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[Elena, ELI STOKOLS and LISA KASHINSKY, “Foreign policy becomes a liability for Biden’s campaign as he heads to France”, ]

President Joe Biden vowed during his 2020 campaign to restore America’s alliances and leadership abroad.

Dave Nagle, March 24 2024, “If Biden loses, it will be because Democrats defeated him,” Iowa Capital Dispatch, https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/03/24/if-biden-loses-it-will-be-because-democrats-defeated-him/

A second limitation on the president’s chances is the realistic observation that many on the far left are reluctant to support him. Ironically, Trump faces the same erosion of support from his moderate GOP base. It almost seems the election will be decided by attrition. Our commander-in-chief may well gain former Trump voters, but at the same time lose leftist Dems at the same or higher rate. I am inclined to believe that more Republican moderates will vote for Biden, if only as the lesser of two evils. Purist Democrats, who expect perfection from their elected leaders, could well vote simply “none of the above.”

[Jessica, “What the ‘uncommitted’ vote says about Biden’s reelection”, ]

With nearly every ballot cast in the Democratic presidential primary, the message for Joe Biden is clear: A small but repeated share of the party’s base is not happy with him.

[Justin, “Who will win the 2024 presidential election?”, ]

Biden and Trump traded slight polling leads throughout the primary season. When it comes to actual figures, though, Trump has carried most of the weight in the majority of polls taken this year — a New York Times poll from May 13 of 1,000 Americans showed the former president leading Biden in five of six key battleground states. Biden led Trump only in Wisconsin with a margin of 47% to 45%. While the accuracy of this poll has been questioned, the Trump lead appears to be in line with a May 14 YouGov/Economist poll of 1,586 voters that had Trump leading 42% to 41% and a May 12 Morning Consult poll of 10,243 voters that had him leading 44% to 43%.

[Scott,, Zachary Donini, Ryan Gest, Scott Tranter is the director of data science at Decision Desk HQ, where Ryan Gest is a data science and digital content fellow and Zachary Donnini is a data science fellow. The Hill, “GOP trifecta? Introducing the Decision Desk HQ 2024 Election Forecast Model”, ]

Welcome to Decision Desk HQ’s 2024 Election Forecast Model, a powerful tool for in-depth analysis and predictions for the upcoming presidential, Senate and House races.

Stephen Chaudoin, Helen V. Milner, and Dustin Tingley, “‘America First’ Meets Liberal Internationalism,” in Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics, Eds. Robert Jervis, Diane N. Labrosse, Stacie E. Goddard, and Joshua Rovner, Columbia University Press 2023, pp. 370-371.

A central claim we made before the start of Trump’s term1 was that his attempts to change American foreign policy would be constrained by domestic and international forces. In terms of domestic constraints, elements of American democracy— its checks and balances— would make radical change difficult. As we will show, agents within key institutions did in fact push back against many of the Trump administration’s policy changes. The usual suspects, like Congress, interest groups, and the American foreign policy and military bureaucracies, played large roles. The judicial system was a surprisingly strong and unexpected constraining force. The media also kept keen attention on the changes proposed by the administration. Trump would have been able to make many more changes had he faced fewer domestic constraints. As Robert Jervis argues in chapter 1, “some realities proved obdurate.”

Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, “Getting Restraint Right: Liberal Internationalism and American Foreign Policy,” Survival, vol. 63, no. 6, 2021, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00396338.2021.2006452.

Success in competition between liberalism and authoritarianism is going to depend, as US President Joe Biden has stressed, on whether the United States and other democracies can show that democracy works. This will require strenuous domestic efforts. Just as FDR’s New Deal programme in the 1930s provided the foundation for success against fascism and then communism, Biden’s neo-Rooseveltian domestic agenda – embracing more equitable tax policies as well as increased funding for research and development, infrastructure, education and decarbonisation – is now vital for both domestic renewal and successful grand strategy.Footnote77 As in the great struggles of the twentieth century, the libertarian agenda of dismantling the modern liberal state is a recipe for the historic failure of liberal democratic capitalism.

Stephen Chaudoin, Helen V. Milner, and Dustin Tingley, “‘America First’ Meets Liberal Internationalism,” in Chaos Reconsidered: The Liberal Order and the Future of International Politics, Eds. Robert Jervis, Diane N. Labrosse, Stacie E. Goddard, and Joshua Rovner, Columbia University Press 2023, pp. 379.

As an update in August 2022 to our arguments, we note that while the war in Ukraine is deeply troubling, the norms enshrined in the Liberal International Order (LIO) are showing their strength. Russia’s latest invasion of Ukraine, in February 2022, did not change the dynamics we describe in this chapter. In the United States, the massive sanctions placed on Russia enjoy bipartisan support among lawmakers and the public.39 European countries have also taken a remarkably united stance against the war and in favor of strong economic sanctions. Even Switzerland broke with its longstanding neutrality to participate in the sanctions regime, while EU countries pledged to increase their defense spending.40 NATO countries are working together tightly, and more countries are in the process of joining. The United States and its allies have come together strongly to oppose this violent attack on another nation and on the LIO. The military attack on a sovereign nation has galvanized many nations and underlined the continuing relevance of the LIO and its institutions.

G. John Ikenberry, “Why American Power Endures,” Foreign affairs, November/December 2022, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/why-american-power-endures-us-led-order-isnt-in-decline-g-john-ikenberry.

The United States, despite repeated announcements of its demise as a world leader, has not truly declined. It has built a distinctive type of order in which it plays an integral role. And in the face of threatening illiberal rivals, that order remains widely in demand. The reason the United States does not decline is because large constituencies within the existing order have a stake in the United States remaining active and involved in maintaining that order. Even if U.S. material power diminishes relative to, say, China’s growing capabilities, the order the United States has built continues to reinforce its power and leadership. Power can create order, but the order over which Washington presides can also buttress American power.

Shalendra D. Sharma, “Trump and the End of an Era? The Liberal International Order in Perspective,” The International Spectator, vol. 55, no. 3, 2020, pp. 82-83, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03932729.2020.1786927.

Whether he realises this or not, Trump, in his own mercurial way, is essentially undoing the very liberal international economic and political system that the United States created from the ashes of World War II (WWII) and has led ever since. With the United States serving as the “benevolent hegemon” or, in John Ikenberry’s (2011) evocative words, the “liberal Leviathan”, the liberal international order provided the framework under which sovereign states agreed to follow a rules-based system of economic and political cooperation and shared multilateral governance (Deudney and Ikenberry 2018). Despite flaws, this postwar order has played an instrumental role in managing geopolitical competition (including winning the Cold War), and promoting global peace and prosperity for the past seven decades.

Daniel W. Drezner, “Bracing for Trump 2.0,” Foreign Affairs, 5 September 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/bracing-trump-possible-return-allies-rivals.

FENCES MENDED?

Michael Julian Gaines, “Whither the Liberal International Order? Does an Attenuated Liberal International Order Affect the Propensity, Incidence, and Intensity of Conflict?” Pardee RAND Graduate School, June 2022, pp. 139-141, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSDA2600/RGSDA2685-1/RAND_RGSDA2685-1.pdf.

Thomas Schelling once noted that there is "something we might call the 'inherent propensity toward peace or war' embodied in weaponry, the geography, and the military organization of the time."307 The propensity towards peace and cooperation is intertwined with the self-reinforcing aspects liberal trade, long shadow interactions, and coercive cooperation all of which are inherent in a strong U.S. led LIO. A strong U.S. led LIO enables liberal trade postures that take advantage of Ricardian trade verities and reduces opportunity costs (i.e., enabling economic interdependence and the deterrence of entanglement where the costs of initiating conflict outweigh even some of the most optimistic potential benefits).

“Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024,” The Economist, 16 November 2023, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/16/donald-trump-poses-the-biggest-danger-to-the-world-in-2024.

A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probability is beginning to sink in.

[Amanda, Zeke, “The White House is threatening the patents of high-priced drugs developed with taxpayer dollars”, ]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is putting pharmaceutical companies on notice, warning them that if the price of certain drugs is too high, the government might cancel their patent protection and allow rivals to make their own versions.

[Association for Accessible Medicines, “National Survey Finds Significant Voter Opposition to Patent Settlement Legislation”, ]

WASHINGTON, DC (July 2, 2019) — A recent national survey finds by a margin of 4-1 that registered voters believe that patent settlement legislation will result in higher drug prices.

[Julia, The Hill, “Biden looks to boost worker, consumer power as election looms”, ]

The Biden administration has issued a flurry of new rules over the past week aimed at increasing worker and consumer power as the president seeks to combat gloom about the economy ahead of what is expected to be a tight election.

Mark Mellman, interviewed by Ryan Lizza (Chief Washington Correspondent for POLITICO), “Why This Pollster Says the Press Is Wrong About the Politics of Israel,” POLITICO, 23 March 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/23/this-pollster-isnt-worried-that-israel-will-sink-joe-biden-00148665.

Q: Let’s start with the politics of Israel. We recently had Rep. Veronica Escobar on this show. She said that Gaza was the Democrats’ biggest vulnerability. Do you agree that it’s as big a problem or a bigger problem than, say, the border or Biden’s age?

Mark Zandi, Brendan Lacerda, and Justin Begly, “Who Will Be the Next President?” Moody’s Analytics, January 2024, pp. 13, https://www.economy.com/getfile?q=95674FFE-7734-4401-877A-FE331AECD442&app=download.

One caveat is that, historically, third parties have tended to experience limited success in battleground states. They typically accumulate most of their votes in uncompetitive states, including Alaska, Vermont, Utah, Montana and Idaho, where the Green and Libertarian parties have a more established presence. For a third-party candidate to swing the results, they would need to secure a meaningful vote share in one or multiple contentious battleground states, similar to Ralph Nader in Florida during the 2000 election (see Table 1).

Jacob Bronsther and Guha Krishnamurthi, “Congress is dysfunctional. History shows it won’t change anytime soon,” The Washington Post, 9 February 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/02/09/congress-dysfunction-polarization-gridlock/.

House Republicans are threatening economic catastrophe by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless President Biden and Senate Democrats agree to steep domestic spending cuts. The odds of this hostage-taking working are low, and the economic risk is unnecessary, but it’s a sign of the political times: The parties are so polarized that even the most basic legislative task is hard to pull off.

[Alex, Hans, “Poll: 49% of Independents think Trump should drop out post-guilty verdict”, ]

One of the first polls conducted since a New York Jury found Donald Trump guilty of falsifying business records find that a significant minority of Republicans and Independents want him to drop out and a majority of registered voters approve of the jury's decision.