Opinion: The 2024 reality check that Democrats desperately need

Opinion by Julian Zelizer, CNN

(CNN) — Democrats need a healthy dose of realism. As the election year gets underway, many Democrats are focused on talking about how the country should be, rather than how it is. They are imagining a different playing field and a different electorate, none of which is likely to come into fruition in the coming months. They risk focusing much more on what they would like, rather than what they need to do to win.

The most striking conversation has been the ongoing debate about whether President Joe Biden should run for reelection. The media has been virtually obsessed with this issue, down to coverage of whether Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, barely known anywhere in the country, has a chance to pull off an upset.

But Biden has been very clear. He is running, and he will be running with Vice President Kamala Harris by his side. Rather than imagining another ticket that won’t be, the party would be best served by turning its energy to the ticket that is.

And they shouldn’t invest too much thought in any Republican nominee other than former President Donald Trump. To be sure, there is the potential for some earth-shattering event to knock Trump out of his position as the front-runner. A conviction in one of the many federal cases that he is facing, or the US Supreme Court allowing the recent ruling from Colorado, could alter the preferences of some Republicans and moderates (though a new poll shows even a conviction might not hurt him).

But right now, not only is Trump in the lead, he’s a strong front-runner. Where things stand now, much of the country is not at all scared off by a second term for Trump. Most of the party likes Trump. The #NeverTrump critics are outliers, not the norm. His standing is so strong that it will be extraordinarily difficult for any of his challengers to knock him out in Iowa or New Hampshire, let alone in the rest of the primaries. Rather than focusing on whether former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley might emerge as the nominee, Democrats should start thinking about how they would defeat a Trump-Haley ticket.

Democrats certainly don’t like polling that keeps showing lukewarm support for the President among Black, Latino and young voters as well as overall disapproval for how he is handling much of the job. Many Democrats are quick to explain that polls don’t matter. These are a snapshot of a moment very far from the election, they say. Conditions will change, the thinking goes; opinion will evolve and everything will be different once Trump is in the forefront.

But Democrats shouldn’t make that assumption. They might have to figure out a way to win with the numbers continuing to stay where they are — or maybe getting even worse. Even as the economy improves, many voters might still feel unsettled by higher prices or the general insecurity that is part of the post-Covid economy. The economic struggles many working Americans face in good times and bad are currently a feature, not a bug, of our economy. The party will need to put together a get-out-the-vote campaign that turns people out at the polls despite the pessimism among voters. They will need to do the hard work of knocking on door after door, mobilizing registration operations and reaching out to various communities to do more explaining about what Biden has done well and what’s at stake if he loses.

Finally, the Democrats need to stop lamenting the media coverage that Biden has been receiving. They are frustrated that reporters have not devoted sufficient attention to his accomplishments or that they give too much airtime to Trump. They wish that reporters would pay more attention to the successes, the shift in investment toward green energy that has resulted from the Inflation Reduction Act or the ways that the administration has helped avert a broader regional war in the Middle East.

But the press coverage is what it is. Most presidents hate the way that the media covers their administration (though not all rail against the entire institution as corrupt, as Trump did). The objective must be to win with the media environment one has. The burden is on the campaign to find ways to generate better coverage or to reach voters through alternative means, even amid negative stories in the press.

“Politics ain’t beanbag,” as the famous saying goes. The 2024 presidential campaign is shaping up to be extraordinarily tough and unstable. Polls suggest this will be a close contest, perhaps coming down to a sliver of votes in swing states, just as occurred in 2016. It will be a grueling election, won or lost by the campaign with the best turnout and a legal strategy to overcome the different challenges each is likely to face (Trump with his indictments and Biden with potential Republican efforts to contest the results). The more that Democrats can approach the campaign with a realistic lens, the better their chances at denying victory to the candidate who promises to be a dictator on Day One.

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