Photo courtesy of Adam Schultz via Flickr.
President Joe Biden, pictured speaking at a press conference on the State of the U.S. Economy and Jobs in Wilmington, Delaware in September 2020.
By Max RhoAds ’25
opinion Editor
We are in the third year of President Joe Biden’s term, and the 2024 presidential election is fast approaching. We have already met the candidates for each party, and the Republican candidates have debated on national television. However, it remains uncertain who will make it onto the ballot.
The Democratic Party has three candidates so far: incumbent Joe Biden, Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips. They all differ in background, with Biden and Phillips being established political figures and Williamson’s only political experience being her previous run for president in the 2020 election. Meanwhile, the Republican Party currently has five candidates, having started with many more. Former President Donald Trump, who has expressed anger over losing to Biden in the 2020 election, is running for another term.
President Biden is the best-known of the three Democratic presidential candidates. However, his approval ratings have dropped over the course of his term for various reasons. According to CNN, one of the biggest reasons is the economy, as many voters believe it worsened during his presidency. Seventy-one percent of Americans believe that current economic conditions are “poor,” and 38% of those polled characterize the situation as “very poor.”
Biden’s continued financial support of the Israeli government despite its bombardment of the Gaza Strip has also become a matter of contention, earning him the moniker “Genocide Joe” from pro-Palestinian activists, CNN reported. Support from Arab and Black voters has dropped significantly, and we may lose critical U.S. allies in the Middle East because of this. Support from voters aged 18-39 is also dropping, according to a poll from Reuters. It is unclear if the two are related, but NBC News reported that younger people are more likely to regularly use social media, where images and videos from inside Gaza are frequently shared.
As for the Republican Party, the competition is just as fierce. The hot-button topic of their party appears to be gender-affirming care, with Vivek Ramaswamy accusing his opponents of being too lenient about the issue. Ramaswamy, the youngest candidate on the Republican ticket, appears to be a loose cannon, leveraging personal attacks at his opponents, which might cause people to overlook him as a candidate. However, many Democrats said the same thing about Donald Trump in the 2016 election cycle, and many Republicans supported him because they felt that he expressed what they were all thinking. Ramaswamy is, contrary to popular belief, definitely someone to watch out for.
Project 2025 is a plan that House Republicans have drafted. According to PBS, it hinges on a Trump presidential victory and would restructure the U.S. government to serve Republican interests. It has gained traction over the last year, with candidates such as Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis endorsing it. Under Project 2025, LGBTQ+ rights are on the chopping block. With multiple states having passed legislation against drag or gender-affirming care — a broad category that can encompass anything from wearing gender-specific clothing to reassignment surgery — this is particularly sobering.
It is a very close race right now, and it is nearly impossible to predict the outcome. But from what we can tell, it is going to be a very fraught election — perhaps more so than the previous one. Biden has already proven to be an unpopular president, and should he make it onto the ballot, many registered Democrats may not wish to vote for him. The sentiment of “vote blue, no matter who” may have been effective in 2020, but we have now seen what a Biden presidency looks like, and many have become disillusioned.