Fresh — or not so fresh — from his awkward and stilted State of the Union address, President Biden took his show on the road to Florida to stump against what he claims are Republican plans to cut (“sunset” in Beltway-speak) Social Security and Medicare. Apparently unaware that Florida is now an irretrievably red state, on Thursday the president spoke at the University of Tampa in what was widely received as a kickstart to his expected 2024 reelection campaign.
Despite platitudes about bipartisanship, Biden targeted Florida Senator Rick Scott, a Republican who has floated a plan to review federal programs once every five years for reauthorization (though the plan does not specifically mention either Social Security or Medicare). Scott quickly replied on Twitter that Biden’s rhetoric is a “lie” and “a dishonest move… from a very confused president.” Scott will also soon air a television ad that refutes Biden, upbraids him for alleged tax evasion, and calls for his resignation.
The Republicans have no known plans to cut either Social Security or Medicare, but that is beside the point. Terrorizing an increasingly precarious middle class with tall tales of danger to grandma’s entitlement payments saved the Democrats from oblivion at the hands of mobilized Republican majorities in the 1990s, and it may be their only hope now. Biden himself gestured in his Florida speech at the unreality of such posturing, calling his depiction of Republican intentions “a dream” and promising to be that dream’s “nightmare.” Given a Democratic Senate and his own veto power, the straw man he is standing up to does not exactly boast the prowess of Corn Pop.
Despite his advantages over the slim Republican House majority and lackluster Republican performance in last November’s midterm elections, Biden’s numbers are terrible. On good days, his approval rating hovers just above 40 percent, a historic line of death for presidents seeking reelection. On economic issues, which are shaping up to be decisive in 2024, he is running significantly lower, at just 31 percent. Only 16 percent of Americans feel they are better off now than they were two years ago. With inflation reaching nearly 15 percent since Biden took office, along with high interest rates and fears of a deepening recession, the administration’s boasts about a booming economy sound fanciful to say the least.
A stark 7 percent of voters say they would be “enthusiastic” to see Biden win another term in 2024, while 62 percent would feel either “dissatisfied” or “angry.” Nearly 60 percent of Democrats would prefer another candidate for their party. Vice President Kamala Harris’s numbers are even worse. Biden’s longtime chief of staff Ron Klain, widely regarded as the real brains behind the administration, unexpectedly resigned in late January, leaving his post the day of the State of the Union. A bevy of recent polling shows Biden losing in a rematch against Trump, the only declared Republican candidate so far.
Even as his cognition continues to decline, Biden exists in a DC-centered echo chamber that tells him he is a great president and his opponents are fascist threats to Our Democracy™. By choosing Florida to castigate Republicans, he seems to be buying into his own 1990s-vintage propaganda, throwing in a few “tax the rich” digs for good measure. “Right now, there a thousand trillionaires in America,” he declaimed, before correcting to billionaires.
Nevertheless, hopeful Democrat strategists hailed the visit as a bold challenge to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the only serious Republican alternative to Trump in 2024. Just across Tampa Bay in Sarasota, DeSantis recently appointed a conservative majority to the board of trustees at the New College of Florida. DeSantis’s policies are popular, both statewide and nationally, and contributed to his 19-point reelection victory, while Republicans hold all state-level Florida offices, both of its Senate seats, 20 of its 28 congressional seats, and supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature.
The idea that Florida could be in play in 2024 is risible. And so did Biden fall into his own rhetorical trap yet again, praising DeSantis’s thoroughly trounced Democratic challenger Charlie Crist, saying to open laughter, “Charlie, I don’t think you’re finished.” But he is finished, and so, probably, is Joe Biden.
Paul du Quenoy is President of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute
