With a year to go until the 2024 presidential election, is it too soon for Democrats to freak out about the horrific New York Times/Siena College poll released yesterday?
President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states 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.
The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of four to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.
Hell, no. This is a perfect time for me to freak out, and judging by posts on my X feed (I really miss Twitter), so are many other political observers who I respect.
In a Politico story, Obama strategist David Axelrod raised questions about whether Biden should run for a second term.
David Axelrod, a prominent Democratic political strategist and former White House official, said on Sunday that President Joe Biden needed to think carefully about whether he should continue to seek reelection.
“Only @JoeBiden can make this decision,” Axelrod wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “If he continues to run, he will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. What he needs to decide is whether that is wise; whether it’s in HIS best interest or the country’s?”
Axelrod — who is best known as the driving force behind former President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 runs for president and served as a senior adviser in his administration — was responding to new polling from The New York Times and Siena that showed Biden struggling in key battleground states against former President Donald Trump. Axelrod posited those numbers as a reality check.
“It’s very late to change horses,” Axelrod wrote, “a lot will happen in the next year that no one can predict & Biden’s team says his resolve to run is firm.”
“He’s defied CW before,” Axelrod continued, most likely referring to the conventional wisdom — “but this will send tremors of doubt thru the party — not ‘bed-wetting’ but legitimate concern.”
Even though I often find Bill Maher to be irritating, when he referred to "Ruth Bader Biden" on his Real Time show last Friday I thought right on!
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was so attached to being on the Supreme Court, she passed on the chance to resign and have Obama appoint her successor. Reportedly Ginsberg was convinced that Hillary Clinton would become president in the 2016 election, and she liked the idea of having the first woman president choose her replacement.
Problem was, Trump won, and Ginsberg died in September 2020 from a longstanding bout with cancer during Trump's last year in office. So Ginsberg made the fatal mistake of hanging on too long, elevating her personal desire over the good of the country, and Trump got to choose her successor.
I see Biden doing the same thing. During his campaign against Trump I recall Biden talking about how his goal was to serve one term, then pass the presidential torch to someone younger. But now Biden is all in on running for a second term, at the end of which he would be 86.
That's way too old. And I speak as someone who is 75 and has friends in their 80s who are as mentally sharp as when they were much younger. But they're not president of the United States!
I like Biden. I think he's done a good job as president. I'm hugely grateful that he saved us from four more years of a Trump presidency. But along with most Americans, I'm utterly unenthused about having to choose between Biden vs. Trump again.
Been there, done that.
Gretchen Whitmer
Time for a new face of the Democratic party. A younger face. A female face. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer could be that face if Biden would simply realize that for the good of the country, he can't be the Democratic candidate in 2024, because there's too great a chance that Trump will beat him. And that would be a total disaster for the United States and the world.
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