Free Republic

Two weeks after becoming the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris’s surge in enthusiasm and support has considerably narrowed the 2024 election. Last week in these pages, we wrote that while there was limited data available, Harris was clearly an improvement over President Biden. Now, new national and state-level polling suggests that assessment might be even more prescient, and points to an election that will be much closer than many had expected. Indeed, national polling underscores just how much the race has tightened. According to the 10 most recent public polls conducted after Biden’s withdrawal and aggregated by...

It remains to be seen whether or not President Biden remains the Democrats’ nominee for president, amid growing calls to replace him atop the ticket. But at this moment, the race is frozen in place. Indeed, Donald Trump’s lead in national polling — now sitting at 3 points (47 percent to 44 percent) per the RealClearPolitics polling average — has remained remarkably consistent for months. This is true even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance and the discontent it engendered among Democrats. Since last November, the race has been stubbornly rangebound, with Trump’s lead over Biden consistently within a 1 to...

The Republican Party’s midterm prospects have markedly improved over the last several weeks. But will 2022 be a red wave election year on par with GOP victories in 1994 and 2010? The warning signs are clearly flashing for the Democratic Party. Recent polling finds that support for Republicans — both generically and in individual races — has increased substantially amid heightened national concerns about the economy and crime, two issues that the GOP leads on. Meanwhile, protecting abortion rights, the crux of the Democratic agenda has become a much less salient issue.

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion. He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside...