Newsmax’s Greta Van Susteren held a discussion alongside Tom Bevan focused on the potential impact of third, fourth, and fifth-party candidates on the 2024 election.
There is strong speculation surrounding Senator Joe Manchin potentially running as a spoiler candidate.
The conversation delved into President Biden’s campaign strategy, which aims to frame the election as an existential threat to the country, with a focus on portraying President Trump as a danger to democracy. (Trending: Bombshell J6 Footage Raises Questions About Pelosi’s Team)
BIDEN (whose party is attempting to remove President Trump from the ballot):
"We must be clear: democracy is on the ballot!" pic.twitter.com/XbwmNugAYh
— AnalyzingAmerica (@AnalyzAmerica) January 11, 2024
Concerns were raised about the effectiveness of Biden’s strategy given the public’s current concerns about the economy and inflation, and the potential lack of new policies to improve people’s lives.
Democrats were noted to be worried about this high-risk, backward-looking campaign strategy, given Biden’s low approval ratings.
“Could Sen. Joe Manchin be the 2024 election spoiler, and if so, who would he spoil it for? Trump or Biden?” Greta Van Susteren pressed.
“It seems like Senator Manchin is such a tease. He keeps going out there and doing these interviews saying that you know he doesn’t like Biden and he doesn’t like Trump and maybe he’s going to do this, maybe it’s not. So, if he does run on “No Labels” or some other party, who does he spoil it for?”
“It’s hard to say. Right now, the data shows that in a three-way race, with RFK being the third candidate in the race, that it actually makes it closer between Biden and Trump. It’s already pretty close. But when the field expands to more candidates, which includes Cornel West and potentially Joe Manchin and others, that actually helps Trump,” Bevan said.
“‘No Labels’ have said they’re not going to do this if their data and their polling shows that that that this would help Donald Trump, so we’ll have to see how this plays out, but he certainly does know how to stay in the conversation, doesn’t he Greta?”
“He certainly does. All right. If you were to step back and look at President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign strategy, what is it?” Susteren asked.
“It is to frame this election as an existential threat to the country. That Donald Trump, they’re assuming he’s going to be the nominee. I think they’ve actually said they want him to be the nominee, because they think they can beat him again. They want to frame this, as they’ve already done multiple times, including just recently with Biden’s address at Valley Forge that this is a threat to democracy, that if Trump wins, democracy is over. So they’re going to cast this election in pretty dire, sort of apocalyptic terms. They’re gonna use abortion as they did before. And they’ll make the campaign all about that,” Bevan said.
“It worked for the Democrats pretty effectively in 2022 when Biden wasn’t on the ticket, and the question is whether it work again when he is on the ticket, and can he get around talking about the issues that the public cares about most, which is the economy, inflation. That is a campaign that they don’t want to have because right now, the public is kind of sour on the way the administration has been handling those issues.”
“I guess the thing is, that is I think of that when you go to vote, people say what you’re gonna do for me? And so if they say well, I’m not gonna do anything for you, but I’m gonna protect you from this extension threat of President Trump. But the problem of that is that the American people, whether you like Trump or not, is that they had four years of him. And you know the country. You know, we still have a country. You know, it’s sort of mean. You know, they’re they’re pinning this as this existential threat, but it’s not like he’s a new commodity. He’s you know, everybody knows what he is, or isn’t,” Susteren said.
“Right, and that’s why I think a lot of Democrats are very [worried]. It’s sort of a high-risk strategy. It is a big gamble because they’re not offering the public any new policies to make their lives better, it’s not a forward-looking campaign. It is sort of a dark, backward-looking campaign. I think that’s why a lot of Democrats are pretty worried about it,” Bevan said.
“We had an ABC News poll come out just a couple of days ago, and Biden’s approval rating was at 33%, the lowest on record for that poll, 28% among independents. So right now, the administration and Biden are in pretty tough shape from an election standpoint.”
