By now we know the White House’s upbeat narrative about how the 2024 campaign unfolds. Republicans pick Donald Trump as their presidential nominee. Voters who’ve been paying little attention come to understand the election is a binary choice between a reliable if unexciting Joe Biden and a watchable if erratic Trump, who may or may not impose a dictatorship for one day, depending on whether he was joking or meant what he said.
Recognizing the stakes, and appreciative of strong economic growth on Biden’s watch, Americans dutifully put aside any misgivings about the president’s age and give him another four years in office.
What could go wrong? Plenty. What follows are five unpredictable twists that could upend the race and derail Democrats’ hopes of keeping the White House.
What if Biden drops out?
It can’t happen, can it?
There’s no way the president would go home to Delaware and voluntarily give up an office he pined for his entire political career.
That’s the conventional thinking in Washington, anyway.
But what if Biden takes a hard look at his poll numbers and concludes he’d rather bail than risk losing to Trump, the GOP front-runner? Or if he is feeling every bit his age (81) and no longer wants all the travel and stress that come with the job? Or if he decides the negative attention heaped on his one surviving son, Hunter, would subside if he just took himself off the ballot and retired from politics?
None of that is expected; neither is it out of the realm of possibility.
President Joe Biden at an event in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the White House complex on Oct. 23.Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images file
Over the last 50 years, Democrats have grown accustomed to a comparatively orderly and transparent process that empowered voters, not party bosses, to choose the presidential nominee.
Biden’s withdrawal from the race would disrupt all that, setting off a frenzied scramble for the nomination unlike anything that most Americans have seen in their lifetimes.
By early January, more than half of the filing deadlines to compete in party primaries and caucuses will have passed. So, depending on when the president were to exit the race, candidates would be jockeying to win over Biden delegates who suddenly found themselves without a candidate.
The competition to succeed him would likely convulse the party ahead of the general election. Vice President Kamala Harris would surely make the case that she is the heir apparent. As the first Black woman to serve as VP, Harris has a natural political base made up of the party’s most loyal voters.
A white male candidate who came along and challenged Harris would endure a fierce backlash from party activists who would want to see her break the ultimate glass ceiling. But ambition and the cold realities of national politics would combine to deny Harris a clear field.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been acting like a politician who can’t run for president soon enough. In late November, he debated Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is vying for the GOP nomination. Newsom could have been setting himself up to run in 2028, or he could have been trying to raise his national profile should the unexpected happen and Biden pull out.
Compared to Biden, who has been vetted over the span of a half-century in politics, Newsom and other potential Democratic hopefuls are relative unknowns whose nomination would be a gamble for a party desperate to win. Which is why so few Democratic strategists and operatives expect Biden to drop out. Can it happen? Yes. Should it? Their answer is a flat no.
OK, but what if Biden stays in?
July 26 must have been an uncomfortable day at Biden campaign headquarters.
On that fateful afternoon, 81-year-old Mitch McConnell was holding a news conference when the Senate Republican leader abruptly went quiet, staring vacantly at the cameras before he was led away from the scrum.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is helped by fellow senators after a health incident at the Capitol on July 26.J. Scott Applewhite / AP file
What if something similar were to happen to Biden? A brain freeze of some sort, a bad fall on the steps of Air Force One, a speech that devolves into gibberish — any fresh sign of frailty would reinforce Americans’ impression that Biden is too old for the job. Biden’s doctor proclaimed him “fit for duty” in February, but voters have their own ideas of how a president should look, act and sound — and Biden isn’t measuring up on that score.
The White House has organized itself in ways that minimize the chances of a Biden stumble — physical or otherwise. It’s no coincidence that Biden is forsaking the long staircase on Air Force One for the shorter one that unfolds from the belly of the plane.
But accidents happen.
Biden thinks “he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama, told The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd last month.
An Elon Musk super-duper PAC?
Elon Musk’s mom is mad — and that could be a problem for Biden.
Maye Musk took to her son’s social media platform on Dec. 13 to write that Elon Musk’s goal “is to make this world a better place.” But, she wrote, “@POTUS wants to stop him. Have you any idea how furious I am? People in other countries are proud of Elon and do not understand the US President’s motive.”
Elon Musk at the opening plenary at the AI safety summit in Buckinghamshire, England, on Nov. 1.Leon Neal / Press Association via AP
Her post was in response to Brendan Carr, a Republican commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission, who insinuated that Biden wants to mobilize the federal bureaucracy against Musk, citing the FCC’s decision on Dec. 12 that affirmed a 2022 ruling denying Musk’s SpaceX satellite company nearly $900 million in rural broadband subsidies.
The bad blood between Musk and Biden appears to date to a White House electric vehicle event early in the administration that excluded Musk’s Tesla. (The reason may have something to do with a pro-union White House not wanting to spotlight nonunion Tesla.)
“Biden has pointedly ignored Tesla at every turn and falsely stated to the public that GM leads the electric car industry,” Musk told CNBC in February 2022.
If the Musk family were to channel their rage into a campaign-year effort to unseat Biden, it could be a huge problem for the sitting president. Deploying even a fraction of his estimated $250 billion fortune could easily make Musk the biggest campaign donor of all time. And the famously unpredictable Musk is just impulsive enough to do it.
Housing gridlock
A lot of pundits argue that inflation poses the biggest economic problem for Biden’s re-election bid.
But there’s another economic story playing out that no one has really seen before — and represents an even bigger threat to the president’s political fortunes.
In the wake of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes, mortgage rates have skyrocketed to their highest levels in decades, peaking above 8% this fall. Although rates have come down since then, with average 30-year fixed mortgage rates hitting 7.07% in December, the cost of a mortgage is still much higher than it was just a couple short years ago.
That, plus home prices spiking 47% since the start of the pandemic, means homes are much less affordable than ever. Making matters worse, the housing supply remains tight as owners with existing low-rate mortgages hold off on buying in a high-rate environment.
A “for sale” sign in front of a home in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 16.Brandon Bell / Getty Images file
The result? Severe housing gridlock. New buyers find themselves unable to get into the housing market, and homeowners who want to move up are stuck in place. Experts say it could be years before the market untangles and reverts to normal.
The gridlock will come to a head in the traditional spring buying season — just as the general election campaign is coming into sharp focus. What’s the political impact of millions of homebuyers feeling stuck and frustrated? Voters tend to blame presidents for sour economic news. And there is no asset more economically or emotionally important to Americans than a home. None of that bodes well for Biden.
Axis of hackers
Russian election meddling once seemed like something from a dystopian future. By next year, it may seem quaint.
The 2024 election could feature attempted meddling by a variety of countries looking to shape American leadership to their liking.
In a November report, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center wrote: “Election 2024 may be the first presidential election during which multiple authoritarian actors simultaneously attempt to interfere with and influence an election outcome.”
The usual suspects are Russia, Iran and China, but with tension rising in the Middle East, any number of Gulf states could also try to seize the opportunity this time around.
Russia hasn’t been standing still: Experts worry that new innovations could catch the U.S. unawares. Microsoft warns that Russian-affiliated actors have been working with novel artificial intelligence tools that didn’t exist in past elections.
“As the election cycle progresses, we expect these actors’ tradecraft will improve while the underlying technology becomes more capable,” the Threat Analysis Center wrote.
Another U.S. adversary, Iran, launched influence operations designed to sow mistrust among American voters during the 2020 campaign. In 2024, Iran will be capable of combining cyberattacks and online campaigns to spread even more propaganda, experts warn.
And China, which has historically focused much closer to home, has been testing the waters, too, perhaps in advance of its own campaign targeting U.S. voters.
NBC News recently reported that the U.S. intelligence community issued a report finding that senior leaders in China have given orders since 2020 to ramp up efforts to influence U.S. policy and public opinion. What’s more, the report concluded, China tried to sway the outcome of specific races in the 2022 midterm elections.
Biden’s problem is that these actors are all likely to make him a target. By stoking division, instability and discord inside the U.S., they would be undermining the agenda of a president in the throes of a tough re-election fight.
It isn’t as if the disinformation efforts cancel each other out; instead, the mischief-makers could amplify one another and, together, reach more voters than if they were acting alone.
Eamon Javers, CNBC
Eamon Javers is CNBC’s Senior Washington Correspondent, focusing on the role of money and influence in Washington, D.C.
Peter Nicholas
Peter Nicholas is a senior national political reporter for NBC News.