Mideast War and the 2024 election

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President Joe Biden’s approval rating has declined to the lowest level of his presidency — 40% — as strong majorities of all voters disapprove of his handling of foreign policy and the Israel-Hamas war, according to the latest national NBC News poll.

What’s more, the poll finds Biden behind former President Donald Trump for the first time in a hypothetical general-election matchup, although the deficit is well within the poll’s margin of error for a contest that’s still more than 11 months away.

The erosion for Biden is most pronounced among Democrats, a majority of whom believe Israel has gone too far in its military action in Gaza, and among voters ages 18 to 34, with a whopping 70% of them disapproving of Biden’s handling of the war.

Joe Biden is at a uniquely low point in his presidency, and a significant part of this, especially within the Biden coalition, is due to how Americans are viewing his foreign policy actions,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies.

McInturff said he can’t recall another time when foreign affairs not involving U.S. troops transformed the American political landscape.

“This poll is a stunner, and it’s stunning because of the impact the Israel-Hamas war is having on Biden,” he said.

But Horwitt cautioned that Biden can bring these disaffected Democrats and younger voters back into the fold. “These are people who have a proven track record in voting for Biden and Democrats,” he said.

And, he added, there’s plenty of time — and more potential political surprises to come — between now and Election Day 2024, which could see the political landscape transform again.

According to the poll, 40% of registered voters approve of Biden’s job performance, while 57% disapprove, representing Biden’s all-time low in approval (and all-time high in disapproval) in the poll since becoming president.

Sixty-two percent now disapprove of Biden’s handling of foreign policy
In another low for the president, just 33% of all voters approve of Biden’s handling of foreign policy, which is down 8 points from September.

That compares with 62% of voters, including 30% of Democrats, who say they disapprove of the president’s handling of foreign policy.

Democrats are divided over the Israel-Hamas war
The poll finds a plurality of American voters, 47%, believing that Israel is defending its interests in the war, and that its military actions in Gaza are justified.

By comparison, 30% think that Israel’s military actions have gone too far and are not justified. Another 21% say they don’t know enough to have an opinion.

Yet among Democratic voters, 51% believe Israel has gone too far, versus 27% who say Israel’s military actions are justified.

And while a majority of all voters (55%) support the United States providing military aid to Israel, almost half of Democrats (49%) say they oppose this aid.

Trump narrowly leads Biden for first time
All of this is shaping a general election that’s still some 350 days away. Biden trails Donald Trump for the first time in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup in the NBC News poll, though the deficit falls well within the survey’s margin of error.

Trump gets support from 46% of registered voters, while Biden gets 44%.

In September, the two men were tied (at 46% each). And in June, Biden was narrowly ahead of Trump by 4 points (49% to 45%). While Biden’s support has changed throughout the year, albeit within the poll’s margin of error, Trump’s has barely budged.

Since the war between Israel and Hamas broke out last month, Muslim and Arab American voters in key swing states have suggested they will never back President Joe Biden again, while the president’s support among younger voters appears to be taking a hit. There has even been a movement to leave the top of the ballot blank in 2024 as a protest against the president, whom they see as being too uncritical in his backing of the Israeli government as casualties mount in Gaza.

In turn, Republicans see an opportunity to take advantage of new divisions among elected Democrats, left-wing activists and core Democratic constituencies — but not by making direct appeals to voters who want to see Biden soften his stance.

That’s “because they’re so far-left on this issue,” one national GOP strategist told NBC News. “And Republicans, I just don’t even see how you could possibly maintain your pro-Israel stance while appealing to them. We could do as much as we could to throw some gas on the flames. But if their issue with Biden is they think he’s too close, I don’t see how Republicans can circle all the way around.”

While cautioning that there is still ample time before the presidential election, Republicans see this issue as one that can benefit them in the near and long term. Multiple Republicans said they hope to be able to target moderate Jewish voters who have traditionally supported Democrats but may now be feeling dismayed by anti-Israel protests. Already, Republicans are hitting vulnerable Democratic senators on Israel.

And, as a second national Republican strategist said, the party does see room to target Muslim American voters who hold more socially conservative views and are upset with Biden’s handling of the war.

And, as a second national Republican strategist said, the party does see room to target Muslim American voters who hold more socially conservative views and are upset with Biden’s handling of the war.

There’s an angle for us to make inroads with Jewish voters who are disaffected by what they see,” this person said, adding: “And then there’s also an opportunity with Muslim voters to some extent, not on the issue of Israel, because we’re never going to stand with them on the Palestine issue, but there is an opportunity on some of these social issues where they’re socially conservative.”

This person echoed other Republicans who spoke with NBC News in saying they saw far greater risk in putting any distance between the party and Israel than any potential electoral benefits they could reap.

As to whether there is any risk in the GOP hugging Israel too tightly, this person gave a simple response: “No.”

The impact could be felt particularly in a state like Michigan, where some Muslim and Arab Americans said they won’t back Biden next time around. Biden won Michigan — with an estimated Muslim population of 240,000 — by 150,000 votes in 2020.

Nada Al-Hanooti, the executive director of Emgage Michigan, a group focused on political outreach to Muslim Americans, previously told NBC News that Biden “cannot win without the Muslim vote, point blank.”

Curt Anderson, a national Republican strategist, laughed at that idea and said Biden faces a much more substantial risk by aligning with the pro-Palestinian protesters and alienating moderates.

“I hope they believe that,” said Anderson, who has previously worked on GOP efforts in Michigan, adding he does not believe there are enough of those voters to make a dent. “It’s just not real. It’s an imagination.”

“If they feel a need to cater to those people, which they will feel that need because it’s the most hardened activist, liberal, whacked-out base of people, any catering they do to them is going to hurt them in the middle,” he added. “And that I’m 100% for.”

Several candidates vowed to deport foreign students who joined protests and espoused views they saw as pro-Hamas. So too did Trump

But even as the war overseas causes political turmoil in the U.S., the first Republican strategist said they ultimately believe that a year from now, “everyone kind of comes home to their respective bases — unless this is going to be a permanent shift.”

“Biden, I think, has played it pretty well so far,” this person said. “I don’t think he stands to lose anything from the middle. The only question is how big is this faction on his left who he might lose.

Memo to Democrats: It’s not Nancy Jacobson who’s disrupting President Joe Biden’s speeches most every time he appears in public and it’s also not Nancy Jacobson floating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. $15 million to help him get on general election ballots.

I don’t write this to downplay the threat that Jacobson’s group, No Labels, poses to Biden’s reelection. A center-right candidate able to secure ballot access could claim thousands of voters Biden needs, namely those Americans who grudgingly voted for him to oust Donald Trump in 2020 and are dreading doing so once more.

Yet the collective Democratic fixation on No Labels increasingly looks misplaced — or at least disproportionate given how the 2024 political landscape is taking shape.

Jacobson seems to chase most every name that bubbles up in the news cycle ( just ask them). Yet she’ll be hard pressed to find the sort of well-known figure she needs to be viable because they want either to retain future prospects in their own party (Nikki Haley) or they don’t want to don the scarlet T in their future obituaries for having enabled Trump’s return. (Most every anti-Trump Republican plus Joe Manchin.)

Meanwhile, how many more polls do there have to be of Kennedy near double-digit votes in swing states before he’s taken seriously? And: how many Biden speeches must be shouted down until Democrats realize that a hot war in Gaza this fall may mean 30,000 fewer votes apiece in Madison, Dearborn and Ann Arbor and therefore the presidency?

It’s the left that presents the most acute peril to the president.

If Kennedy claims the Libertarian Party line, which he’s warming to, Jill Stein is the Green Party nominee and Cornel West gets on any battleground state ballots, they would combine to drain far more votes from Biden than from Trump. You wouldn’t think Democrats need much reminding of this scenario, given how many in their professional ranks lived through two campaigns, 2000 and 2016, in which they lost the electoral vote in part because of leftist spoilers.

But it’s also because Democrats are still catching up to the possibility of their coalition unraveling over Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Are the well-organized hecklers bird-dogging Biden at nearly every speech going to turn to a candidate who once proposed a Muslim ban? Of course not. Yet this White House race, like the last two, is bound to be won on the margins, and Biden is at risk of losing critical younger and left-wing voters to third-party candidates or apathy.

People don’t understand how few votes [the third-party candidates] would need to take away,” said Lis Smith, the hard-charging Democratic operative who has recently signed on with the DNC, in part to grab voters by the lapels about the threat at hand. “It’s the whole election.”
Few in the administration sense the danger more than Vice President Kamala Harris. From holiday parties to a dinner at her residence last month for a group of prominent Black men, Harris has been telling sympathetic Democrats outside the White House that she recognizes the political challenge posed by Biden’s unwavering public support for Israel, I’m told by officials familiar with her comments at the events. Harris told people she’s making the case privately for the administration to show more empathy for the plight of innocent Gazans, an internal push that my colleague Eugene Daniels reported in December.

The vice president, too, has been heckled by pro-Palestinian protesters. And it’s no coincidence that her abortion rights tour has not yet taken her to activist-filled college towns such as, well, Ann Arbor and Madison that would otherwise be obvious stops to motivate core Democrats. (Even going to comparatively conservative San Jose this week, however, didn’t spare her from protesters.)

Biden himself is a different case. Like everyone in the administration and any Democrat with a pulse, he’s deeply suspicious of Benjamin Netanyahu, and privately has called the Israeli prime minister a “bad f*****g guy,” according to people who’ve talked to the president.

Biden aides have clearly absorbed the blowback they got from even friendly Democratic lawmakers for making no mention of Palestinian suffering in official statements they issued marking 100 days since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.

Indeed, it’s hard to overstate how contemptuous even staunchly pro-Israel Democratic lawmakers have become of Netanyahu.

One House Democrat told me of a dinner last month with about eight other colleagues, a cross-section of the caucus ideologically and generationally. “It was unanimous that this Israel-Gaza war needed to end now and that Biden needed to stand up to Bibi,” this lawmaker told me, before offering his own view.

“This is a disaster politically,” said this House Democrat, who rarely criticizes Israel. “The base is really pissed — and it’s not just the leftists. I have never seen such a depth of anguish as I’ve seen over this Gaza issue. Bibi is toxic among many Democratic voters and Biden must distance himself from him — yesterday.”

Jumping off the page: A recent YouGov poll found 50 percent of self-described Biden voters called Israel’s attacks on Gaza “a genocide.”

Part of the president’s challenge, particularly with younger Democrats deriving their news almost entirely from social media, is they don’t hear of Biden pushing Netanyahu behind the scenes.

“You create political challenges for yourself when your public and private messaging aren’t aligned,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama White House aide who now co-hosts Pod Save America and praised Biden for his efforts to free hostages and establish a cease-fire. “People don’t see Joe Biden chewing out Bibi on the phone.”

The White House, in a reflection of their public confidence (hubris?) regarding the politics of Biden’s positioning on Israel, arranged a call with Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.).

Fetterman, who has delighted in trolling left-wing critics by resolutely standing with Israel since Oct. 7, told me young voters should consider the implications of enabling a candidate who would likely give Netanyahu even more of a free hand.

“If you sit this out, or throw your vote away, you now are effectively empowering Bibi, and you’re definitely going to be empowering Trump,” he said.

And, Fetterman added, don’t forget the lessons of Hillary Clinton: “I said the same thing in 2016 to voters, I said: ‘Hey, you know what, you don’t like Clinton, you know what f**k around and find out what Trump is going to be about and, hey guess what, how’d you like it?’”

There is a hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner element to Biden’s approach to Israel that some in Gen Z can’t fully grasp. His politics are that of a Cold War Democrat, and a Northeastern one at that. Support for Israel is part of his liberal DNA, no matter the prime minister. Jewish voters, Irish ones, Italian, too — that’s the coalition. It’s a matter of principle, sure, but also domestic politics. But they’ve not heard of the “Three Is” on TikTok.

For now, Biden is hoping his spy chief, William Burns, can negotiate a cease-fire-for-hostages deal that would bring a two-month peace to Gaza.

If that agreement can be struck, then look for Biden to use the moment to make a public appeal, aimed at American voters and Middle Easterners alike, for a broader framework for the region. It would effectively be Biden’s attempt at a geopolitical grand bargain, combining a path toward a two-state solution with a new U.S.-Saudi Arabia security arrangement and normalization of ties between the Saudis and Israelis.

Such a moonshot would pay enormous political dividends. Yet Biden’s campaign can’t count on it — they must begin restoring the president’s standing on the left now.

There are gentle ways to do that — Biden’s actions on Thursday — and more aggressive steps.

The latter will, I’m told, include a multi-pronged offensive against Kennedy, Stein and West, some of which will come from the campaign and some from outside entities.

“We can set this up very directly: it’s us versus them — and us is just voting for us, and them means voting for a third-party or Trump,” as one Biden official put it to me.

In the short term, that means seizing on any chance to complicate the ballot access of the third-party candidates and attempting to discredit their motives or at least highlight the less savory aspects of their character.

They probably shouldn’t wait much longer.

I got a taste of what’s brewing at a conference this week convened by the University of Southern California’s Center for the Political Future. It was a mostly decorous forum in the chandeliered Town & Gown Club, where a portrait of Pat Nixon still hangs prominently.

Then a student took the microphone and confronted longtime Biden adviser John Anzalone with a question. Well, it was more of a statement.

Michigan voters, the student warned, are “not going to vote for Genocide Joe.