is exactly the kind of dominant candidate we would have hoped for. Now let’s go win this.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report