By Dave Andrusko
On Wednesday we talked about a Tuesday column written by the Washington Post’s David Ignatius urging pro-abortion President Joe Biden not to seek a second term. Why? His age and his vice president whose approval ratings are even lower than his.
Yesterday the New York Times’s Ross Douthat provided us with a column entitled “2024’s Field of Nightmares.” He doesn’t flatly tell President Biden to step down—although he acknowledges the role concern for President’s age could well play—but he tiptoes right up the edge.
Hot Air’s David Strom riffed off of a Quinnipiac University Poll. Rather than spending a lot of time talking about the head-to-head Biden versus Trump match up [it’s 47% for Biden, 46% for Trump], he examined the internals:
Voters see Biden as too old and don’t see the same problems with Trump. There is absolutely zero chance that voters will change their minds on this question, at least regarding Joe Biden. Biden isn’t going to become more mentally alert or more physically vital, and voters are set in their opinions that Biden is not truly fit to be president.
This opinion is reflected in the answers to the second question, about who could better respond to a national crisis. There are a lot of people who say they won’t vote for Donald Trump who freely admit that he is better equipped to handle a national crisis.
This answer is driven, I would expect, partly by the perception of age and decrepitude that attaches to Biden, but also due to Biden’s objectively poor performance as president.
That, too, is not an opinion that is likely to change.
How attached are voters to their candidates? Half of voters who said they support President Biden in the 2024 Democratic presidential primary “also said they were open to voting for another candidate,” according to Sarah Fortinsky. “In the new Quinnipiac University national poll, 51 percent of respondents planning to vote for Biden in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary said they might change their candidate choice, depending on what happens before the Democratic primary.”
As for voters who said they plan on supporting Trump in the Republican primary, they were more loyal. Fortinsky reported “68 percent said they are firmly set on the former president, regardless of what happens before the GOP primary. Twenty-nine percent said they might change their candidate choice depending on what happens.”
More tomorrow.