One of J.P. Morgan strategist Michael Cembalest's predictions on his list of "Ten Surprises for 2024" is getting a lot of attention beyond just folks interested in the market and investing.
It's because Cembalest's third predicted "surprise" is that Joe Biden will pull out of the election between Super Tuesday and November, for health reasons.
— Dr. Nickarama (@nickaramaOG) January 7, 2024
Super Tuesday is the day that you have a lot of the states holding primaries and caucuses. This year, that's March 5.
Cembalest says that after Biden steps down due to health, the Democratic National Committee will name a replacement to whom to pass the torch.
Biden has a low approval rating for a President with ~10% job creation since his inauguration, although that figure is the by-product of his inauguration coinciding with the rollout of COVID vaccines and a reopening US economy.
If you look at the chart above you can see how low Biden is, the lowest approval of anyone occupying the office at this point since inauguration, 1051 days. Cembalest notes the "job creation" number, but that it really isn't attributable to Biden because it's the people returning to work with the reopening of the economy after COVID. So people know that it isn't due to anything Biden has done. Meanwhile, they know that the things he has done have hurt the economy, like spending leading to more inflation. That's why he gets such low marks for the economy because people don't think he knows what the heck he is doing and because Bidenflation has been crushing them. They know how much more they've had to pay out of their pockets under Biden as opposed to under Trump.
There are reasons to think that's not out in left field, particularly as the reality of how bad Joe's condition has become more and more apparent over the last couple of months.
People are already nervous as Biden continues to wallow in the approval-level basement. We've seen folks like David Axelrod and James Carville say maybe he should get out for the good of the party. I wrote earlier about how Barack Obama is getting nervous about Joe's chances. He's reportedly concerned about the strength of former President Donald Trump and he doesn't think Biden's campaign has their act fully together yet.
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So who would that leave us with? While he predicts how the person will be selected, he doesn't predict who that will be. I suppose the presumed person would be Kamala Harris for a host of reasons. But California Gov. Gavin Newsom has certainly been posturing. Not only would Joe have to go for that, but Kamala as well. If anyone is as unpopular as Biden, it probably would be Kamala. So the DNC may figure that Newsom is their better bet to win. He's a horrible choice -- but they don't have any good choices.
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