By Dave Andrusko
There was always going to be a point where (to borrow from Byron York) “The entire Democratic political establishment freaked out” [http://click1.trk-washingtonexaminer.com/ViewMessage.do] over the prospect of pro-abortion President Joe Biden running for a second term. How could there not be?
His job approval numbers are as low as 37% topping out in the low 40s. The administration’s attempt to celebrate “Bidenomics” runs up against high interest rates, high gas prices, high food prices, and near historic highs in the percentage of people who believe we are on the wrong track.
NBC News says “Bidenomics is
a term that mystifies Americans and confounds even its namesake. “I don’t know what the hell that is,” Biden said in a speech in Philadelphia earlier this year.
In a September focus group with Pennsylvania swing voters, one participant told the research firm Engagious that the concept was a “jumbled mess,” adding that “it’s really hard to explain.”
But it was a story in the Sunday New York Time—”Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Sienna Poll Finds”—that set off all the alarums. To quote York
The story was based on a new survey in which voters in six key swing states — Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada — were asked whether they supported President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump in a 2024 matchup. The result: In five of those states, all except Wisconsin, Trump led Biden.
How much of a difference? Was it tight?
The poll found Trump leading by 10 points in Nevada, by 6 in Georgia, 5 in Arizona and Michigan, and 4 in Pennsylvania, while Biden led Trump by 2 points in Wisconsin. “If the results in the poll were the same next November, Mr. Trump would be poised to win more than 300 Electoral College votes, far above the 270 needed to take the White House,” the New York Times concluded.
Shane Goldmacher, the author of the New York Times story, wasted no time in outlining the President’s dilemma. His lead
President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states [all of which Biden carried in 2020] one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues, new polls by The New York Times and Siena College have found. It gets worse.
Goldmacher writes astutely
Concerns about the president’s advancing age and mental acuity — 62 percent also said Mr. Biden does not have the “mental sharpness” to be effective — are just the start of a sweeping set of Biden weaknesses in the survey results.
Goldmacher also added a finding that was a real show stopper:
In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six.
There is much, much more about how the poll has the Democrat Establishment in a full panic. For example:
The poll prompted David Axelrod, the former Obama adviser, to openly muse about whether Biden should run for re-election. While conceding that it’s late for Democrats to change candidates, he wrote of Biden, “What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”
We’ll talk this more tomorrow.