He doesn’t surf and he’s not a Kardashian (even by marriage), but that doesn’t mean Pennsylvania-born, Delaware-bred Joe Biden isn’t secretly running for a job that doesn’t exist — President of Southern California.
Global warming. Immigration. Weed. Biden has spent much of the past two years wading into issues that voters in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties care about more than most.
“Care,” in this case, shouldn’t be misread as “loves the way Biden is handling that.”
While it’s true that in 2020 voters in the four-county region preferred Biden over then-President Donald Trump by a resounding 28.4 percentage points (about 4.8 million votes for Biden versus 2.6 million for Trump), it’s no lock that will happen again in 2024. Presidents seeking a second term sometimes find their biggest detractors are former supporters who feel burned by unmet expectations or broken promises.
With that in mind, here’s a look at five issues Biden’s campaign is either crowing about – or conspicuously not crowing about – that could be deal-breakers for Southern California voters:
Global warming
What Biden did: Last summer, after weeks of behind-the-scenes haggling, the Biden administration announced it had enough votes in the Senate to pass the Inflation Reduction Act.
While the bill takes steps to trim health spending and reduce the deficit, it also aims $369 billion toward reducing America’s contributions to global warming. That makes it, by far, the biggest federal law ever passed in the climate arena. Independent climate experts – who don’t necessarily love everything about the bill – confirm it could cut U.S. greenhouse emissions to about 40% below their all-time high over the rest of this decade.
Why it’s a SoCal thing: Californians, particularly Southern Californians, view climate change as a big deal.
A 2022 poll from the Public Policy Institute of California found that about 7 in 10 adults…
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