WASHINGTON — Carolyn Valone would not vote for president in November.
The 84-year-old Democrat from St. Louis said she ‘just can’t forgive’ Joe Biden for Gaza” and his continued support for the Israeli counteroffensive against Hamas.
Matteo Saracco and Cooper Brock, two 25-year-old transportation planners in Atlanta, planned to vote for Biden over the Republicans. Donald TrumpBut neither was enthusiastic about the idea of a rematch of the 2020 election between two men who were together 150 years old.
“I was actually hoping that something would change,” Saracco said of watching Biden, now 81, grow older in his three-plus years as president.
And then it happened.
“It’s a new choice now,” Valone said, explaining her willingness to support the vice president Kamala Harrisnow the likely Democratic candidatea chance after Biden ended his re-election bid.
Valone, Saracco and Brock reflect what the 2024 Presidential Campaign: The broad group of voters who were disappointed or dissatisfied with the choice between the same two men who fought a bitter national battle four years ago.
Now these voters, especially those who are left-leaning, are once again showing interest in the campaign and are eager to see Harris take over the Democratic Party role instead of Biden.
“I don’t know enough about her yet, but I’m looking forward to learning more,” Brock said. “And it’s certainly exciting to think that a woman and a woman of color are in a position to win.
Harris’ campaign is trying to reap the rewards by capitalizing on a shock of fundraising, volunteer interest and media attention after Democrats spent the three weeks following Biden’s debate debacle wondering whether the octogenarian president step off or to continue his campaign even as his support within the party waned.
For months, Biden’s campaign had made an all-in bet that voters frustrated or in denial about their options this fall would choose his candidacy because of a shared fear of Trump. It was a risky proposition, as evidenced by the speed with which Biden’s candidacy collapsed after the June 27 debate.
With Harris at the helm, the same team that had prepared for a campaign of attrition is going on the offensive, seeing a “larger universe of winnable voters,” as campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillion wrote in a recent memo.
While Biden and Trump were widely known and disliked, voters know less about the vice president.
The campaign and its Democratic allies plan to reintroduce Harris to the American people ahead of the Democratic National Convention next month and want to get voters excited about their new choice.
The fresh start for Democrats doesn’t eliminate the presence of “double haters” — those voters with negative impressions of both candidates. But it resets the race and gives Harris an opening to introduce herself to a wider range of voters, particularly those who still harbor strong reservations about Trump.
Among disaffected voters, there are a variety of emotions and opinions: true double-haters may have had genuinely negative opinions about both candidates, while others may have had a clear ideological preference for one candidate or the other, but still had one stumbling block.
For Saracco, Biden’s age was a concern, but his performance during the debates confirmed that.
“President Biden has done an admirable job. I am pleased with his administration,” he said. “But the debate was the breaking point.”
Americans’ discontent over the possibility of a Biden-Trump rematch has been evident for some time. Just a year into Biden’s presidency, An Associated Press-NORC poll found that 7 in 10 Americans, including about half of Democrats, did not want him to run for re-election. the same poll, conducted in January 2022It also emerged that about 7 in 10 Americans did not want Trump to run for president again.
By then, widespread dissatisfaction with Biden’s performance as president had taken hold. Only about 4 in 10 Americans approved of the way he was handling his job as president, according to the January 2022 poll, a drop of nearly 20 percentage points from the year before.
Biden’s honeymoon glow hadn’t completely faded — about half of Americans had a favorable opinion of him — but his popularity continued to decline in the months that followed.
By the end of 2023, when it became clear that a rematch between Biden and Trump was a real possibility, more than half of Americans said they would be somewhat or very dissatisfied if either Biden or Trump were nominated.
But Trump retained the enthusiasm of many Republicans as the primaries drew to a close, while Biden lost ground with his own party’s base. AP-NORC Poll from July A survey conducted just before Biden withdrew from the race found that about 6 in 10 Republicans were satisfied with Trump as the nominee, while only 4 in 10 Democrats said the same about Biden. Nearly two-thirds of Democrats That poll said Biden should withdraw.
Even left-leaning voters interviewed by AP expressed broader frustrations with a two-party system on the verge of a rematch.
“The United States has a billion people, and the candidates are a former president and another president that age?” Valone asked in disbelief. “I know why the Republicans nominated Trump, because they just handed their party over to him. But how could the Democrats not have seen this coming, not have seen that this was going to be an election that people just couldn’t get excited about.”
It’s unclear whether the new dynamic is permanent, but recent polls suggest that the events of the past two weeks have at least temporarily dampened the momentum of the Biden-Trump rematch. Polls from CNN and from the New York Times and Siena College show that at least slightly fewer voters now have an unfavorable opinion of either candidate.
That’s largely because both polls show fewer people have a negative opinion of Harris than of Biden. However, both polls also show a slight increase in the percentage of voters who say they have a positive opinion of Trump.
Republicans believe they can blunt any shift in public opinion with a barrage of advertising that paints Harris as an extension of Biden’s record, particularly on consumer prices and immigration, while also damaging her personal brand. Harris and her allies have an opportunity for a counteroffensive.
“This race is now more fluid — the vice president is well-known, but less well-known than either Trump or President Biden, especially among Democratic-leaning voters,” O’Malley Dillon wrote.
Republican pollster Neil Newhouse, a lead consultant for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said “double haters will still play a role in November.” But, he added, “there’s no question that voters know President Trump much better than they know Vice President Harris,” meaning unfavorable opinions of her may not be as hardened.
GOP pollster Whit Ayres said true independent “double haters” could still go either way depending on the campaign’s messages.
“If Trump goes down, DEI road “If he focuses on her far-left positions on the San Francisco issue, he’ll push them back into the category of the double-haters,” Ayres said, referring to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. “If he focuses on her far-left positions on the San Francisco issue, he’ll push them back into the category of the double-haters.”
Kathryn Kabat, a 69-year-old North Carolina voter who described herself as an independent with a Democratic leaning, has already made her choice. The retired Air Force captain said she planned to vote for Biden and has largely stuck to that plan, even after his debate performance.
“I was sad for him and I was afraid that he would lose and that we would have another term of Trump that we simply cannot afford,” she said.
Now she is not only an ardent Harris voter, but also a volunteer.
“I send postcards from home, and I do what I can,” she said. “So maybe I can add a few voices.”
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Barrow reported from Atlanta.
