Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, February 3 rd: Biden’s primary election is "going through the motions" and his re-election is "uneven"
    Xinhua News Agency reporter Sun Ding Xiong Maoling
    On February 3rd, South Carolina will hold the first official Democratic Party primary election in the 2024 presidential election. American media and experts believe that Biden, the current president seeking re-election, is currently in a solid position in the Democratic Party, and the primary election is basically just a "going through the motions" for him. Judging from the current Republican party elections, Biden may once again confront former US President and Republican Trump in the November general election to reproduce the situation of the 2020 general election. Public opinion is worried that this may further deepen the political polarization and social tear in the United States and increase the risk of political turmoil in the United States.
   competeThere are many challenges in re-election
    Biden officially announced his re-election in April last year. He currently has two challengers in the party, namely Congressman Dean Phillips and writer Marianne Williamson. Biden’s support rate in the polls is significantly ahead of these two people. Public opinion generally believes that Biden will once again become the Democratic presidential candidate, but he will face multiple challenges on the road to re-election.
    First, Biden’s approval rating is not high. After the United States hastily withdrew its troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, the public’s negative evaluation of Biden’s ruling performance rose. In addition, since Biden took office, the United States has experienced the highest inflation in decades, the number of illegal immigrants has soared, and the recent "border crisis" has been violently fermented, and its support rate has now fallen below 40%. David axelrod, an American political scholar, believes that the low support rate has cast a shadow over Biden’s re-election campaign.
    Secondly, Biden is being impeached by Republicans in the House of Representatives. American public opinion believes that although the impeachment case is unlikely to make Biden step down, it will even help him consolidate inner-party support and absorb more political donations to a certain extent, but it will inevitably involve his energy and may affect his personal image. As the CNN article said, this dispute will "bring great pressure" to Biden’s re-election campaign.
    Biden’s opponent also made a fuss about his age. Biden, 81, is the oldest incumbent president in American history. Phillips commented that Biden "can’t perform the duties of the president in the way that the United States needs." Biden’s campaign team argued that age is not a burden but an advantage, representing experience and qualifications.
   Focus on reappearing "South Carolina recovery"
    Four years ago, Biden did not perform well at the beginning of the Democratic primary in the 2020 presidential election, but rebounded in South Carolina. After that, he successfully won the party nomination and was finally elected president. The state was then called Biden’s "political recovery" by the American media. Biden bluntly said in the election campaign a few days ago that he would not become the president of the United States without the voters of the Democratic Party of South Carolina. At his appeal, the Democratic National Committee decided to hold the party’s first official primary election in 2024 in the state.
    However, South Carolina has traditionally been a "red state" dominated by Republicans. During the presidential election in 2020, then-President Trump won the state by nearly 12 percentage points. It is not easy for Biden to win the state in this year’s general election. However, Biden’s campaign team still invests a lot of money and manpower here. An important reason is that there are a large number of African-American Democratic voters in the state, which is very important for Biden’s re-election campaign.
    The White House says Biden is committed to promoting racial equality and creating economic opportunities for African-American families and communities. The New York Times argues that the Democratic Party is trying to test whether its policy proposition can effectively attract African-American voters in South Carolina, so as to observe whether this campaign strategy can be used in other areas where African-American voters are concentrated.
    What worries Democratic campaign strategists is that Biden’s support rate among African-American voters has declined recently, and his support rate among Hispanic and young voters has even been overtaken by Trump. According to American media reports, Biden plans to increase his support rate among African-American and Hispanic groups through more visits to ethnic minority communities. In terms of winning young people’s votes, Biden’s team is considering pulling American singer Taylor Swift as its platform.
   Battered again is not welcome.
    On the Republican side, although Trump has not got rid of the controversy over his eligibility for election and many criminal cases involving him are still in progress, he has made great strides in the party’s primary election. Public opinion generally believes that it may be only a matter of time before he is nominated as the Republican presidential candidate again. This means that the 2024 presidential election in the United States may once again become a confrontation between Trump and Biden, just like in 2020.
    According to a recent joint poll conducted by the US "Decision Desk Headquarters" website and the "News Country" TV channel, nearly 60% of registered voters in the United States are "not very enthusiastic" or "not enthusiastic at all" about the possible second showdown between Trump and Biden. Randy Johnson, a 64-year-old Republican voter in Missouri, said that he hoped to have a third choice, but it didn’t work in the current political system in the United States. He felt sad for his country. "We can only choose the lesser of two evils.".
    After Biden won the presidential election in 2020, Trump refused to admit defeat and repeatedly claimed that there was massive fraud in the election, which laid the foundation for the subsequent "Capitol Hill riots". In the past few years, a series of political and legal disputes triggered by the riots have continuously fueled the partisan opposition and political tears in the United States.
    Recently, Biden and Trump’s teams have intensified their attacks on each other, accusing each other of being "a threat to American democracy". The Associated Press published an article saying that the two men fought again or "shaken American politics", posing a far-reaching challenge to the "democratic future of the United States."
    Peter baker, The New York Times’s chief White House correspondent, commented: "Voters may have some idea of how the next four-year-old White House will behave, but it is completely unclear how a divided country will react to the winner. It seems possible to refuse to accept, disrupt damage, further tear or even violence. "
