It was another big night for Democrats on Tuesday.
One year after a surge in turnout helped the Democrats deflate talk of a red wave in the 2022 midterms, the party once again enjoyed major success on Election Day 2023.
The Democrats appeared to get a big boost for a party coping with continued concerns over the economy and a plethora of international crises, from Europe to the Mideast to Asia.
Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear cruised to victory in his re-election bid in red-state Kentucky, while Democrats won total control of the state legislature in Virginia, expanded their legislative majorities in New Jersey, won a state Supreme Court seat in battleground Pennsylvania and passed an Ohio referendum that enshrined abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
For President Biden — who faces increasing doubts about his ability to win re-election next year after a slew of devastating polls in recent days showing him losing to former President Donald Trump in a 2024 rematch — the ballot box victories are seen as a much-needed booster shot.
TOP TAKEAWAYS FROM ELECTION NIGHT 2023 AND WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THE 2024 SHOWDOWNS
President Biden address a campaign rally on the first anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which struck down a federal right to abortion, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., on June 23, 2023. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“Across the country tonight, democracy won and MAGA lost. Voters vote. Polls don’t. Now let’s go win next year,” the president urged in a fundraising social media post and text on Tuesday night.
The president’s re-election campaign argued that “in hundreds of races since Donald Trump’s conservative Supreme Court appointments overturned Roe v. Wade, we’ve seen Americans overwhelmingly side with President Biden and Democrats’ vision for this country. That same choice will be before voters again next November, and we are confident the American people will send President Biden and Vice President Harris back to the White House to keep working for them.”
TRUMP EDGES BIDEN IN ANOTHER 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION POLL
Veteran strategist and Democratic National Committee member Maria Cardona argued that Biden came out ahead, despite not being on the ballot himself.
“I absolutely think it was a big night for Joe Biden because the president is the head of the Democratic Party,” Cardona said. “He is the one who’s pushing the Democratic agenda… which is making this contrast that is enabling Democrats to win up and down the ballot all across the country.”
Seasoned Democratic operative Joe Caizzo told Fox News that “what Tuesday night showed is voters across the country are overwhelmingly rejecting radicalism.”
But Caiazzo, a veteran of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, acknowledged: “Make no bones about it, Democrats have some work to do before next year’s elections.”
President Biden shakes supporters’ hands after addressing the crowd at the Democratic National Committee’s winter meeting in Philadelphia on Feb. 3, 2023. (Fox News – Paul Steinhauser)
Pointing to Biden’s underwater standing in the surveys, Caiazzo said that “part of the reason why the president’s poll numbers haven’t been phenomenal is because he’s governing. He’s not perpetually on the campaign trail.”
“I think the president has delivered for working families,” he said.
Caiazzo predicted that “once the campaign heats up and that argument is actually delivered to voters, it will be crystal clear that he’s followed through.”
THIS POLL FUELED FEAR AMONG SOME DEMOCRATS OVER BIDEN’S 2024 CHANCES
But Biden wasn’t a fixture on the 2023 campaign trail, and Beshear secured re-election after keeping himself at arm’s length from the president and national Democrats.
Recent polls indicate that Biden faces rising concerns from Democrats over his age and that many Americans, including plenty of Democrats, do not want the president to seek a second term in the White House. Several top Democrats have suggested that the 80-year-old president should drop out of the 2024 race and pass the baton to a new generation.
Despite Tuesday’s setbacks for the GOP, Republicans see hope for their party in 2024 with Biden as the Democratic standard-bearer.
Longtime Republican consultant David Kochel, a veteran of numerous presidential campaigns, pointed to Biden’s polling woes and argued that “the best news for Republicans” in the wake of the dismal 2023 election results “is that Joe Biden remains the standard-bearer in 2024 and that’s a bad, bad thing for Democrats.”
Seasoned Republican communicator and strategist Ryan Williams said that “midterm and off-year elections tend to be about issues more than personalities. Presidential years are about the candidates. Joe Biden has fundamental issues with his re-election campaign — mainly his age — that are completely separate from issues like abortion that motivated Democratic voters to get out and win this week.”
Williams, who served on a handful of GOP White House campaigns, noted that in 2024, Biden is “on the ballot and will win or lose based on how people feel about him more than on certain issues.”