Hunter Biden Is Not A Political Problem
How coverage of the Hunter Biden story exemplifies the problems with modern political reporting
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How Much Of A Political Problem Is Hunter Biden?
On Friday afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of David Weiss as special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden (Weiss had previously been the federal prosecutor in Deleware investigating the case) … which led to this breathless declaration in pages of Politico.
The appointment … likely ensured that the probe of the president’s son, and the headlines it produces, will doggedly shadow his father’s reelection campaign for the duration of it.
While no evidence has yet been presented to connect Hunter Biden’s business dealings with President Joe Biden, the Department of Justice’s decision to allow for a special counsel adds fuel to a storyline that many on the right have feverishly gripped as the key to the president’s political downfall.
…. What was certain in the aftermath of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s announcement was that as much as the White House had tried to turn the page, the specter of Hunter Biden’s legal problems would hang over his father’s reelection bid.
This argument is at pace with the emerging conventional wisdom about the political impact of the Hunter Biden investigation. Indeed, Politico also quotes Rep. Dean Phillips, who has publicly suggested that Joe Biden is vulnerable and that someone (maybe even him!) should challenge the president for the party’s nomination. “This is exactly, exactly why I’m trying to raise the alarm,” said Phillips. “The data, the polling is a huge risk. The president’s age is a risk. And now the appointment of a special counsel to investigate the president’s son — essentially, what, 16 months before the 2024 election — is almost certain to ensure that this is front and center during the most consequential campaign in perhaps history.”
There’s a major problem, however, with this argument, and ironically, it comes in the 16th paragraph of the Political piece.
“A Reuters/Ipsos poll in June found that most Americans said the Hunter Biden plea deal does not affect their likelihood of voting for Biden next year.”
Oh really? Hmm, if most Americans said Hunter Biden’s plea deal (which would have been an admission of guilt) doesn’t affect their likelihood of voting for his father … then wouldn’t that undercut the argument that this is a significant political problem for the president?
To answer my question … yes. No matter what self-interested argument Dean Phillips makes or no matter how much reporters want to hype this story, the fact that polling shows Americans don’t care and it’s not influencing their views on voting for Biden is enormously relevant. It’s not a nugget of information that should be buried in the 16th paragraph.
Indeed, a closer look at the poll is revealing. Even though 50 percent of Americans think Biden received preferential treatment because he is the president’s son, it’s not having much impact on how they view his father.
These poll results suggest that the Hunter Biden story is likely to reinforce existing viewpoints rather than change them (I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the 45% of Republicans who say they are much less likely to vote for Biden were probably already not planning to cast a ballot for the president).
This result is arguably even more interesting.
Even a plurality of Republicans agree that Biden’s support for his son indicates he’s a good father. This gets to something that I wrote about last week. Political lines of attack are effective when they reinforce already existing perceptions. If people generally view Joe Biden as shady or corrupt, then Republican accusations of corruption and influence peddling will resonate. The attacks will fall flat if they don’t associate Biden with corruption.
Conversely, voter opinion about the Hunter Biden story will likely be viewed through the prism of how they already perceive Biden. Since the president has a long-standing reputation as a dedicated and empathetic father who has experienced extraordinary trauma in his personal life, it perhaps shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that even Republicans are willing to cut him some slack when it comes to his son. So as odd as it might seem, the Hunter Biden story could just as easily reinforce already positive perceptions of the president as they are to create new, negative ones. At the very least, any damage to Biden may be minimized by counter-vailing empathy toward the president.
It Just Doesn’t Matter
One can easily argue that this is one poll, and it’s a mistake to extrapolate too much information from a single data source. It’s a fair point, but Politico introduced the poll in their piece … and ignored its implications. Unlike the assumptions and suppositions made at the outset of the piece, the poll is actual data on the political impact of the Hunter Biden story … and essentially contradicts much of what came before in the story.
While I suppose the appointment of a special counsel may dramatically change the nature of the Hunter Biden investigation, that feels like a stretch, especially since the special counsel on the case was previously willing to offer Biden a rather generous plea deal when he was acting in his role as a federal prosecutor.
I’m sure that some of you will argue that this is just one more example of media bias against Democrats. Maybe that’s part of what is happening here, but I think the better explanation is simpler and more depressing. If Politico ran a piece that said, “Appointment of Special Counsel in Hunter Biden Unlikely to Have Much Impact on the 2024 Presidential Election,” fewer people would click on it. Journalism is a business, and hyping the Hunter Biden story drives traffic.
Moreover, political reporters (like most political junkies) generally live in a bubble and tend to believe that other Americans are as focused on political machinations as they are. However, that’s not true! Most of the political stories that reporters devote their time to covering will have little to no impact on voter decision-making. But to acknowledge that publicly would mean that much of the horse race reporting political journalists do for a living is useless or, more charitably, caters to a narrow subset of the electorate. The simple reality is that the vast majority of Americans already know who they are voting for in November 2024. Partisan identification remains the single best predictor of voting patterns. Little that happens between now and then will dramatically change their mind. That’s the case in most presidential elections, but it’s even more true in 2024 because the party nominees (assuming Trump wins the GOP nod) are so well-known by the electorate.
Yes, there will be shifts along the margins as there are still some persuadable voters in the American electorate. But if reporters want to argue that Hunter Biden’s legal troubles will move the political needle, they need more than unproven assumptions. Until we see any data that suggests Hunter Biden is a major concern for voters, we should assume that it’s a non-story for 2024.
What’s Going On
Here’s an actually important political story: Donald Trump is facing a serious cash crunch, which could leave him at a money disadvantage against Joe Biden next Fall (assuming he’s the 2024 Republican presidential nominee).
This is what the Supreme Cort has wrought: a 13-year-old in Mississippi giving birth to her rapist’s child because she couldn’t get an abortion.
Great piece by Jon Pareles on the 16 essential Robbie Robertson songs.
Mike Tomasky is rooting for Republicans to impeach Joe Biden.
The Arkansas Education Department is canceling an AP African-American history class … AP European history is still cool.
Always read Ron Brownstein. Always.
Musical Interlude
I’m not done remembering Robbie Robertson
First: Hunter doesn't matter...right now. So long as nothing implicates Joe Biden I agree: this is irrelevant.
Second: while I don't think this story matters a lot, it's still not GOOD for Joe Biden. This story percolating increases the number of cycles where Joe Biden will have a bad political week/weekend/few days. That makes it harder to get polling momentum, and if timed properly, could hurt. If, say, Hunter goes to trial in October of 2024: that's a big thorn in Joe's side.
Joe would be better off if Hunter could cut a different deal.