It seems like no one is gung-ho about President Joe Biden’s re-election prospects.
Case in point: A key JPMorgan strategist has forecast that Biden might drop out of the race — and he even provided a timeline for when it would happen.
In the financial service company’s lengthy “Eye on the Market: Outlook 2024” report, Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, listed 10 “surprises” for the year.
One of them is that Biden will withdraw from the presidential race for “health reasons sometime between Super Tuesday and the November election.”
Super Tuesday — when 16 states hold their primaries — is March 5 this year, while the general election is eight months later on Nov. 5.
Cembalest suggested the party’s nomination would be passed to a “replacement candidate named by the Democratic National Committee.”
The brief entry cited Biden’s abysmal approval ratings and disappointing job creation record.
Of course, no one knows what will happen in the coming months.
Back in 2015 and 2016, most people, even many conservatives, didn’t have much faith in Donald Trump’s ability to win the White House — and then he did it.
Do you think Biden will drop out of the race?
Also, it’s worth noting that Cembalest did not outright predict that Biden will drop out of the race.
Rather, the analyst described his list of “surprises” as “an exercise in thinking against the grain about what might happen in an industry dominated by consensus.”
Still, the fact that a top strategist at a top financial services firm would make such a statement is undoubtedly intriguing.
The fact of the matter is Biden’s presidency has been an abject failure from the start.
From COVID-19 to the economy to the border crisis to foreign affairs, the 81-year-old Democrat has fumbled the ball on almost every significant issue he’s faced in his presidency.
Further, the doubts regarding his mental capacity have not gone away, as many hoped, and instead have only increased.
So even though this is just a “surprise” prediction, such an outcome isn’t really all that unlikely.
Many political commentators have been sounding the alarm on Biden’s foundering re-election campaign, and even members of his own party have soured on him, as NBC News noted in November.
“Pick a metaphor: President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign is a ‘five-alarm fire,’” the outlet said. “It’s a cardiac case in need of a ‘defibrillator.’ Or a lemming on course to ‘slowly march into the sea and drown.”
“All come from Democratic strategists whose low-boil frustrations with Biden’s candidacy erupted over the weekend amid a spate of bleak polling numbers.”
The big question is who would replace him on the November ballot.
As Reuters noted on Nov. 30, the Democrats don’t have a backup plan if the president were to withdraw from the race. Vice President Kamala Harris might be even less appealing to voters than Biden is.
“There is no Plan B,” an unidentified senior Democrat told the outlet. “If he were … suddenly not to run, everyone you know would run. The VP scares no one.”
Will Biden drop out? Only time will tell.
