Heading into tonight’s State of the Union address, Joe Biden is in a historically unique position. A year from the first presidential primaries, his own party’s voters, by large margins, do not want him on their presidential ticket. Yet no obvious primary challenger appears on the horizon, and the entire apparatus of the Democratic Party is being bent against the emergence of one.
The evidence from public polling is unambiguous. Poll after poll after poll after poll shows that solid majorities of Democrats do not want Biden to run again and would choose another candidate if offered one. Biden’s national approval ratings remain poor, and his approval among Democrats is soft, although he has one saving grace that helped him in 2022: While nearly everyone who disapproved of Donald Trump over the years has told pollsters that they “strongly disapprove,” the bulk of those who disapprove of Biden disapprove “somewhat,” a finding repeated across many public polls.
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