https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/10/opinions/us-election-isnt-playing-out-how-i-thought-zakaria/index.html
When President Joe Biden made clear that he was going to run for reelection, I had a sense of what his election strategy was and thought it was an intelligent path to victory. After the chaos of Covid-19 and the administration of former President Donald Trump, Biden would stand for normalcy and a rising tide of good economic news. Trump would divide Republicans, with significant chunks of the party wishing that someone like former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would be their nominee. Meanwhile, Trump would unite and motivate Democrats, allowing Biden to focus on independent voters in the swing states that threw the Electoral College to Trump in 2016 and to Biden in 2020.
I have to admit, none of this is playing out as I had thought. Trump is now leading in almost all the swing states, and behind those numbers lie even more troubling details. As someone worried about the prospects of a second Trump term, I think it is best to be honest about reality. I understand that polls are not always accurate, but in general they have tended to underestimate Trump’s support, not overestimate it. I doubt that there are many shy Biden voters in the country.
Perhaps the most worrying new trend for Democrats is that far from being the more unified party, they are now bitterly divided over the war in Gaza. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has said the eruption of pro-Palestinian protests could be “Biden’s Vietnam” and even invoked the specter of President Lyndon Johnson choosing not to run for reelection in 1968 because of the public opposition to that war. The analogy is farfetched — America was itself sending hundreds of thousands of troops to Vietnam, with more being recruited from college campuses every week. But there is no denying that the party seems more openly divided than it has been in decades. Only 33% of Americans say they approved of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, which is criticized both by people who think he is too soft and people who think he is too hard on Israel.