A friendly reminder from the paper of record: Joe Biden was a placeholder in 2020 and Democrats still haven’t fully fallen in love.
As the latest polling data on the state of the 2024 presidential race from the Washington Post and ABC News made the rounds yesterday, Democrats took on a discouraged and defeated attitude realizing that their guy is, well, a dud.
The New York Times picked up the story with an article by Peter Baker in which Democrats are described as “queasy” and “alarmed” over the fact that two-thirds of survey respondents said Joe Biden lacks the fitness and mental acuity to be president:
Taken at face value, the poll showed Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by six percentage points in a theoretical rematch, raising the question of whether the president is as well positioned as he maintains.
No single poll means all that much, especially so early in an election cycle, and the president’s strategists as well as some independent analysts questioned its methodology. But even if it is an outlier, other recent surveys have indicated that the race is effectively tied, with either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump holding narrow leads within the margin of error. Taken together, they suggest that the president opens the 2024 campaign facing enormous challenges with no guarantee of victory over Mr. Trump.
The data has left many Democrats feeling anywhere from queasy to alarmed.
The synopsis is that Democrats still can’t believe Donald Trump isn’t politically dead yet. Furthermore, they can’t believe that Joe Biden is actually considering a second run for the White House, a scenario where he would be 82 years old taking the Oath of Office.
Biden’s only argument lies in some mysterious belief that he and he alone is the most electable option against Trump. That was never true from the beginning and it isn’t true now, but Biden believes it in the core of his being.
The Times article quotes former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazille with an ironically tone-deaf thought:
“The poll demonstrates that the president still has work to do, not only in convincing the American people that he’s up for the job that he wishes to complete,” said Donna Brazile, a former chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee who said she lost sleep over the “ominous signs” in the latest survey results.
The American public has known Joe Biden for multiple decades. He’s now been President since 2020. If Joe Biden “still has work to do” to convince the American people that he’s up for the job, then he’s not up for the job.
What’s stopping him? What’s holding Joe Biden back from wowing everyone? Why has Joe Biden been unable to convince the American people that he’s up for the job? Perhaps it’s because his time on the job has resulted in economic catastrophe for a wide slice of the population. Perhaps it’s because America stumbles from one foreign policy crisis to the next while getting lapped by China and other geo-political adversaries in the process.
Some Democrats took a different view on the Post/ABC poll. If you don’t like the numbers, trash the method:
“The poll really is trash, and I don’t say that lightly because I’ve had respect for their polling in the past,” said Cornell Belcher, who was President Barack Obama’s pollster. “However, their methodological decision here is problematic,” he added of the way the survey was constructed.
There may be some truth in that, perhaps the poll is trash. On the other hand, it was produced by the Washington Post and ABC News to prop up their guy. It’s surprising they ever let it see the light of day unless it’s more of a warning shot for the Biden campaign that they have a tough road ahead.
The bottom line for the 2024 election is that Joe Biden is not prepped for an easy lay-up. He’s not Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, or even George W. Bush.
Biden hid in his basement during the entirety of the 2020 campaign thanks to Covid, but he won’t be able to hide this time around. In fact, it’ll become painfully obvious from the start that Joe Biden will not be able to maintain the grueling tasks of the presidency and campaigning at the same time.
As it stands now, he’s a part-time President who often wraps things up in the early afternoon.
Democrats should be queasy. They put all their stock in a guy who is being investigated for endless pay-to-play corruption schemes that are growing in toxicity by the day.
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