Three possible threats to president’s reelection campaign

President Joe Biden forged a unified NATO position on ultimate membership for Ukraine and continued military help abroad two weeks ago. At home, inflation fell to the lowest level in more than two years, outpaced by wage gains.

A new poll showed him leading his two most likely Republican rivals. And the House GOP barely survived a legislative train wreck by passing a defense bill laden with unpopular social policy riders.

It’s been a good couple of weeks for Biden, accentuated by the contrast between his successes and the flailing of Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail.

But three other factors could pose the biggest threats to the president’s reelection prospects.

One was vividly illustrated when a pair of political outsiders, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and former Utah Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman, staged a New Hampshire event touting a third-party option that polls show would hurt Biden and help the GOP.

The other two are his age — he’ll be almost 82 when Americans vote in 2024 — and the possibility that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to halt inflation may cause an election year recession, something no president wants.

Of the three, one threatens to become a bigger problem, one looks likely to be a lesser one and the third is totally unpredictable. Here is what I mean:

A potentially bigger problem: At least two different groups are talking of offering “alternatives” to the two major-party candidates, citing polls showing substantial dissatisfaction with the prospect of a Biden-Donald Trump rematch.

The Manchin-Huntsman team unveiled a centrist platform crafted by “No Labels,” a group that heretofore has primarily sought support for moderate legislative alternatives. Its leaders are Nancy Jacobson, a longtime Democratic fundraiser, and her husband, former Democratic consultant Mark Penn, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential campaign, but its financial backers include many Republicans.

It plans a nominating convention in April and hopes to get on the ballots of all 50 states, no easy task.

The other threat comes from the left-wing Green Party, which is already on 17 state ballots. Its prospective nominee is left-wing author and political activist Cornel West, who said NATO “provoked” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Assisting him is Jill Stein, the 2012 and 2016 Green Party nominee widely believed to have contributed to Clinton’s defeat by draining off liberal votes in key Midwestern states.

According to the nonpartisan website fivethirtyeight.com, five national polls since May with either Manchin or Maryland’s former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan heading an alternative ticket all showed Biden led Trump narrowly or was even in a two-way race, but Trump went ahead in a three-way contest.

Similarly, polling summaries released by Citizens to Save Our Republic, a bipartisan group formed to fight a third-party ticket, showed a three-way race would erase Biden’s edge over Trump both nationally and in seven swing states.

Unfortunately, this is a familiar political dynamic: In 2000, Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy probably cost Democrat Al Gore the election by denying him the electoral votes of New Hampshire and Florida; in 2016, Stein similarly damaged Clinton in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

A potentially lesser problem: An economic recession, triggered by the Fed’s raising of interest rates to combat inflation.

But this month’s Consumer Price Index report showed the annual inflation rate has dropped from 9% a year ago to 3%. If sustained, that could mean the Fed’s next interest rate hike would be its last, reducing the threat of pushing the economy into a recession.

By most accounts, the economy remains strong. But polls show the public doesn’t believe it and gives Biden even lower grades on the economy than his overall job approval level.

That’s why the White House has launched an all-out effort to sell its contention that “Bidenomics,” a term co-opted from GOP critics, is contributing to better lives for most Americans.

It hopes a year of reduced inflation — and continued low unemployment — will bolster Biden’s economic numbers.

A totally unpredictable problem: Biden’s age. Now 80, the nation’s oldest president would be, if reelected, 86 before the end of his second term. It’s a major reason roughly half of all Democrats wish he would retire.

But Biden argues that, like other past presidents, he needs four more years to finish what he started. Another consideration: He feels he is the only Democrat who could defeat Trump, the overwhelming early favorite to head the 2024 GOP ticket.

Since he can’t change his age, Biden has started to use humor in references to it, a tactic used successfully a generation ago by President Ronald Reagan, who was the nation’s oldest chief executive when he won a second term in 1984 at 73.

Democratic strategists also note that Trump would also pass 80 in a new term.

Some Democrats fear concern over Biden’s age might increase if Trump lost the GOP nomination to a younger rival like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is 44. But DeSantis’ campaign has had a rough six months, and a recent Morning Consult survey showed Trump, while behind, fared better against Biden than the Florida governor.

The usual cautionary note: Presidential campaigns are notoriously unpredictable. Whatever seems likely now may well not happen next year.

Carl Leubsdorf is the former Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News.