Inside the Hive host Brian Stelter previews the 2024 general election and explores Joe Biden’s chances and challenges with Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, author of the Hopium Chronicles on Substack. Rosenberg tells Stelter he believes the campaign will be brutal but is optimistic for Democrats in 2024.

“I think that we underestimate sometimes how unsettled the world is,” he says, “It’s been a bumpy time.” It’ll take a while to tell Americans we’ve gotten to the other side, but according to Rosenberg, that’s what a campaign is for. 

Rosenberg says that it’s expected, at this point, that some Democratic voters are unengaged and wandering, but he believes Democrats will still succeed next November because the presidential election will be a referendum on Trump. In his view, the general election will start in January because Donald Trump is so far ahead in the primary race and will demand that the other GOP hopefuls get behind him by a specific date. “We’ve seen this movie before,” he says. Trump, Rosenberg notes, is dangerous for Republicans because he’s too powerful for anyone to compete with him in the primary, but his ceiling among the general electorate is much lower.

Rosenberg acknowledges that Biden’s age is an issue and that if November is a referendum on the president, Democrats will likely lose. But, he emphasizes, Biden’s wisdom is because of his age rather than despite it. “Having the most experienced person in the Oval Office during this time of enormous tumult may have been a blessing.”

The primary reason Rosenberg is so bullish on Biden in 2024: He has to be. “The Republican Party has become deeply untethered from truth and facts.” The only way for the “dark grip of MAGA” to loosen, according to Rosenberg, is for Democrats to win the next election by an overwhelming margin and for Republicans to believe that MAGA is a losing stance.