Polls show Republicans have slight edge in midterms: Former AOC communications director
Corbin Trent and Jehmu Greene give their take on some progressives seeking a Biden challenger for 2024 on 'The Story.'
A former top aide to New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that President Biden has continued to fail at connecting with the American people and could face a Democratic primary challenger in 2024.
No Excuses PAC founder Corbin Trent told Fox News on Friday that he and others believe the economy and general state of the country are more positive than it appears and that part of the problem is communication on the part of the 79-year-old president in the White House.
"One thing – polling – is behind that. We’re seeing with my version of the midterm outcome is not just my version. We’re seeing that the polls show the Republicans have a slight edge. That may be getting worse," he said. "We see Biden’s approval ratings going down and moving in the wrong direction."
"What we’re seeing right now is a Democratic Party that has done a lot for the American people and has largely been unable to articulate what it's doing and what it’s done. That is a real challenge."
CANDIDATE ROSS PEROT'S LAST ELECTORAL MEETING (Photo by Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Sygma via Getty Images)
Part of that problem, Trent said, is Biden continues to fail at making a cogent case for almost any of his policy proposals, even those implemented into law. Biden's issues, he told Politico, stem from being "being deeply unpopular, he's old as s--t… ineffective -- unless we’re counting judges or whatever the hell inside baseball scorecard we’re using."
Because of all this, Trent told Fox News, Democrats could indeed see Biden face a primary challenger – a rarity for an incumbent going back to when Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., filed to run against President Carter in the 1980 race.
Host Martha MacCallum read from a list of the top potential primary challengers for Biden in 2024 that included Trent's former boss, as well as ex-New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and Vice President Kamala Harris.
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper updates the public during a press briefing on the coronavirus pandemic at the Emergency Operations Center, Thursday, May 14, 2020, in Raleigh, N.C. (Robert Willett/The News & Observer via AP)
"If anybody sort of traditional were to pop up, then it's going to be a wide variety of people," Trent told "The Story." "You have a guy that is pushing 80, right? There wasn’t even certainty that he would run for a second term when he first ran."
"So if we see a midterm outcome where Democrats lose the House and God forbid the Senate, too, I think all bets are off, and we’ll see the Democratic Party trying to go in a different direction and sort of truncate its losses."
The former Ocasio-Cortez staffer said he could indeed see a repeat of a 1992-style three-way race when billionaire businessman Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate and arguably played spoiler to incumbent President George H.W. Bush, helping Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton win the White House.
"I don’t know what will happen, but we’re not connecting," Trent said. "Right now the American people are divided in how they feel about the economy, divided about how we’re handling the COVID pandemic. … We have to do a better job uniting the country. For whatever reason, President Biden has not been able to do that to this point."
"One of the problems is we’ve tried to align ourselves close with a Republican Party that has very little vision, very little agenda. 13 Republicans out of 212 voted for this bipartisan infrastructure package," he added. "Roads, bridges, internet, If you can’t get behind it – what can you get behind?"
Still, some Democrats believe the possibility of Biden facing a primary challenger is far-fetched.
"There will not be a serious challenger to President Biden for the Democratic nomination - point-blank, period," Jehmu Greene, former candidate for DNC chair, told "The Story." "Anyone who says or speculates anything different, is, as we like to say here in Texas, is ‘all hat, no cattle.’"