IN-DEPTH: Biggest Challenges Faced by Top 2024 Presidential Candidates

As the field of 2024 presidential candidates narrows, the competition to gain the favor of voters becomes more heated. From attack ads to campaign trail rhetoric, the effort of each candidate to make voters focus on the weaknesses of their rivals has also become more intense.

In interviews with The Epoch Times, political experts shared their thoughts on the biggest challenges faced by the top 2024 presidential candidates for each political party, including incumbent Democrat President Joe Biden, former Republican President Donald Trump, GOP challenger Nikki Haley, and Democrat-turned-independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Joe Biden

Tom Bevan is the president and co-founder of RealClearPolitics and widely recognized as one of the nation’s foremost political and election analysts.

He told The Epoch Times that President Biden’s biggest challenges are “his age, his age, and his age.”

Citing a recent NBC poll, Mr. Bevan said voters believe he’s “too old to be president.”

Along party lines, 95 percent of Republicans and 81 percent of independents have major or moderate concerns about his mental and physical fitness. Even 54 percent of Democrats expressed concern.

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“This has been an issue for him that has been lurking in the background but has boiled over with the special counsel’s report and his continued gaffes in public,” Mr. Bevan said.

Justification for the decision was based on the observation that his “memory was significantly limited.”

“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,” the report revealed. “He did not remember when he was vice president. … He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

So, it was determined that President Biden “will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully—that is, with intent to break the law,” and he “would likely present himself to a jury” as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

He specifically recalled how White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre quoted First Lady Jill Biden at a Feb. 12 press briefing, saying her husband does “more in one hour than most people do in a day. … His age, with experience and expertise, is an incredible asset, and he proves it every day.”

“And that’s what we believe,” Ms. Jean-Pierre added.

It’s an assertion Mr. Bevan rejects.

“Does anyone really believe that? No. It’s not going to fly with the American people,” he insisted, saying voters will base their opinions on what they see, “not some press release or spin the White House is going to offer.”

“It’s the one thing he can’t reverse or control,” Mr. Bevan added. “There’s no policy that he can change or make to make it better, so the administration will try to spin his age as an asset, as they are already doing, but it’s not going to make the issue go away. The concern is with the American people so it’s a huge problem for him.”

Mr. Allen told The Epoch Times he believes President Biden’s biggest challenge is “people’s perception of his ability to fill the role” of president, whether it’s his performance on the economy or his age.

“Those are outweighing people’s perceptions of his accomplishments and as an incumbent, that’s a negative place to be,” Mr. Allen said.

“People see the economy is underperforming even as data suggests the U.S. economy is relatively strong,” he noted. “For Biden, that’s a huge headwind. It’s a huge negative, because it’s hard to change people’s perceptions of something when reality doesn’t match it.”

Donald Trump

Asked about the biggest challenges facing President Trump in securing a second term as president, Mr. Bevan said “his legal challenges are an issue,” noting how data from recent polls show a conviction “could hurt him in the general election setting.”

The NBC survey showed that 61 percent of voters expressed major concerns (51 percent) or moderate concerns (10 percent) about President Trump’s legal matters, “including multiple felony charges.”

“That may or may not be true. We won’t know until it actually happens,” Mr. Bevan acknowledged. “But the data we have suggests it could be a problem for him.”

Another challenge Mr. Bevan suggested for President Trump “is that the more he campaigns, the more people who voted against him the first time around will be reminded of why they voted against him the first time around.”

“I think that’s a challenge for Trump,” Mr. Bevan said. “He’s never changed. It’s unlikely that he will change. His style can put a lot of people off, even people who like his policies.”

Mr. Allen agrees with Mr. Bevan that President Trump’s greatest challenge is “the court.”

“He’s the first presidential candidate to face multiple indictments. He’s likely to go to trial on one of those cases before the election. He is a flawed candidate in a way we’ve not seen before and that’s his biggest headwind.”

He also thinks President Trump’s age is a matter of concern, noting that President Trump is also sometimes accused of misspeaking and confusing facts.

“I think this is less salient for his base and less important for his base. But it’s certainly something that might become dominant in media coverage.”

Nikki Haley

In January, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan endorsed Ms. Haley, telling CNN’s “State of the Union” she is “the strongest chance for us to put forth our best possible candidate for November.”

Still, she is losing ground in her effort to overcome President Trump for the GOP nomination.

“Her biggest challenge is there’s simply no path to the nomination for her in the Republican Party,” Mr. Bevan said.

“She simply represents a small portion of the Republican electorate, and she cannot win the nomination,” Mr. Bevan insisted. “The only reason why she’s done as well as she has so far is because she’s been buoyed, supported, and boosted by Democrats and undeclared voters in places like New Hampshire and Iowa.”

According to Mr. Allen, “Nikki Haley’s biggest challenge is Donald Trump.”

“He has an absolute stranglehold on the Republican Party. There is no realistic path for her unseating him through the primary process,” he explained. “Trump has such an in-built base of support that Nikki Haley will be fighting an uphill battle every step of the way.”

If she does continue through to the convention, Mr. Allen said Ms. Haley will have the second-most delegates.

“But having a few dozen delegates to several hundred is not exactly a position of strength,” he said. “Her biggest weakness is the fact that the Republican Party is so overwhelmingly aligned behind Trump.”

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

According to Mr. Bevan, the biggest challenge for Mr. Kennedy “is convincing enough voters that voting for him would not be a wasted vote.”

He described Mr. Kennedy’s independent run as “sort of paradoxical,” in that many voters see the choice between Democrat President Biden and Republican President Trump as deciding between “lesser of two evils” rather than supporting the candidate themselves.

“That would seem to indicate that there’s room for a third-party candidate to drive right through a wide-open door,” he reflected.

“The problem,” he suggested, “is we are so tribal in our thinking and so evenly divided as a country that there’s actually less room.”

While he believes Mr. Kennedy “is in a better position than any independent candidate has been in a long time, going all the way back to Ross Perot,” the question is “whether he’s able to make enough of an impact on this race.”

“He has to get on all the ballots. He has to poll well enough to get in on the debates if they happen,” he said, adding that “it seems unlikely that our system is primed for that kind of breakthrough for an independent candidate right now.”