Focusing on the left wing of the Democratic Party instead of independent voters could cost President Joe Biden the election this November, according to a New York Times opinion piece on Sunday written by Mark Penn.
"If Mr. Biden wants to serve another four years, he has to stop being dragged to the left and chart a different course closer to the center that appeals to those voters who favor bipartisan compromises to our core issues, fiscal discipline and a strong America," wrote Penn, who served as an adviser to former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 1995 to 2008 and now runs the Harris Poll.
Penn wrote that "the 2024 election is a rematch, but Mr. Biden should not assume that he will get the same result as he did in 2020 in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia and other battleground states by running the same playbook."
Biden needs to focus on drawing new voters, according to Penn, writing that "most of the 101,000 'uncommitted' votes that Mr. Biden lost in Michigan [due to a progressive protest vote in the Democratic primary] will come home in the end, because they have nowhere else to go, and the threat Mr. [Donald] Trump poses will become clearer and scarier in the next six months. But regardless, there's a much bigger opportunity for Mr. Biden if he looks in the other direction."
Penn wrote that supporters of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley "are in the moderate center, and many of them could be persuaded to vote for Mr. Biden if he fine-tuned his message to bring them in" on a variety of issues important to the public.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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