Angry anti-Trump Republicans who voted for Biden in 2020 now say he’s gone too far left for them to do the same thing again
As Joe Biden continues to try to chase Donald Trump to win re-election, some Republicans who voted for him in 2020 are struggling to switch parties for a second time.
Poll after poll shows President Biden in trouble against Trump in their 2024 rematch, both nationally and in key swing states.
Christopher Shays, a former GOP congressman from Connecticut who voted for Biden in 2020, now says it is “unlikely” he will make another run for president in November.
He asked, “Many of us are struggling with the question: How can we support him when he has gone so far to the left?”
Shays, who served in the House of Representatives from 1987 to 2009, is now considering running for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to vote.
As Joe Biden continues to try to chase Donald Trump to win re-election, some Republicans who voted for him in 2020, like Christopher Shays (pictured), are struggling to switch parties for a second time.
According to a New York Times report, Shays shares the sentiments of many Republicans who voted for Biden in 2020, saying they felt largely ignored by his time in office.
The latest blow to Biden’s efforts to court the Republican party: Nikki Haley’s admission that she will vote for Trump.
“Haley’s support for Trump is a blow,” said Adam Kinzinger, the former anti-Trump congressman who served on the Jan. 6 committee.
“If there aren’t other Republicans creating a permission structure for those people to vote Democratic, I don’t know how you expect to get much from them.”
He says he hasn’t heard much from the Biden campaign about aid and says if they don’t try to use him to gain Republican support, “it’s political malpractice.”
Ex-Republican and former Congressman David Jolly says a recent email to Republicans included comments that shocked him.
“My eyes were opened to the level of anger and disgust toward Biden, it really was,” he said. “There is a real disappointment in Biden’s policy direction.”
Biden touted support in 2020 from Republicans like Kinzinger, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich and former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman.
It comes as a new poll shows Trump and Biden neck-and-neck in blue New Hampshire — the latest in a series of polls raising warning signs for the struggling president as the general election season heats up
Poll after poll shows President Biden in trouble against Trump in their 2024 rematch
However, Republican and former New York congresswoman Susan Molinari, who spoke on behalf of Biden at the 2020 Democratic Convention, reiterates that there has been little outreach.
“I’m concerned about the state of the campaign, that there has been little to no outreach to almost every Republican I know who wants to help,” she said.
She added that while she will vote for Biden again, “I think everyone is just scratching their heads.”
Republicans such as former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel — who served in the Obama-Biden administration — and former congressmen Jim Greenwood and Claudine Schneider all say they remain supportive of the president.
It comes as a new poll shows Trump and Biden neck-and-neck in blue New Hampshire — the latest in a series of polls raising warning signs for the struggling president as the general election season heats up.
Biden won the Granite State in 2020 by more than seven points with almost sixty thousand votes more than Trump.
But the New Hampshire Journal/Praecones Analytica Survey finds the couple tied in the state with less than six months to go before Election Day.
Trump has 36.6 percent among registered voters, while Biden has 36.5 percent in the state.
The latest blow to Biden’s efforts to court the Republican party: Nikki Haley’s admission that she will vote for Trump
“Haley’s endorsement of Trump is a blow,” said Adam Kinzinger, the former anti-Trump congressman who served on the Jan. 6 committee.
Independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. scores 14.6 percent according to the poll.
According to Jonathan Klinger of Praecones Analytica, Biden has to contend with swing voters in the famously independent-minded state.
“While registered voters of both parties are largely united around their candidate, independent/black voters divide their support in four statistically indistinguishable ways: between Biden, Trump, Kennedy, and other unnamed candidates,” Klingler told the New Hampshire Journal.
He noted that compared to exit polls in the 2020 presidential election, independent/Black voters in the state are showing significantly less support for Biden.