Joe Biden is in the driver’s seat for 2024

So Joe Biden is tied in reelection polling a year out, with an improving economy, hostages being released, and a senile opponent who’s about to go on criminal trial? That’s what you call being in the driver’s seat.

If Biden were significantly behind in the polls at this point on the calendar, it would be cause for concern, and thus a story. But with Biden tied at this point on the calendar, it’s a non-story. But the media can’t have something be a non-story, or how else will it get ratings, so the media is cherry picking individual polls out of context in order to pretend that Biden is behind when he’s not.

There’s been an exhausting amount of fretting, raging, and lamenting (three complete wastes of time) on our side about Biden supposedly being behind in the polls. Even now that I’ve encouraged folks on our side to actually look at the pooling averages and see that Biden is tied in the polls and not behind, there’s still plenty of fretting, raging, and lamenting about. “How can he only be TIED?????”

Clearly these people have never been through a presidential election before. Biden’s numbers are better in 2023 than Obama’s were in 2011, and Obama won reelection. Yes, it was fairly close. But so what? When was the last time a presidential election didn’t come down to the wire? It’s just how it goes. You can waste your time sitting around fretting, raging, and lamenting about how awful it is that the next presidential election might end up being close, or you can decide you want to win and do something about it.

If you want to help Biden win in 2024, step one is to acknowledge that he’s in a good position. When you’re tied, in polling averages that appear to be skewed against you to begin with, it means you’re probably slightly ahead in reality. And because voters in the middle tend to be hard on a President in years three and four but then usually lean toward keeping that President around anyway, Biden’s incumbency also works in his favor. So stop with the doom and gloom crap and the defeatist outrage and lamenting and all that other pointlessly self indulgent nonsense. All it does is demotivate everyone around you. Stop it.

Step two is to let everyone who’s listening know that Biden is in a good position. Every time you hear someone lamenting about how he’s supposedly behind in the polls, point out to them that he’s in fact tied. Bring up the polling averages on your phone and show it to them. Once they understand that Biden is tied, and that the media is flat out lying about him being behind, they’ll understand that the “oh no Biden is doomed” thing is a false media narrative. And if they like him, they’ll get on board with helping to get him reelected.

Step three is to put in the work that’s required to win any competitive election. In spite of all the nonsense you keep hearing, the 2024 election will not be decided by something like a third party bid, or a court ruling on the 14th Amendment, or some dark money group that gets a lot of press. Those sideshow things don’t decide elections. You do. We see over and over again that competitive elections are decided by small dollar donations, helping register people to vote, phone banking, volunteering, and if you can’t do any of that, then simply retweeting Biden and the DNC and the Democratic candidates in competitive races whenever they post about their campaigns.

Step four, or maybe we should call it step zero because it really does come before everything else, is to STOP with the doom and gloom crap. Stop talking about how “terrified” you are. Stop obsessively posting scenarios about how screwed we are when Trump retakes power. Just stop all this stuff. STOP IT. When you talk like that, you are telling everyone that Biden is doomed, Trump has it locked up, and they might as well just give up and stare helplessly instead of going out and trying to win. STOP DOING THAT. When you talk like that, you are directly costing your side votes and harming your side’s chances of winning. STOP.

Joe Biden is in the driver’s seat for reelection in 2024. That doesn’t mean he’s going to win. It just means that he’s in a much better position to win than the other side is – and in a presidential election that’s all you can ever ask for. The rest is up to you. Are you going to make my enemies list by sitting around fretting about how we’re supposedly going to lose? Or are you going to make me proud of you by talking about how we’re going to win, and then putting in the work required to win, so that we can win?